[3/4/2025] Taiwan Roundtable: Bills, Budgets, and Brawls: Understanding Taiwan’s Legislative Crisis

Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan has long been characterized by intense partisan competition, high-stakes negotiations, and, at times, dramatic confrontations. Recent legislative crises—including controversial cuts and freezes to the operating budgets of several ministries—have highlighted the complex interplay between budgetary politics, institutional constraints, and evolving party dynamics, raising critical questions about the resilience and functionality of Taiwan’s democratic system and constitutional order. At the same time, civil society groups, open-government advocates, and civic tech communities in Taiwan have played active roles in developing participatory mechanisms and transparency tools meant to enhance public engagement and citizen oversight in legislative affairs, but face a variety of resource and outreach constraints. The current legislative dilemma may also have substantial impacts on Taiwan’s diplomatic, national security, and geoeconomic efforts during a time of critical international exposure.

To address these timely and salient topics, please join the Sigur Center for Asian Studies for a panel discussion that brings together leading experts and practitioners to analyze the roots and ramifications of Taiwan’s ongoing legislative turbulence. Scholars, students, and policymakers interested in Taiwan’s democratic development, legislative politics, and governance will find this discussion particularly valuable in assessing both the challenges and resilience of Taiwan’s governing institutions.

Lunch (12:00—12:30)

Roundtable Discussion (12:30—2:00)

“Digital Civic Engagement in Taiwan’s Legislative Crisis,” Ipa (Hsiao-wei) Chiu, Co-founder of g0v.tw community

Wei Ping-Li, Postdoctoral Associate, the University of Maryland

“A Constitutional Crisis during a Time of Global Crises,” Thomas J. Shattuck, Senior Program Manager, Perry World House

Speakers

Ipa is co-founder of g0v.tw, a civic tech community in Taiwan starting from 2012. She is a writer and documentary director. She focuses on citizen engagement and public participation for the past 12 years, with the g0v community, which promotes online collaboration through open source culture between civil society and public sectors. She will publish her second book at the end of 2024, which is about her sociologist father and the intellectual community during Taiwan’s democratization process in the 1990s.

Dr. Wei-Ping Li is a is a postdoctoral researcher at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland and a research fellow at the Taiwan Factcheck Center. Dr. Li holds a Ph.D. degree from the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland and an LL.M. degree from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Her research focuses on disinformation, fact-checking, social media content moderation, and privacy issues in the digital era. Dr. Li is admitted to the practice of law in New York State.

Thomas J. Shattuck is a Senior Program Manager at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perry World House. He is a 2024-25 non-resident WSD-Handa Fellow at the Pacific Forum a 2024-25 non-resident Research Fellow at the Modern War Institute at West Point, and a 2025 fellow with Atomic Anxiety in the New Nuclear Age. His research focuses on cross-Strait relations, Taiwanese and Chinese domestic and foreign affairs, Taiwan’s semiconductor industry, and the US role in the Indo-Pacific. Shattuck is a Non-Resident Research Fellow at the Global Taiwan Institute, Non-Resident Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, member of Foreign Policy for America’s NextGen Foreign Policy Initiative, and the Pacific Forum’s Young Leaders Program, where he participated in the 2022 US-Philippines Next-Generation Leaders in Security Initiative.

Moderator

Richard J. Haddock is the Assistant Director of the Sigur Center for Asian Studies at the George Washington University, where he leads the Center’s robust Taiwan affairs programming, outreach, and curriculum development. He is also a member of the UC Berkeley U.S.-Taiwan Next Generation Working Group, where his research focuses on U.S.-Taiwan education diplomacy and exchange. Previously, he has held positions at the GW East Asia National Resource Center, the National Democratic Institute’s Asia team, the American Institute in Taiwan’s Public Diplomacy Section, and the U.S. Department of State. Mr. Haddock is currently pursuing a PhD in Public Policy and Public Administration at The George Washington University, focusing on digital democracy and e-governance development in the Asia-Pacific. He holds an MA in Asian Studies from the Elliott School, with a concentration on domestic politics and foreign policy of East Asia. He graduated from the University of Central Florida with a BA in Political Science and minors in Asian Studies and Diplomacy.