Politics in Taiwan is an accessible and highly readable survey of the Taiwanese political situation covering 1949 to the present. With a focus on the issue of democratisation, Shelley Rigger covers Taiwan's complicated, and unique, political history. The Republic of China on Taiwan's experience of democratisation in unusual. Taiwan began confounding theorists of political development more that thirty years ago: in the two decades after Taiwan weaned itself off US foreign assistance in 1965, it stood as a counter-example to modernization theories which saw a link between industrialisation and democratisation. When political reform took hold in the mid 1960's, it was driven by ethnic and political injustice rather than by the predictable calls based demands born of economic success. This book shows that Taiwan, unlike other countries, avoided serious economic disruption and social conflict, and arrived at its goal of multi-party competition with little blood shed.
Nonetheless, this survey reveals that for those who imagine democracy to be the panacea for every social, economic and political ill, Taiwan's continuing struggles against corruption, isolation and division offer a cautionary lesson. This book is an ideal, one-stop resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students of political science, particuarly those interested in the international politics of China, and the Asia-Pacific.