Supported by: Taiwan Fellowship Program, Taipei Representative Office
Project span: January – September 2013
Project team: Grigorij Mesežnikov (author), Ján Bártoš (technical coordinator)
Objectives: Project includes the elaboration of study – in Slovak and English edition – about basic characteristics of the process of Taiwan’s transition from authoritarianism to democracy, with a special emphasis on the role played by civil society actors in a comparative framework of some aspects of the democratic transition in Slovakia (and broadly in Central Europe). The study summarizes the historic background of Taiwan’s transition to democracy and its international context, internal and external factors that influenced the process of democratization and the consolidation of democracy in a formative way, the modes of activities and interactions of the major political actors involved in the processes of democratization, as well as the important institutional changes accompanying democratization. It also deals with the basic characteristics of civil society in Taiwan, including a typology of civil society actors (social movements and NGOs), some quantitative parameters of the Taiwanese “third sector”, legal regulations applied in the area of non-profit activities, involvement of NGOs in the process of democracy’s consolidation, their international links and role in the policy-making process, and relations between the government and non-governmental sectors. The study describes activities of selected issue-oriented NGOs.
The publication is an outcome of the author’s research leave at the Department of Political Science at the National Taiwan University in Taipei under the Taiwan Fellowship at the end of 2012.
In September 2013, publication Demokratizácia a vývoj občianskej spoločnosti na Taiwane. Poučenie pre strednú Európu [Democratization and Civil Society Development in Taiwan. Some Lessons for Central Europe] was presented in Open Gallery in Bratislava.
Outputs:
