My research interests embrace Asian politics, society and economy. In recent years, I have conducted research on democratisation, electoral campaigning,  and transitional justice in Asia. Here are some of the highlights of my research efforts.

State of Democracy in Taiwan:

Tracing the Obstacles to Further Democratic Development

In 2000, the international community praised Chen Shui-bian's electoral success as a major step towards a consolidated democratic Taiwan. In Taiwan itself, different interpretations surfaced soon after the election and have dominated the domestic and international intellectual discourse since then. In 2004, Taiwan witnessed the rise of 'fascist dictator' Chen Shui-bian and the birth of the so-called new democracy movement. Two years later, the movement achieved new momentum when the Red Movement spread through the island, vowing to restore democratic order and to bring society back to its 'core values.' And in 2008, people again took to the streets, expressing their fear of a rebirth of KMT authoritarianism. In this paper, I would like to look behind these challenging developments and outline several key obstacles to further democratic development in this island-state.

Full paper available in PDF.

Election Campainging in East and Southeast Asia

Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006

Social changes in advanced democracies, advancements in media technologies and the global wave of democratisation in the late 1980s contributed to the global spread of US electoral campaign techniques. For over a decade, the international scientific community has endeavoured to formulate a universal theory of political campaigning that would be applicable to all democratic polities and able to explain the causes, dynamics and limitations of this new phenomenon. However, most of the relevant contemporary writing deals with different aspects of campaigning and is restricted to the European and American experience. Concerted efforts to gain a global understanding of campaigning, such as the Global Political Consultancy Survey, have been rare and have only partially covered Asian democracies. While electoral studies in Western democracies have been strongly influenced by new scientific approaches, the study of Asian elections has seen little analysis. There is thus limited knowledge of how campaigns are run in Asia and how the modus operandi has changed as a result of democratisation. In my edited book Election Campaigning in East and Southeast Asia, I have addressed those important processes.

The scientific community positively appraised my work. One leading European scholar, for example, considered the publication as a "timely edited volume" that "marks one of the first attempts to study these processes [Asian electoral campaigning] systematically" (McCargo, Pacific Affairs, vol.  79, no. 4 (Winter 2006-2007): 662). In his book review, the scholar also noted the shortcomings of contemporary research and requested more concerted efforts among Asia scholars. 

Reviews

Duncan McCargo, Pacific Affairs, vol.  79, no. 4 (Winter 2006-2007) (PDF)

Arndt Graf, Asien, 109 (October 2008) (PDF)

Table of contents and sample chapters

Table of Contents (PDF)

Chapter 1: The Globalization of Political Marketing: An Introduction (PDF)

Chapter 6: Is There an Asian Style of Electoral Campaining? (PDF)

Other links

Google Books (Browse through the entire book)

Ashgate Publishing (Obtain a copy of the book)

Evolution and Limitations of Modern Campaigning in East Asia: A Case Study of Taiwan

Routledge Handbook of Political Management (2009)

The Routledge Handbook is a comprehensive overview of a variety of research areas related to campaigning. In 2007, the editor of the Handbook (Dennis W. Johnson, George Washington University) invited me to contribute a chapter on the evolution and current modus operandi of modern electoral campaigning in Taiwan, one of Asia's most vibrant new democracies. The final version of my paper is available here.

Links:

Routledge Publishing 

Browse through the entire book.

Chapter 27: Campaigning in East Asia (PDF)

Understanding Modern East Asian Politics

Nova Science, 2005

In 2004, I finally succeeded in enlisting several European, Asian and American scholars in my attempt to author a volume of essays about key themes relating to politics in East Asia today. In 2005, the volume was released by a US publisher. It explores the formidable obstacles on the road to democratic consolidation in Asia's new democracies, and the prospects for democratic transitions among the region's remaining authoritarian polities. The essays address issues of institutional design, media reform, electoral politics, and religious movements.

Links:

Nova Publishing (Obtain a copy of the book)

Google Books (Browse through the entire book)

Table of Contents

For the last ten years, I have observed elections in Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Thailand and Mongolia. Here are some of my publications:

Recent Elections and Political Trends in East Asia

East Asia Books, 2004 (PDF)

For the last ten years, I have observed election in Taiwan, Japan, Thailand, South Korea and Mongolia. Here are some of my publications on elections in Asia: This volume is a collection of essays on elections and political development in Taiwan, South Korea and Mongolia. I edited the book and authored one article on Taiwan. Heike Hermanns analysed the local and national elections in Korea. Holis S. Liao looked at politcal developments in Mongolia and Kay Moeller at international relations.

The Power of the Ballot Box: Political Development and Election Campaigning in Taiwan

Lexington Books, 2003

In this book I look beyond regional and global causes of democratisation to pinpoint the true indigenous foundations of Taiwan's political development, and examine the pivotal importance of local elections in the island's democratisation process. Based on extensive research and in-depth interviews with leading Taiwanese politicians and political scientists, the book provides a detailed history of Taiwan's electoral experience from the Japanese colonial period, through the Kuomintang regime, to the present day.

Links:

Google Books (Browse through the entire book)

Lexington Books (Obtain a copy of the book)

Transitional societies are confronted with the problem of how to deal with the atrocities committed by former authoritarian regimes. Despite the fact that there have been a number of regime transitions in Asia during the last two decades, transitional justice has been an issue hardly addressed in those countries.

In 2006, the 2-28 Massacre Foundation (Taiwan) asked me to do a study on how Austria, my home country, had dealt with the past. In my paper, I also looked at the Taiwanese discourse on transitional justice and concluded with several normative policy suggestions.

Transitional Justice Austria/Taiwan

Original Chinese version (PDF)

Revised English version (PDF)

In 2007, another government-funded foundation asked me to analyse the foreign perception of Taiwan's transitional justice. In my paper, I ascertain that global and local efforts to promote meaningful transitional justice initiatives are interdependent processes in which foreign communities have a mediating function. My study shows that the absence of a constructive dialog between local and global actors limited indigenous transitional justice efforts in Taiwan. I presented the results of the study at the International Symposium: The 20th Anniversary of the Lifting of Martial Law in Taiwan (Taipei). 

In the late 1980s, a number of states in Asia entered the process of liberalisation and democratisation. For the last ten years, I have personally witnessed key events in the democratisation processes of South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Mongolia.

In November 2008, the Asian Political and International Studies Association invited me to participate in an international conference on the state of democracy in Asia (Conference schedule: PDF). In my presented paper (full paper in PDF), I argue that democratic consolidation in Taiwan has mainly to do with the question of how to overcome the legacies of the former authoritarian regime. In addition, I ascertain that the growing self-dramatisation of political events has prevented any constructive political discourse for  the last eight years.  I came to a similar conclusion in September 2008 when I did research on the new Thai democracy movement (see PAD, consumed democracy and self-dramatization: A comparative view from Taiwan; images of the PAD movement are available here).

A revised version of my presented paper is going to be published in 2009 by De La Salle University Press (Chapter Outline).

Taiwan's Nuclear Dream: An Analysis of Political and Ecological Problems and Current Discussions

Cathay Skripten, Heft 10 (September 1998) (PDF)

Democracy and Democratization in East Asia: Myth or Reality?

Modern East Asia, Vol. 1, No. 3 (August 2002) (PDF)