As Asia's first ecological party, the Green Party Taiwan (GPT) had a promising start when it obtained a national-level assembly seat two months after its founding in January 1996. However, what came later was a string of repeated setbacks and prolonged dormancy until its resuscitation around the mid-2000s. Riding on the surge of protest activisms, the GPT won three local councillor seats in 2014. The party had a decent chance in the 2016 and 2020 national elections, but was outmanoeuvred by other movement-oriented start-ups, chiefly the New Power Party, which emerged to be the third largest party in the legislature.
The GPT's electoral vicissitudes are the central topic of this book, offering a unique lens to observe Taiwan's political change over more than two decades. Like its West-German prototype, GPT hailed from environmental and antinuclear campaigners and grew to include activists in LGBT, indigenous and other youth-led movements. Its founding signified the coming of age among Taiwan's movement activists who were no longer satisfied with the alliance with the Democratic Progressive Party, the heir of anti-authoritarian opposition. The GPT struggled to maintain its electoral viability, which underscored the formidable challenge for outsiders to break into the political scene once the democratic transition was over.
A tireless crusader of Taiwan studies, Dafydd Fell has established his professional credentials with previous publications on party politics. This book took nearly a decade-long effort in the making, involving in-depth interviews with over 50 participants, focus group discussions and field observation. The result is a richly detailed account of the GPT's evolution from an intimate perspective, since the author was able to obtain valuable interview data from core participants. The analysis should be recommended for its balance and fairness as the author had to navigate among conflicting narratives from a number of strong-willed participants.
The first three chapters introduce the rationale, methods and theoretical questions regarding niche parties. The next two chapters profile GPT leaders and supporters and examine their experience in a global perspective. The following nine chapters closely trace the GPT's electoral attempts. The concluding chapter is a candid reflection on the GPT's shortcomings up to the time of writing and offers practical lessons for its renewal. The thematic arrangement is complete and organic, and it will be very difficult to come up with a competing book-length statement in the near future. The book is among the essential reading list for understanding Taiwan's fascinating intersection of movement politics and electoral politics. Also of interest is the attention to the GPT's role in Taiwan's diplomacy. Despite the island nation's challenged presence in the international community, the GPT continues to liaise with green parties in the Asia Pacific region and elsewhere; and this global connection in turn strengthens the commitment of GPT participants.
Taiwan has sustained antinuclear activism, and the popular concerns over environmental issues (air pollution, for instance) have been persistently strong. Why then did the GPT fail to capitalize on this endowment and become a more competitive party? While GPT's quiet period (1999–2005) coincided with the low tide of movement activism, why did it miss the subsequent opportunity when youth activism was on the ascendency, particularly in the wake of the 2014 Sunflower Movement? As a forerunner to combining movement commitment and electioneering, the GPT appears to be both too late and too early. In the mid-1990s, the nascent GPT emerged too late for the flare-up of antinuclear sentiments. And starting with the 2008 election, a revitalized GPT was poised to harvest the political fallout of rising protests, and yet after the Sunflower Movement, it effectively ceded the limelight to newer outfits.
Writing as a sympathetic observer, the author refrained from pronouncing a judgment. There are many clues to be gleaned throughout the book. It was only in 2014 that the GPT began to establish active local branches and formalize nominations (p. 191). Prior to that, due to its rudimentary institutionalization, the party seemed akin to what Max Weber identified as a “party of notables.” Until recently, the GPT seemed to pay more attention to national-level elections. Yet, local elections of city and county councillors offer a more accessible entry point, because the multiple-member district design favours smaller parties, and the dominance of two mainstream parties is weaker (councillors without party affiliation made up 26 per cent as of 2018). There is little description of the GPT's non-electoral activities. One cannot but have the impression its activists were mostly seasonal politicians whose presence was limited to electoral periods only. In two incidents of alliance with other political parties in 2012 and 2016, when GPT had its best chance, severe internal disputes took place, resulting in long-lasting feuds. This suggests a pervasive fundamentalist mentality among core participants which inhibited pragmatic adaptation to changing political circumstances.
The intensive reliance on interview data invites the reader to the intimate world of GPT activists; yet, there are places where decaying memory, conflicting narratives and personal rivalries stand in the way of a fuller understanding of some important episodes, such as the party's surprising performance in the 1996 election (p. 121). It is therefore a pity that the GPT's only ever elected national-level representative was not available for an interview. Nevertheless, a monograph on the GPT with such attentive care does not even exist in Chinese. Its publication is surely a testament to the vibrancy of international Taiwan studies, and the book promises to be the standard reference for readers who are interested in the lively interaction between social protests and electoral politics in Taiwan.
