Abstract
In the introduction to his new book, J. Bruce Jacobs first appears to construct a rather typical political scientist’s research set-up. He states on page 1 that he will argue in the book that ‘increasing economic prosperity with increasing equality can facilitate democracy, but it is not necessary. Similarly, higher levels of education can also assist, but are not a precondition.’ He makes a distinction between democracy and ‘liberalization’ and quickly runs through various factors that have contributed to Taiwan’s democratization in a short first chapter (pp. 5–18).
The author then seems to forget about this whole framework of economic prosperity, equality, and education and its contribution to democratization. Instead, what the reader gets is a fairly typical historical overview of Taiwan’s political events from the first ‘discovery’ of Ilha Formosa to the present time, with a focus on events that had some connection to democratization. The book is heavy on historical details; names, dates, places, and poll figures abound.
For the most part, the book presents a rather conventional view of Taiwan’s political development, running through the main historical events in a chronological order. There is only a tenuous connection between the research framework and the actual analysis. The main purpose of the distinction between democratization and liberalization seems to be to show that only under Lee Teng-hui did Taiwan truly begin to democratize. Whatever Chiang Ching-kuo did in his last years was merely liberalization. While such a distinction makes some sense in the case of Taiwan, I wonder whether the author is not venturing into unfamiliar research territory, given that he only provides three general political science sources (the classical Huntington [The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991] and Almond and Verba [The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963, and The Civic Culture Revisited, Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1980]) to back up this quasi-theoretical discussion.
As a work of political history, the book is at its best in providing historical detail and filling in gaps surrounding earlier events – less well known outside of Taiwan – related to Taiwan’s political democratization process. In particular, the sections on the dangwai (the ‘non-party’ 黨外) movement and the events leading up to Chiang Ching-kuo’s decisions that allowed political liberalization are a worthwhile read.
The author claims that the book is based on extensive field research and many interviews. What is actually meant is that Jacobs has in the past conducted considerable field research for other publications from which he also draws for this work. Here and there a fleeting reference is made to interviews, but often the details of who, when, and where are a bit sketchy. Given that Jacobs has gained extraordinary access to many key people at crucial points in time, it would have been interesting to see a greater use of these interviews. The author also frequently refers to various internal party polls to back up his argument. However, as these apparently are not publicly available and no exact identifying information is provided on them, it is impossible to establish the veracity of such polls. Jacobs also appears to have a fancy for political ads and cartoons, several of which he describes in the book. Perhaps some of these could also have appeared as illustrations.
The main sources used are pro-green newspapers and magazines, foremost the Taipei Times and the Ziyou shibao (Liberty times). These account for around half of all the cited sources. One might ask whether such a heavy and lopsided reliance on newspapers commonly perceived to be somewhat partisan, as well as other pro-green material, may skew the picture. This concern is underlined by the author making rather strong political judgements, for instance, describing authoritarian-era Kuomintang variously as a ‘dictatorship’ (e.g., pp. 84, 142, 149, 162), a ‘colonial regime’ (e.g., pp. 16–68), or even as a ‘colonial dictatorship’ (p. 164). There is also some wavering in these judgements. Lee Huan is first repeatedly described as a key ‘liberal’ (pp. 13, 53, 71), but then all of a sudden becomes ‘conservative’ (p. 74). As a side note, the romanization practice in the book is unclear, as many names appear both in pinyin and in other forms without any obvious logic (e.g. Lee Teng-hui/Li Denghui, Kuomintang/Guomindang, Ma Ying-jeou/Ma Yingjiu, Taipei/Taibei).
As the book is a kind of recap of Jacobs’s earlier research on Taiwanese politics, the author engages in considerable self-referencing. An astonishing 8 per cent (34 publications) of the entire list of cited sources concern the author himself. The use of academic literature is thin at best: less than one-fifth of the cited sources are proper academic publications. Conspicuously, many prominent political scientists working on Taiwan are missing from the literature list. Instead of citing their research the author refers to his own articles and editorials. Another illustration of this cavalier attitude towards sources is the author’s often sweeping references in the text to supposedly widely shared scholarly or expert opinions, without providing any source.
While this book makes for a decent overview of the political history of Taiwan’s democratization it does not bring much new information to the table. Given the somewhat questionable use of sources and weakly built political science argument, it cannot be recommended as an academic textbook.