ASSESSING TAIWAN's SECOND TRANSITION OF POWER:
A turning point in Taiwan's political development?

The Possibility of Public Deliberation in Managing Political Cleavages : The Case of an Inter-ethnic Forum in Taiwan

Tong-yi Huang
Associate Professor, National Cheng-chi University

Abstract
The most daunting and fundamental challenge Taiwan’s nascent democracy must confront is the entangled political cleavages of ethnicity, national identity and regional division. These divisions reinforce with party support and cause obstacle to Taiwan’s governance. Policy disputes and administrative issues are constantly reduced to political conspiracy theory or struggles across two political camps. Open and rational policy debates are rare and gridlocks become normality. Recent revival of theories of deliberative democracy and its practice in Taiwan has brought new hopes to solving these difficulties of governance. Through analyzing an inter-ethnic forum which touched upon the thorny issue of national identity, this paper assesses the possibility of public deliberation as an effective tool to manage the political cleavages. From the perspectives of self-transformation, enlargement of political discussion network, and change of judgment habits, this paper argues that public deliberations prevent polarization of attitudes and are conducive to unfastening the reinforcing political cleavages. This paper also points out the problems deliberative democracy has to address in Taiwan in terms of its tensions with representative democracy and social movements. To cope with these problems, this paper proposes suggestions for both advocates and students of deliberative democracy.

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