Chapter 1 Introduction
1.3 Literature Review
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(TAHR), on the other hand, works closely with other international human rights organizations, such as the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH).
Sometimes, the two organizations collaborate in organizing conferences and choosing itineraries for those conferences. In ways like this, NGOs act as a bridge between Taiwan’s people and international institutions.
1.3 Literature Review
1.3.1 Origins of Civil Society
Literature relating to civil society can be traced all the way back to Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher who in the fourth century BCE wrote Politics. In it, he makes what is widely considered the first reference to civil society, arguing that in order for people to be good citizens they must take part in communities. “[H]e who is unable to to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god: he is no part of a state [or polis]” (Aristotle 1996: 1253 a26-9;). Aristotle used the term koinonia politike, which in Latin read societas civilis, and eventually arrived in English as civil society.
Aristotle’s work became popular with classical Arab philosophers like Ibn Sina (980-1037) and Ibn Rushd (1126-1198), also known by their Latin names Avicenna and Averroes, respectively. Aristotle’s ideas subsequently made their way to medieval European thinkers. In 1265, William of Moerbeke made the first Latin translation, which Catholic philosopher Thomas Aquinas used to craft commentaries on Aristotle’s thoughts. “It is largely through Aquinas that the ideas of man as a social and political animal, of the citizen as one who participates in government, of the classification of
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government by the number and quality of its rulers, of the mixed constitution, and many other concepts entered the medieval milieu” (Blythe 1986, 547-65).
William of Moerbeke’s original Latin translation, though, would eventually be superseded by that of Leonardo Bruni, an Italian Renaissance historian and humanist.
Much of Bruni’s work, including his translation of Aristotle’s ideas and formulation of civil society, was tailored to advance his goal of promoting humanism. He wrote in the introduction to his translation of Aristotle’s Politics that it is crucial “to know what a city is and what a commonwealth is, and to understand how civil society is maintained or destroyed … Man is a weak creature and draws from civil society the self-sufficiency and capacity for perfection he lacks on his own” (Hallberg and Wittrock 2006, 40).
Only later would the term civil society become intimately linked with Western-style democracy. After narrowly surviving the bloody French Revolution with an aristocratic background, French diplomat and intellectual Alexis de Tocqueville journeyed to the United States, where he “marvelled at the way Americans – in contrast, he thought, to continental Europeans – participated in countless associations and thereby breathed life into their democracy” (Hoffmann 2006, 2). Tocqueville was looking for a way democratic societies could avoid the gruesome proletariat violence of the French Revolution. He believed he found it in the voluntary associations that made up civil society in the United States. “If men are to remain civilized, or to become so, the art of associating together must grow and improve in the same ratio in which the equality of conditions is increased,” he wrote (Tocqueville 1835, 585).
Tocqueville was not actually a proponent of democracy. His “view of American society was that of a French aristocrat engaged in analysing the dangers that
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democracy, which he thought would inevitably come, held for the old European social order” (Hoffmann 2006, 5). Yet his writing proved foundational for the idea that civil society is part and parcel of democratic politics. “Tocqueville’s belief in an intrinsic connection between civic activism and democracy is still the central point of reference for most contemporary theories of civil society” (Hoffmann 2006, 2).
It’s worth taking a moment here to notice how in its journey to our modern understanding, the idea of civil society, like most fragments of accepted knowledge, passed through the articulations of men (and they were all men) who shaped it according to their own beliefs and biases to suit their own agendas. Each man had a goal. Aristotle sought to intellectually undermine the conservative elites who sentenced his master’s master, Socrates, to death; Aquinas wanted to harmonize divine Christian belief with agnostic philosophical arguments to definitively prove the existence of God;
Bruni made it his mission to push religion aside, formulating knowledge as free from dependency on the divine; and Tocqueville was desperate to curb the excesses of the French Revolution and protect the privileges of Europe’s social elite, of which he was a member.
The concept of civil society experienced a lull in popularity during the mid-1800s, as more attention was paid to analyzing the industrial revolution. “It bounced back into fashion after World War II through the writings of the Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci, who revived the term to portray civil society as a special nucleus of independent political activity, a crucial sphere of struggle against tyranny” (Carothers and Barndt 1999-2000, 19). These writings were inspirational to social movements in eastern Europe during the
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Cold War, and eventually the fall of the Soviet Union and subsequent wave of democratization would make civil society a byword for political liberalization.
1.3.2 Defining Civil Society
Instead of asking what civil society is, it may be more useful to declare what it is not. Civil society does not involve business or commerce; it does not seek profit in the traditional sense as a motive. Civil society does not involve politicians; it does not seek direct political power. “Civil society is the realm of ordinary citizens, who join and participate in groups and associations because of their everyday interests, needs, and desires” (Howard 2003, 35). As to the difficult question of how to measure civil society, Marc Howard advocates conducting surveys to find out the percentage of respondents who take part in associations in specific countries, as this “not only give[s] a better approximation of the development of that country’s civil society than can come from a hollow list of total numbers or types of registered organizations, but they also facilitate extensive comparisons among the social strata of the country being studied, as well as with other countries” (Howard 2003, 53). This representative survey approach has an advantage in that it can usually be replicated in multiple countries, which “provides the best overall opportunity for comparative research on this important attribute of democracy and democratization” (Howard 2003, 55).
1.3.3 Civil Society as an Independent Variable
In modern academic literature, civil society is often analyzed in conjunction for some result. Will it spur democracy? Does it foster economic development? Can it weed out corruption? Questions like these have guided countless academic studies that
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sought to probe how beneficial civic associations are for different aspects of society.
Some of this research has focused on specific places.
For example, Rob Jenkins argued that India’s democracy “has progressed much further in terms of inclusiveness than with respect to accountability” (Jenkins 2007, 55), and that in the mid-1990s civil society groups began to play an important role in chipping away at corruption by uncovering specific acts of malfeasance, harnessing the efforts of average citizens, and focusing “on the local level, where routinized corruption was a daily curse, where the theft of public resources was personal, and where citizens themselves could do the most to expose the precise mechanisms through which corruption took place” (Jenkins 2007, 59).
Civil society is often thought of as a byproduct and self-reinforcer of democracy, as “almost all agree that a healthy democracy requires many voluntary associations and much local activity” (Ehrenberg 1999, 233). But its link with liberal politics may in fact come not primarily from civil society activities inside democracies, but rather from the demise of authoritarian regimes, particularly in former Soviet regions. “There is widespread agreement in the literature on the East Central European Velvet Revolutions that civil society was pivotal to the overthrow of communist regimes in 1989”
(Jensen and Miszlivetz 2006; Bernhard 1996, 135). However, other literature tries to dispel simplistic monocausal ways of thinking about civil society throughout the Cold War and thinks of civil society rather “as a master frame with which civic movements across Eastern Europe sought to mobilize public support in light of changing political opportunities” (Glenn 2001, 26-27).
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Some literature is now less optimistic about civil society in eastern Europe. For example, Anders Uhlin wrote that post-Soviet civil society in eastern Europe is weak because, apart from strong trade union membership, “few people are engaged in civil society activities and most civil society groups have failed to mobilize members” (Uhlin 2006, 152). In Russia, civil society stagnated because, despite laws protecting the rights of associations, there is “resistance from public officials, a political culture of apathy and distrust, and a legal system oriented towards protecting those in power rather than making them accountable to an organized public” (Uhlin 2006, 153; Weigle 2000, 338).
Civil society’s failure to take root in Russia was not for a lack of trying on the part of the people, but rather due to “the absence of a link between organized activism and state power” (Weigle 2000, 377).
After the fall of the Soviet Union, a lot of political science literature in the 1990s focused on democratic transition. But more recently, given the rise of China and Russia’s backsliding from democracy back to authoritarianism, recent political science literature has looked more at authoritarianism as a resilient form of government not necessarily prone to collapse. Civil society in these cases is studied for its ability to exist in an environment with significant restraints. And in fact Russia led the way in cracking down on civil society to prevent democratization. It passed a law in 2006 that placed NGOs under strict surveillance and limited the ability of NGOs to receive foreign funding;
other authoritarian countries soon followed suit (Koesel 2018, 257-258).
One of the most consequential paths of civil society in recent decades has been its foray into developmental economics. NGOs working in developing countries for the purpose of poverty reduction began increasing dramatically in quantity and scale in the
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late 1970s (Banks and Hulme 2012, 5). This happened shortly after global development assistance policy took a neoliberal turn, with poor countries pressured into embracing structural adjustment that canceled welfare services and state expenditures, emphasizing market-driven, trickle-down growth (Banks and Hulme 2012, 5; Murray and Overton 2011). As this neoliberal shift continued to bear little developmental fruit, philanthropists began to see NGOs as a useful way to fill the vacuum of public services for the poor (Gill 1997; Barr et al 2005; Lewis 2005; Murray and Overton 2011).
Thus began one of civil society’s most well-known innovations: the developmental NGO. These can take the form of small local NGOs that work with foreign donors to provide malaria nets to low-income households, large international NGOs that provide healthcare services to remote locations, entrepreneurial organizations that seek to nurture small businesses and innovation, and more. “Where states cannot provide sufficient goods, services or enabling environments that help citizens in securing livelihoods, or where disadvantaged groups are excluded from existing state institutions, alternative channels of service provision and/or holding governments to account must be found. It is into this gap that NGOs have neatly fitted”
(Banks and Hulme 2012, 3). Developmental experts and practitioners grew disillusioned with the neoliberal approach by the 1990s, and soon articulated a different strategy of fostering “good governance” that recognized the importance of public expenditures (Murray and Overton 2011). However, by this time, NGOs were so imbedded in on-the-ground efforts at poverty alleviation that they never fell out of significance, and they found support in a post-Cold War international community that valued human rights and grassroots participation (Murray and Overton 2011).
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Developmental NGOs have received measured criticism, mainly that they often supply services without teaching local populations to provide these services for themselves, and that they do not efficiently accomplish long-term structural changes in target countries (Banks and Hulme 2012, 3). But they have nonetheless been accepted as crucial players in the fight against global poverty.
Some research into civil society has been more theoretical, such as Francis Fukuyama’s article that argued the existence of a complex interrelationship between civil society, social capital, and economic growth (Fukuyama 2001, 7).
1.3.4 Civil Society, International Interaction, and Global Ethics
Another discussion involving civil society has been that of global ethics. Can international civil society groups facilitate interaction across cultures that foster shared normative values? “For the first time in history, a dynamic and globally connected civil society is emerging, independent of government,” wrote Don Eberly, who worked for many years in the US State Department (Eberly 2008, 278). He argued that civil society groups have goals that “are all linked to the ethic of human worth and dignity, which must be guarded and transmitted by a global civic culture … A diversified and tolerant political culture can rise up from this subsoil of democratic civil society” (Eberly 2008, 289).
Regarding classic international relations theories, global ethics is probably most related to constructivism. As Alexander Wendt argues, the global political arena fosters social interactions where countries’ “identities and interests are socially constructed”
(Wendt 1999, 248). Key to his theory is the notion that different countries can foster a
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shared culture comprised of shared ideas which are then institutionalized and acted upon (Wendt 1999, 249).
1.3.5 Taiwan’s International Space
Taiwan cannot directly take part in many of the geopolitical arenas Wendt referred to because it is excluded. This was not always the case. The Kuomintang as the Republic of China (ROC) was a founding member of the UN in 1945 and took a permanent seat on the influential security council. After the Kuomintang lost the Chinese civil war and fled to Taiwan in 1949, they retained the UN seat and claimed to represent China, even as they no longer had control of the mainland. But this changed in 1971, when diplomatic maneuvering by other nations on behalf of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) succeeded in expelling the ROC from the UN. No seat was maintained for representing the people of Taiwan.
That isolation grew worse and worse, as Beijing’s economic reforms in 1979 ushered in a new era of Chinese wealth and power. As a small nation of only 23 million, Taiwan has seldom been able to leverage its own successful economy and democratization to gain access to international political organizations. Only under the presidency of Ma Ying-jeou, who endorsed the PRC’s preferred verbiage regarding the
“1992 Consensus” that means there is only one China and Taiwan is a part of that China, did Taiwan make limited progress. Under Ma Ying-jeou’s Kuomintang presidency, Taiwan was allowed to be an observer at World Health Organization assemblies, and Beijing did not object to Taiwan being represented at the Asia–Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) 2008 annual meeting. Beijing’s acquiescence was critical to these endeavors.
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Some scholars of cross-strait relations believe Ma had the right approach, and that negotiating with Beijing is the only way to expand global participation. “Beijing’s flexibility in its application of the ‘one China’ principle and the Ma administration’s practicality in making its requests are critical to the realization of Taipei’s demand for international space and hence cross-Strait stability” (Wang, Lee and Yu 2011, 249).
But that endorsement of the PRC’s insistence that Taiwan is part of China is opposed by many in Taiwan, including politicians in the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which came to power in 2016 after a wave of student protests expressing anger at Taiwan’s increasingly close relations with the mainland. Now, the DPP is trying to expand Taiwan’s international participation while maintaining that Taiwan is an independent country.
As Jacques deLisle wrote shortly after the inauguration of independence-leaning DPP president Tsai Ing-wen, politicians in Taiwan seeking to expand the island’s international space “must do so in the face of continuing, and possibly increasing, resistance from Beijing and amid uncertainty about the policies of key states, including China and the United States” (deLisle 2016, 550). Taiwan was not allowed to continue observing World Health Organization meetings, but it maintained its spot at APEC meetings.
Observers believe a tough road lies ahead for Taiwan’s quest to gain formal representation on the world stage. The question I seek to probe is, given Taiwan’s exclusion from formal international bodies, can NGOs help Taiwan interact with the world so that Taiwan can take part in influencing and absorbing global norms?
1.3.6 NGOs in Taiwan
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As formal avenues of interaction narrowed, however, informal ones proliferated.
Taiwan’s democratization ushered in an era of interaction through global NGOs. In order to understand how this happened requires a brief historical overview.
Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao, writing about the history of civil society in Taiwan, said there are several distinct periods to distinguish. The first, which he called political forces in absolute command, lasted from 1947 to 1962. “All aspects of public life were
placed completely under the control of the party-military state … Taiwanese civil society fell under the complete control of the Mainlander-dominated central state apparatus.
Suppression and coercion were immediately applied to any autonomous demands”
(Hsiao 1990, 164).
The second period lasted from 1963 to 1978. Hsiao called it economic forces in relative command. “Economic forces gradually emerged as the KMT state incorporated
economic growth into its priority agenda for ruling Taiwan … Economic considerations were taken very seriously, allowing the rise of new economic interests to articulate and exert their influence on the state” (Hsiao 1990, 164). During the end of this period, kernels of civil society began to appear, but these remained mostly confined to intellectuals (Hsiao 1990, 165).
The third period lasted from 1979 to 1990, when he was writing. He called it social forces in mobilization. “In the past ten years, the civil society, across ethnic and
class lines, has developed a new life cycle” (Hsiao 1990, 165). New civil society groups grew more bold in pressuring the state for change. “One means was to voice grievances growing out of the serious social problems facing Taiwan. The other, and more direct,
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way was to organize collective action, with demands that the state should respond”
(Hsiao 1990, 165).
Hsiao went on to say that these protest movements, nurtured by civil society, began to advocate systematic change. “One objective of Taiwan's protest movements of the 1980s has been to acquire autonomy from the domination of the authoritarian state.
Reform has been sought not only of a specific public policy or a specific function of the state apparatus but also to transform the power relations between the authoritarian state and the mobilizing civil society” (Hsiao 1990, 165-166).
That systematic change eventually did come, culminating in Taiwan’s first presidential election in 1996. Steadily thereafter, Taiwan’s civil society activity became more international, not only with Taiwan’s NGOs playing a role globally, but also with international NGOs coming to Taiwan in order to expand their influence in Asia.
“According to governmental registration records, currently there are more than 40,000
“According to governmental registration records, currently there are more than 40,000