Taiwan's direct democracy

Full Transcript:

Introduction:

Hello and welcome to the Rules of the Game podcast, where it is my job to discuss democratic institutions.

Taiwan’s democratic development has been truly remarkable. Today it is one of the most democratic countries in the world.

The founder of the Republic of China, Sun Yat-Sen, already in 1924 praised direct democratic institutions, saying that referendums and recall are “the solutions to transforming China into the world’s most advanced country”. The road to direct democracy took very different turns though than what Sun Yat-Sen probably had imagined. 

In 1949, under the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek, the Kuomintang (KMT) party had to retreat to the island of Taiwan after the lost civil war with the Chinese Communist Party. After it became clear that a return to mainland China was not an option, a new country was built. After several decades under authoritarian rule, the country finally made a consequential turn towards democracy in the 1990s.  

The ideas of direct democracy, however, were enshrined into Taiwan’s constitution very early on. While the direct democratic institutions were dormant in the constitution for a long time, the people of Taiwan seemed to take the political leadership at their word, having internalized the promised instruments of direct political decision making.

With Yen-Tu Su I discuss the astounding development of Taiwan’s direct democracy since its early days, and its crucial revisions and improvements in its usability since 2003. The now ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) made putting direct democratic institutions into practice one of their main campaign promises. 

The people did not entrust the political elites with determining Taiwan’s future. They wanted to take the fate of their country into their own hands and embraced direct democratic power as an opportunity to safeguard the country’s political destiny. 

After several revisions of the referendum law, most importantly lowering the thresholds for ballot initiatives and referendums, direct democracy is now a pivotal part of Taiwan’s democracy. 

Yen-Tu Su is an Associate Research Professor at the Institutum Iurisprudentiae   at the Academia Sinica. He got his bachelor and master in law from the National Taiwan University, and an LL.M and Doctor of Juridical Science (S.J.D.) from Harvard Law School’s, which is Harvard’s most advanced law degree. He has written and published numerous articles and book chapters on Taiwan’s democratic institutions. Internationally he is an important voice for Taiwan’s democratic development, for instance contributing an op-ed for the Washington Post titled ​​”Taiwan is revolutionizing democracy”.

I am very happy and grateful to have him on the show. 

I am your host, Stephan Kyburz, and this is the thirteenth episode of The Rules of the Game podcast. I am a political economist with a PhD in Economics from the University of Bern in Switzerland. And I previously held positions at the London School of Economics and Political Science and the Center for Global Development.

You find a full transcript of the conversation on my website rulesofthegame.blog. If you enjoy this episode, please leave a review on your preferred podcast platform and share it with friends and colleagues. 

Now please enjoy this wide ranging conversation with Yen-Tu Su.

Interview:

Stephan Kyburz: Yen-Tu Su, welcome to the Rules of the Game podcast, I’m very happy to have you on the show.

Yen-tu Su: Thank you Stephan, thank you for your invitation, I’m very happy to be here.

Stephan Kyburz: Cool. So I start with the first question that I ask all my guests on the podcast. What is your first memory of democracy or maybe of politics in general?

Yen-tu Su: That’s a hard one. Ah but I put a few thoughts about it and I guess I can share with you a story. Maybe not the first memory but something that stayed with me for quite a while and still influences me. So it’s about the late 1980s and early 1990s. I was a high school student at that time and you know that time, it’s a very different time from now. The democracy was rising. And authoritarianism was in retreat and Taiwan also left the martial rule maybe two or three years ago, but Taiwan was still under the authoritarian rule of the KMT, the Kuomintang regime at that time. So you see that at that time there were lots of marches, rallies, protests demanding democracy. There’s so many social movements going on at that time. So I get to attend quite a few rallies and sit-ins as a high school student even before I got my right to vote. I still remember one time that maybe in March 1990, at the early days of this Wild Lily student movement a few college students just began to sit in and camp in a plaza in Taipei. Just to demand democratic reform and after school I went there, I just wanted to join them, I really wanted to join them. But the only thing I could do is to stand beside them for quite a few hours even until the nights.

At that time we didn’t have cell phones so I didn’t tell my parents where I’m going and but interestingly they found me there. My parents found me there. They took me home. And to this day is amazing, it’s still a mystery to me why they knew I was there.

Stephan Kyburz: So They came to pick you up? That’s quite impressive, must have been an amazing experience for you as a young person to see so much you know force in the society to bring about change and improvements in democracy in the rules, how the country is governed?

Yen-tu Su: Yes, and you know it’s not just that the outside world is changing. It’s that you yourself is changing too. So you can feel the transformation. So beforehand, I was taught as a Chinese, we were Chinese and our great mission is to reunify with Mainland China some day in the future. But after I’ve been, we’ve been through this democratization, we realized that okay, we are actually Taiwanese. And we should learn more about the history the  geography of Taiwan, more than the history and geography of China. So you can see that even my political identity changed over time, thanks to this transformation.

Stephan Kyburz: And did that also inspire your career like that you became like you know a professor in doing research on democracy and and law?

Yen-tu Su: I think a little bit. I was interested, I also took in my college years I also took part in student elections, student elections for student governments and have some experiences in managing campaigns, student campaigns and later on I was trained as a constitutional lawyer. But when I went to United States to study for graduate studies, at that time, you know there was a Bush vs. Gore decision, so a fast growing development in the field of law and democracy and that really just got me. So I count myself as a student of law and democracy ever since.

Stephan Kyburz: So today we would like to talk about especially direct democracy in Taiwan and how it developed, including the referendum, the initiative, but also the recall. And as you mentioned before, they are used and have been implemented over time in different versions and I think we mainly want to talk about the initiative and the referendum. But also the recall is kind of part of Taiwan’s direct democratic history. So I’d like to start with a quote I read in the Wall Street Journal and that Sun Yat-Sen, the founder of The Republic Of China, he praised referendums and recalls already in 1924 and he said they are “the solutions to transforming China into the world’s most advanced country”. So this is very early and I think it’s fascinating that he mentioned it already. Can you confirm this and can you kind of say how the direct democratic discussion evolved after that and what were kind of the main steps in the early days

Yen-tu Su: Yes, that’s actually the reason why the constitution of the Republic of China, the current written constitution of Taiwan, is actually one of the first constitutions guaranteeing citizens’ right to direct democracy decision making. So Sun Yat-Sen, as you know, was the founder of The Republic Of China (ROC). He was a revolutionary rebel back then so when he traveled to the United States for the support of the republic revolution in China, he actually saw the development of the progressive movement at that time. And that’s how he found out that there were actually systems and the institution called initiative and recall, and Referendum at that time. And then he brought back that ideas to China. And so in 1947 after the World War 2 when the ROC finally trying to make its first constitution, the right to recall, initiative and referendum was actually written into the constitution. But as you also know, that remained just like a window dressing on the constitution. For about more than 30 or 40 years, because after 1950, when the KMT, the Kuomintang regime left China and went to Taiwan, with the constitution, they began their authoritarian rule. So the people in Taiwan actually could not exercise these direct democratic rights, because there were just simply no pursuing regulations, legal statutes, regulating the exercise of these rights. So it was not until, I think 1980, that there was an election and recall law implemented in Taiwan. And the first recall was, the first major recall occurred in 1994 though it failed to reach the required quorum. And it was not until 2003 that we have our um referendums act. So that’s the basic historical background of direct democracy in Taiwan.

Stephan Kyburz: So in the beginning it was already included, so the idea was already there, but it was just not used because the thresholds to actually, you know, get the citizens to achieve a direct democratic decision was too high, right? So It was really as you say window dressing. Still, it’s still remarkable I think that it was actually included even though, during obviously authoritarian times regime regimes, they often include something like, you know, people’s power in the constitutions. But obviously it’s not.. It’s not really applied right.

Yen-tu Su: Right! So when we were young we were taught that the Republic of China was actually a more democratic country than many other democracies because our citizens not only have the right to election but also have the right to recall, to initiative and referendum; even though we could not exercise this right until pretty late, until 2003 for example for the right to initiative and recall.

Stephan Kyburz: So Taiwan essentially after, or starting in the 1990 did like a remarkable track of democratization. So in 1992, the authoritarian regime was essentially ended and the more democratic regime started and the first presidential election was in 1996 and then you had the first referendum law in 2003. I would like to know from you in 2003 who brought about this change? Was it more top-down, was it more the regime itself that decided to democratize and give the people more more decision making power? Or was it rather civil society and the people or or even or parliament that pushed for that change? Where did that change come from?

Yen-tu Su: Okay, I think we can think of the development as a result of a series of political struggles for about a decade. So in the 1990s the opposition at that time actually advocated for having more direct democratic mechanisms in Taiwan, for 2 reasons. The first one is they really wanted to have a referendum, so that we can declare our independence officially to the world. So that’s why pro-Taiwan independence movement, they actually really like referendum, they are one of the major driving forces behind this movement, behind the direct democracy movement. And the other one is the environmentalist movement at that time. They also want to have more democratic, direct democratic institutions instituted, because they thought that major, some major environmental policy decision making should not be made solely by the technocrats, or by the government, and people should have a say on whether we need, for example, the fourth nuclear power plant being constructed. And so that’s another driving force and initially the KMT, the ruling party in the 1990s, they had serious reservations about direct democracy. But as you know, since the constitution already guaranteed that people have this rights and so they don’t have many good reasons to oppose this demand, to delay this demand.

So what happened in 2003 is that, at that time the DPP, the Democratic Progressive Party, already won the presidency and then the president, Chen Shui-bian, at that time he planned to hold some national referendums, with or without a referendum law. So the KMT actually controlled the legislative Yuan, Taiwan’s parliament, and so they thought that maybe we can do something about it, maybe we can diffuse this problem by enacting a referendum law. So on the one hand we will have a referendum law eventually, but on the other hand it would be very difficult to initiate and to pass a referendum. So that’s their plan and they succeeded because they have the majority, they have the legislative majority. So they enact the Referendum Act in 2003 and then the act was often criticized for being too restrictive, too difficult for people to exercise their right to initiative.

Stephan Kyburz: That’s really fascinating, because it shows the progress of, you know, direct democracy pretty clearly that it was as you say it was important that it was in the constitution very early on. So it was kind of on paper, but not not applied right? And then the opposition came into power, at least in the presidency, and wanted to actually execute the constitution, or the rules that were already there, and then the Kuomintang who was in power in the legislative branch, they kind of complied, they implemented a referendum law but which was then with too high thresholds, right? So it was still not able to be used. Is that kind of a good summary?

Yen-tu Su: Yes, that’s actually right and so under the 2003 law, it’s very difficult to have a citizen initiative, ballot proposition being put on the ballot. It takes actually, about close to a million peoples’ signatures to get on the ballot and it also requires a turnout threshold. So you need to have a 50% voter turnout for the referendum to be considered valid.

So it’s very difficult threshold requirement, approval requirements. But somehow, I mean in addition to the citizen initiated the referendums, the president and the legislative Yuan and the executive Yuan, Taiwan’s government, under certain circumstances, under certain conditions can also initiate referendums. So president Chen Shui-bian back then actually found a way to have a referendum anyway to initiate, so he initiated the first two national referendums in Taiwan in 2004. So the referendums were held on the same date of the presidential election. But since there was a high voter turnout threshold requirement, and the Kuomintang actually managed to boycott the referendum by asking people to abstain from the referendum vote. So the first two and the next four national referendums all failed.

Stephan Kyburz: But wasn’t it the Kuomintang who initiated the first 2 referendums or was it the DPP?

Yen-tu Su: The first two referendums were initiated by the DPP president  Chen Shui-bian and the next four national referendums were initiated by KMT and two by DPP, around 2008 but they all failed.

Stephan Kyburz: They all failed because the thresholds were too high?

Yen-tu Su: Exactly and since under that kind of threshold requirement, it’s easy for the opponents of the referendum to boycott the vote. You can simply boycot the vote by just abstaining from the voting procedure.

Stephan Kyburz: Yes, and then, the next revision of the Referendum law was in 2018 or was there still a revision before. Because now the thresholds are much lower, right? So maybe can you elaborate what were the next steps in revising the the referendum law and how it impacted the further development of direct democracy in Taiwan?

Yen-tu Su: So you are right, the next major revision actually occurred in 2018, January 2018. And that’s because in 2016 the DPP won not just the presidency but they’ve also won for the first time the legislative majority and since the reform of the referendum process to make it easier for people to use, is on their campaign platform. So they thought they have a political duty or obligation to fulfill their campaign promise. So at the end of 2017 the legislative Yuan actually passed major revisions of the Referendum Act. They not only lowered the signature requirements for ballot propositions, but they also lowered the approval threshold for the referendum vote. So now a referendum would be considered past, if the yes vote exceeds the no vote and the yes vote has the support of 25% percent of the electorate. So it was a much lower threshold. So following the 2018 reform, there was a boom, an explosion of referendums in the same year. So in the local elections of 2018, voters in Taiwan actually got to vote in 10 referendums and 7 of them actually passed.

Stephan Kyburz: Wow, that’s quite high. So people were essentially waiting for the first few direct democratic decisions really, right? So campaigns both, probably among among citizens but also among the parties were launched to use that tool right away?

Yen-tu Su: Yes, one interesting thing about the direct democracy in Taiwan is that the major parties, major political parties, are actually active players using referendums, using the mechanism of direct initiatives. So for example, in the 10 referendums held in 2018, three of them were actually proposed by the then opposition party, Kuomintang.

So they know how to use, because now they realize that the Referendum is actually a very useful tool to set the national agenda. So and since that seemed back then the referendum under certain circumstances can be held, together with the election. So it’s also a good way to mobilize their voters by putting some policy issues on the ballots for people to vote. 

And that’s why after 2018 in 2019 we have another round of revisions of the Referendum Act and this time the DPP government decided to decouple the referendum and the election. So from 2019 we were going to have a specific special referendum date that is separate from the national election day.

Stephan Kyburz: Yeah, which is probably a good thing, right? Because you don’t want the tool to be used as a marketing tool or I mean, you know parties will always use it if they can, I mean I think that’s pretty legitimate and there is no way around it and it’s also probably a good thing that parties can use the tool as well, because they’re also part of of society, right? But decoupling the dates, having not the election and the referendum decisions on the same day is probably a good thing, because it prevents trying to influence people to vote on the party and the referendum issues in the same.

Yen-tu Su: Well, the move was, to say the least, a little bit controversial in Taiwan. So you would think it’s not a good idea to separate the election and referendum if you were interested in proposing a referendum. And people worried that in a separate election day, the turnout would be low and they worried that the turnout would be an issue. And so interestingly last year we actually vote on another referendum proposed by the KMT lawmakers. They want to return to the old days to have a concurrent referendum election vote. But the referendum actually failed because they could not reach the required threshold.

Stephan Kyburz: Okay, that’s interesting. So actually the referendum law is also used to kind of try to amend the referendum law itself in that way, right?

Yen-tu Su: Right, there’s one ballot proposition trying to reconnect the referendum and the election. And interestingly the last four referendums we had in Taiwan, it’s last year last December and they were held in a separate day, a special election day and the turnout is about 40 or 41%, or so and it’s lower than the usual turnout of a national election day. But I guess people might think it is still a healthy turnout.

Yen-tu Su: And even under that kind of circumstances, you can see that there’s actually a very robust party competition before the referendum vote. So this time the KMT and the DPP they all participated in the referendum campaign. The DPP, the current ruling government actually asks the voters to vote all four NO, four NOs in this referendum and the KMT would would suggest that voter vote four YES. So you can see that even with a decoupled referendum vote there is still a very robust, a very competitive partisan competition going on.

Stephan Kyburz: Yeah I think, looking at it from a Swiss perspective, I don’t think a low turnout or lower like 40% turnout is not necessarily a bad signal. It’s just that sometimes people think an issue is important, right? And they will go to vote and sometimes they think an issue is maybe not so important and they don’t vote and I think that’s pretty natural and as long as people have the option to vote on it if they really think it is crucial then they can go to the ballot box and I think that’s that’s the important part. 

Stephan Kyburz: I quickly want to go back to you know the kind of political economy of introducing and revising the law. So you say in 2016 the DPP made it kind of a campaign promise to revise the referendum law and then once they were in power, you said they came to power in 2016 for the presidency and the majority in parliament, so did they themselves think that revising the referendum law was a priority among the population or why did they make this a main campaign, a main electoral campaign promise. Where did that pressure come from?

Yen-tu Su: There was actually some pressure from the young generations. You know in 2014 there was the Sunflower Movement, some students in the civic groups, they actually occupied the legislative chamber for 24 days demanding further political reform and a not so close relations with China back at that time. So you can see that there were some new political parties entering Taiwan politics after the Sunflower movement. So some new parties, they actually, they are also behind the push for a more liberalized referendum law. And so under this kind of pressure and since the reform of the referendum and law was long in the party platform of the DPP, so they think it’s good for them to just keep their promises. So they not only revised the referendum act, they also lowered the difficulties for recall. They also revised the recall law to make it easier to use. But they probably know what will happen later on and so they anticipate that there might be some – maybe we can call it the age of populism coming to Taiwan – they have a little bit worry about that. And so especially after 2018, some people have maybe some second thoughts about referendums because they saw the passage of certain social conservative issues and some progressive issues actually failed the vote. So some people now begin to worry that it’s a really good idea to let people decide.

Stephan Kyburz: And what do you think from the populations from the citizens perspective and you know, there is sometimes among the population, the feeling that direct democracy is a good thing, and in other countries you feel like people are maybe not as much in favor of direct democracy. So in Taiwan what made people believe in direct democracy or was that something that developed just over the decades because it was always written in the constitution or what was kind of the driver of wanting direct democracy, more direct democracy in Taiwan from the citizen’s perspective?

Yen-tu Su: I guess having constitutional provisions specifically guaranteeing the right to recall, referendum and initiative does make some impact on how people think about direct democracy. Because maybe it’s really a good thing, that’s why we put it in the constitution, right? Some people also really liked to have direct democracy, it’s just that the political situation cannot allow Taiwan to hold an official referendum declaring independence. So they really want to have a major, they really want to have a say on the future or the most important thing about the future of Taiwan. So I think that one is, you can even count that one as a political consensus in Taiwan that the future of Taiwan should be decided by the people themselves, not just the political elites and so that part is pretty, pretty strong.

But in terms of other public policies I think people are still, they are still willing to have the experimentation of direct democracy going on. And they know ok, maybe it’s a way to solve or to decide some divisive policy issues. or there’s a way to have some problems solved. But they they are still thinking about how to do it better, how to make sound decisions. So some people would think that maybe we should reform the referendum act again to ensure that we have more time to deliberate on the referendum issues, for people to have more information about what the vote means.

Stephan Kyburz: Yeah I think it takes time definitely to balance out, you know, the referendum law to find the right thresholds. You know what is a good threshold for people to initiate a new proposition. Obviously also I think the people shouldn’t be overloaded with decisions, because if there are too many, they can’t really deliberate and they can’t make themselves, you know, know much about each issue. So I think this is really important but it takes time. And for a while there may be a bit too many referendums and then the thresholds are maybe adjusted and over time it will be optimized. I think also that’s how it worked in Switzerland more or less even though the threshold has been kept quite at the same level while the population grew a lot. So there have been somewhat more initiatives and referendums. But overall people are still happy to make their minds up about all the issues and decide and maybe at some point we will adjust the thresholds. But also what I thought was really interesting is that will, that drive of the people to take that power to make their own decision about Taiwan’s future, I think is really important and also probably that was the main driver of the Sunflower Movement because the people, especially the young people that really live the democracy. They thought that you know the elites the political elites, they can’t really trust them, right? They can’t trust them to make the right decisions for the future of Taiwan. So the people, you know, really pushed for having that power to make their own decisions. I think that’s that’s really really fascinating.

Yen-tu Su: Yes, so in fact, and now we have a law requiring mandatory referendums for any political negotiations and political agreements between Taiwan and China and it’s mandatory.

And since now that the people think that Taiwan is already at least de facto speaking already an independent country, so you don’t need a referendum vote to declare independence but you do need to have a referendum if you want to change the status quo.

Stephan Kyburz: Okay, that’s very interesting. Yeah, and also crucial for Taiwan’s development, future developments I guess.

Yen-tu Su: Yeah, and now you also take a referendum to amend, to revise the constitution. It’s also a mandatory one, the ratification through referendums, that’s also a current law.

Stephan Kyburz: So one more question I have is the you know the initiative, the ballot initiative that’s kind of a bottom up process. Is there still a possibility for the government or the parliament to initiate a referendum, I mean in the sense that it’s still possible, like a top-down to use a top-down process to initiate a referendum.

Yen-tu Su: Yes, we have both the bottom-up and top-down referendums in Taiwan. So in addition to a bottom-up citizen initiate ballot propositions, the legislative Yuan, Taiwan’s parliament and Taiwan’s government, and the president, they all under certain conditions can also initiate referendum votes, but their referendum would be what may be called policy vote, it’s about some policy, some issues of major policies. Whereas the bottom-up citizen initiated referendums, people can initiate a vote on legislative principles, or a referendum of an existing law or a policy vote.

Stephan Kyburz: To wrap up the discussion, do you have any books or articles that you can recommend on the topic?

Yen-tu Su: So I’ve been interested in figuring out direct democracy and the problem of populism lately. And I found Jan-Werner Mueller’s book “Democracy Rules” a very informative one. It really helped me think through these issues, back to the basics of what democracy means, so I would certainly recommend that one.

Stephan Kyburz: Okay, cool “Democracy Rules”, I will put that in the show notes for sure and thanks a lot for this recommendation. And yeah I think it’s fascinating, thanks a lot for that conversation. I think we could, you know, discuss so much more in different directions. There’s so much to talk about. But I think for the moment we leave it at that. And so Yen-tu, I really thank you for taking your time to join this conversation and I really appreciate having Taiwan’s direct democracy as a topic on my podcast. So thanks, thanks a lot.

Yen-tu Su: Thank you for having me Stephan. It’s been a pleasure.

Outro:

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