GW Taiwan Conference | Pulse Check on Taiwan's Democratic Resilience

“Democracy is never a thing done,” wrote poet Archibald MacLeish. “Democracy is always something that a nation must be doing.” In a similar vein, Taiwan’s vibrant democracy continues to be shaped and tested by dynamic internal and external pressures. This year, Taiwan’s January elections resulted in its first divided government since 2004, with no party winning an outright majority in the Legislative Yuan. Social movements have emerged in Taiwan in response to domestic political developments, including the Bluebird Movement, which formed in protest of a set of contentious legislative reform bills and produced the largest civil society demonstration since the 2014 Sunflower Movement. At the same time, exogenous factors such as the 2024 U.S. presidential election, ongoing cross-Strait tensions, and major military exercises conducted this year by the People’s Republic of China have left indelible marks on domestic political discourse in Taiwan. All the while, cross-sector social and digital innovations, such as civic technologies designed to counter disinformation, position Taiwan as a pioneer in new forms of democratic governance. How are Taiwan’s democratic institutions adapting to this wide array of internal and external social, political, and security challenges?

Join the Sigur Center for Asian Studies for a timely conversation with a group of multidisciplinary experts to unpack, explore, and assess the current state of domestic political discourse in Taiwan, the robustness and resiliency of Taiwan’s democratic institutions, and the newly emerging democratic frontiers confronting Taiwan and beyond.

Agenda

Panel 1: Elections, Political Upheavals, and Domestic Discourse in Taiwan

Speakers

Dr. Chiaoning Su is an associate professor in Communication, Journalism and Public Relations at Oakland University. She also serves as the director of the Public Relations program and the Klein Center for Culture and Globalization, as well as PRSSA's academic advisor. Beyond OU, Su served as the 2018-2020 President of the Association for Chinese Communication Studies, and the non-resident fellow of the Taiwan NextGen Foundation.
Su received her Ph.D. in media and communication from Temple University in 2015. Her research focuses on two distinct yet interconnected research lines: journalism of crisis and journalism in crisis. While the first line examines the representation and production of crisis news, the second focuses on journalism in public life during an era of waning democracy. Her work has been published in Media, Culture and Society, International Journal of Communication, Asian Journal of Communication, and Taiwan Journal of Democracy, and Communication Review. She is the recipient of the 2020 Honors College Inspiration Award and the 2021 Teaching Excellence Award at Oakland University.
Prior to her academic career, Su worked as a communication specialist at Ogilvy Public Relations and for several political campaigns in Taiwan. Through these professional experiences she developed expertise in media pitches and crisis management. In recent years, her research attracted increasing international media attention. AlJazeera, Deutsche Welle, Radio Free Asia, and Voice of America have interviewed her on U.S.-China-Taiwan relations, press freedom in East Asia, China’s wolf warrior diplomacy, and Taiwan’s nation branding. Additionally, she appeared on several Taiwanese radio programs to discuss strategic narratives to amplify Taiwan’s international visibility.

Dr. Dennis Lu-Chung Weng joined the department of political science at Sam Houston State University in 2017. Dr. Weng’s research and teaching interests are in the fields of comparative politics, Asian Politics, political behavior, and survey research. His articles have appeared in the Electoral Studies, Japanese Journal of Political Science, Asian Journal of Comparative Politics, Asian Journal of Political Science, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, and several News Media in Asia.

Dr. Weng was a business consultant and journalist in Taiwan prior to his academic career. Before coming to SHSU, he taught at The State University of New York at Cortland, Wesleyan University (CT), and The University of Texas at Dallas. He is the recipient of several teaching awards from previous institutions. Weng holds degrees in Political Science (Ph.D., MA) from the University of Texas at Dallas, International Relations (MA), and Business Administration (BA) from Tamkang University (Taiwan).

Dr. Austin Horng-En Wang is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He also serves as an associate political Scientist at the RAND Corporation. He received his doctoral degree in political science from Duke University in 2018, his bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering in 2009, and master's degree in Public Administration in 2012 from National Taiwan University.
His research and teaching interests focus on voting behavior, East Asia, and political psychology. His dissertation examines the relationship between temporal discounting and political participation through survey and experiments in the U.S., Taiwan, and Ukraine. His ongoing and sponsored research projects explore the long-term effect of political repression and attitude toward war in East Asia.
His research articles had published in several journals such as Political Research Quarterly, Electoral Studies, Asian Survey, and Social Science Research. He also has written book chapters about voting advice application and party politics in Taiwan. His comments on Asian politics had appeared in Washington Post, The National Interest, and Huffington Post, among others.

Panel 2: The Health and Future Fronteirs of Taiwan's Democratic Institutions

Speakers

Dr. Li-Yin Liu received her B.A. in Public Management and Policy and MPA from Tunghai University in Taiwan. She then received her Ph.D. degree in Political Science from Northern Illinois University, where her first field was Public Administration with specialization in public policy and nonprofit management.

Liu’s research interests are centered around science-intensive public policies, including environmental sustainability and COVID-19 policies. Her current research focuses on environmental nonprofit organizations’ influence in policy-making and citizen engagement in environmental policy implementation. In light of the COVID-19 public health crisis, she also participates in several collaborative research teams, examining the institutional determinants of COVID-19 policy configurations and the Taiwanese government's comprehensive response to COVID-19.

In addition to her primary research interests, Liu is also committed to advancing gender equity through her collaborative projects. She has been recognized for this focus and was selected as a Gender Equity Research Fellow for the 2023-24 academic year at the University of Dayton.

Liu’s teaching interests are in advanced/introductory public administration theory, public policy, nonprofit management, research methods, program evaluation and environmental governance and policy.

Prior to joining the University of Dayton, Liu was a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Public Administration at Northern Illinois University, and she worked for the Legislative Yuan (Congress) and non-governmental organizations in Taiwan before moving to the United States.

June Lin is the senior program manager for Asia-Pacific programs at National Democratic Institute (NDI), overseeing the institute’s Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Asia-Pacific regional programs to counter China’s illiberal influence. With over eight years of experience in the non-profit sector in the US and Taiwan, Ms. Lin began her endeavors in the democracy, rights, and governance sector as an activist in the 2014 Taiwan Sunflower Movement. In 2016, Ms. Lin moved to the United States and joined the Formosan Association for Public Affairs (FAPA) as a policy expert focusing on US-Taiwan relations. Before joining NDI, she worked at Freedom House and the International Republican Institute (IRI), focusing on supporting civil society actors in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the Uyghur communities. In her personal capacity, Ms. Lin also serves as the Board Secretary of the Hong Kong Democracy Council (HKDC), and as an advisor to Doublethink Lab (DTL).

Dr. Kharis Templeman is Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the manager of the Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region. He is also a Lecturer at the Center for East Asian Studies at Stanford University.
From 2013-19, he was a social science research scholar in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, where he was the program manager of the Taiwan Democracy and Security Project (TDSP) in the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC). (Prior to fall 2017, the TDSP was known as the Taiwan Democracy Project and was part of the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law).
Outside of Stanford, he is a member of the U.S.-Taiwan Next Generation Working Group, and he was a 2019 National Asia Research Program (NARP) Fellow at the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR). He has also served since 2012 as a contributor to the Varieties of Democracy project, and from 2016-18, he was the coordinator of the Conference Group on Taiwan Studies (CGOTS), a Related Group of the American Political Science Association.
He holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Michigan, and a B.A. from the University of Rochester.

Host or Publisher Sigur Center for Asian Studies at GW