External embeddedness

From the diagram of embedded democracy, one can see quite clearly: Democratic structures of government form the basis of national structures, including in an environment capable of sustaining democratic development. This external circumstances are not limited to democratic political systems, but this external circumstance and democratic political systems have an embedded relationship, as pertinent to the possibility of whether a democratic system of government advances or fails. Provided that external situations and their embedded relation with a democratic political system are disrupted, this will lead to the appearance of defects in the democracy and an uncertain political situation. Merkel believes that there are three of these external circumstances of utmost importance, divided between social-economic context, civil society, and international integration.

1. Socio-economic context

Merkel believes that the socio-economic factors of economic development and inequality have a large influence on democratic political systems. Although he believes that in using economic factors to evaluate the development of democracies is theoretically crude, it is undebatable that economic development is important to the consolidation of democracy. The course of economic development gives rise to many unequal circumstances, which can provide a basis for the disruption of democracy, and can influence the direction of an economic system of government’s development.

From the perspective of political development, poorer citizens have lower levels of education, degrading their opportunities for political participation, and there are many empirical and legal examples in which poverty as an extreme form of inequality leads the poor to become disadvantaged in the exercise of their civil and

political rights. As O’Donnell and Hermann Heller emphasize, citizens should have a sufficient shared economic base between them, in order have equal opportunities to participate in politics. Namely, cause only if citizens have assurances of sufficient socio-economic development and education can they arrive at individual points of view, and can they take up their civil rights.

As such, Merkel believes that special characteristics of the external embeddedness of socio-economic contexts and whether democracy can continue development are economic development, preventing poverty, diversification of social structure, equality in socially material resources as well as educational resources and their distribution serve as whether the democratic system of government can stabilize or continue to development. On the other hand, economic stagnation and circumstances of social inequality, can endanger the stability and character of democratic systems of government.

2. Civil Society

Merkel believes that a developed civil society can strengthen the stability of a democratic system of government. He describes this in terms of four functions:

Protection from Arbitrary State Rule: The Lockean Function, The Balance between State Authority and Civil Society: The Montesquieuian Function, The School of Democracy: The Tocquevillian Function, The Public Sphere: The Habermasian Function. He believes that civil society can defend individuals from arbitrary detention by the state, and supports rule of law and balance of powers, as well as civic participation and recruiting political elites, institutionalization of the public domain, and supports civil society serving as a self-reflective mechanism for government.

In Merkel’s theory of embedded democracy, civil society is externally embedded via the state apparatus, and if civil society is able to fulfill these four obligations, on the one hand, it can strengthen social democratization, stabilizing and self-organizing, and can provide oversight and support for the state apparatus, bringing about democracy, particularly with regards to constitutional governance.

3. International Integration

Democratic governments are able to in international organizations and international society is mutually coupled. This has a large influence on the stability and quality of democracies. Merkel raises the examples of NATO, ASEAN, Mercosur, the UN, and the EU to provide comparisons:

- If joining an international organization is only for a specific aim, such as military cooperation or economic development, authoritarian regimes, defective democracies, and democratic countries can have coalitions, because their internal power structure is subject only to specific political goals for the sake of foreign policy security. But this kind of stable circumstances has no way to allow for the development of democratic effectiveness in authoritarian regimes or defective democracies, because these set political aims are not sufficient to give rise to embedded circumstances.

- The EU’s effectiveness in achieving international integration is the most successful example of embeddedness to date, because conditions for joining the EU include governments working towards high standards and providing assurances of constitutional governance. These conditions and demands for economic and democratic reform are very useful in terms of promoting democracy, on the one hand, stabilizing young democratic countries and, on the other hand, promoting the advance of democracy in these young democracies.

- The embeddedness of democracy and economic development in the EU, allows EU member states to establish a strong mutual interest and democratic values, with member countries, leading to the embeddedness of the economy and democracy, allowing the EU to become the world’s unique and unmatched economically integrated bloc, since 2004 stabilizing the 10 new western and eastern European member states.

- As such, Merkel believes that if democratic systems can give rise to increasing levels of external embeddedness, this will both consolidate democracy and make it more flexible. Internal factors will menace external factors less and less, with interactions between factors growing more and more intimate, and cooperation becoming larger and larger. What is worth noting is that with this kind of cooperation becoming stronger and stronger, elements of democracies and their mutual interactions and respect for one another will become higher, reflecting that the entire regime will become more and more democratic.

The opposing circumstance is that, the degree of external embeddedness is very weak, and that mutual respect and cooperation between democratic regimes will become weaker and weaker and that political regimes become more and more like deficient democracies. Which is to say that in a democratic system of government, these between democratic factors, embeddedness needs to take place, otherwise integrated relations are not only for the sake of appearing integrated. The more closely the democratic elements cooperate with each other, the stronger their individual independence is.

For political systems in the ongoing process of democratization, Merkel argues on the a discovery made through embedded democracy theory: that in newly emergent democracies after 1990, although with the establishment of elections, it appeared as though there were large opportunities for political participation and that there were assurances for the rights of citizens, a deeper analysis shows that only having elections and no importance given to emphasizing embedded democracy internally or externally led there to be no way for internal structural coupling or external environmental changes in the environment, and that this led the government to be stuck in the stage of consolidating democracy, and there to be no way of reaching liberal democracy. This kind of stagnant democratic development, can be thought of a process blocking democracy, and a defective democracy.

Merkel and Croissant in 2004, as based on the theory of embedded democracy and research into newly emergent democracies in Asia, although different indicators

suggested that Taiwan had developed into a liberal democracy in 1996,¹⁴² and at the same time, they pointed to that Taiwan was still in the stage of consolidating democracy.¹⁴³ This seemingly contradictory conclusion actually accorded to embedded democracy theory’s presuppositions towards electoral democracy:

elections do not necessarily mean liberal democracy, the key point being that the meaningful content of elections guarantee rule of law, civil laws, and horizontal accountability.¹⁴⁴ Again, from the point of view of internal embeddedness and external embeddedness, Taiwan has long been not embedded in international society and instead appears sealed away out of international society. As such, in terms of looking at what externally embedded factors Taiwan lacks as well as seeking explanations as to the course of Taiwanese democratization, this embeddedness is lacking, and this has had a heavy influence on Taiwan, something worth noting.

Continuing this line of thought, if we consider Taiwanese workers, what kind of embeddedness and interactions did Taiwanese workers have with other social elements? For workers, was there embeddedness or integration with democratic factors? In the aforementioned research, we discover that, for Taiwanese workers, particularly regarding workers’ participation in politics, the attempt was made by political centers of power to integrate workers rather than to embed them, leading to workers have limited integration into the range of political participation, and a degree of isolation. In theories of democratic integration, the closer the internal elements of democracy are, the more closely they respect each other's independence.

We might discuss this from the three aspects of external integration: the socio-economic context, civil society, and international integration:

As described in the first chapter, in contemporary Taiwanese society, Taiwanese workers confront low salaries and long working hours, as well as, in context of the social structure, the fact that education contributes to class stratification. The lower paid workers are, the longer hours they need to make income, and with the passing of “yili yixiu 2.0” labor policy,¹⁴⁵ workers are not allowed overtime pay, and there is a large gap between actual time worked and time worked based on the law. Furthermore, with the demand for flexible work hours at the behest of

142 p. 165, Aurel Croissant, “From Transition to Defective Democracy: Mapping Asian Democratization,”

Democratization 11, no. 5 (2004). p. 51, Wolfgang Merkel, “Embedded and Defective Democracies, 2004.

143 p. 157, Aurel Croissant, “From Transition to Defective Democracy: Mapping Asian Democratization,”

Democratization 11, no. 5 (2004).

144 Wolfgang Merkel and Aurel Croissant, “Conclusion: Good and Defective Democracies,” Democratization 11, no. 5 (2004).

145 After 2017 elections, the Democratic Progressive Party instituted the "yili yixiu" system of changes to the Labor Standards Act after it passed its third reading December 6th, 2016, and these changes were implemented starting on January 1st, 2017. The concept was originally to have two days off per week, but this was changed to one set day off per week and one "flexible rest day" with workers still having the rest day included in salary calculations. In the process of amendments, the amount of public holidays that workers had was cut by seven. On October 31st, 2017, newly appointed Premier William Lai, listening to the demands of industrial groups claiming difficulties following the implementations of new policy and the loss of overtime opportunities for workers, allowed for more flexibility for employers in proposing a new version of the "yili yixiu" system. This thesis will refer to the 2016 version of the "yili yixiu" as "yili yixiu 1.0" and the second revision as "yili yixiu 2.0" in order to avoid confusion. See the following:

capitalists granted by the Executive Yuan, workers are unable to increase their pay and made to sacrifice their weekends, making them unable to take care of their families on the weekend as other social classes are able to do.

Under these circumstances, workers are not give enough rest time to restore their energy, and workers still have to pay expenses for their family members. How can workers have the time to participate in political activities, then? In other words, from the socio-economic context, contemporary Taiwanese workers do not have equal opportunities to participate in democratic politics and lack the conditions to use their civil rights in that regard, and have no way to embed themselves with other classes in society, leading them to become an isolated system.

From the perspective of civil society, contemporary Taiwanese laborers have become a “minority voice.” This is to the extent that the DPP would claim of protests against the Labor Standards Act that, “Workers’ groups are not serious in protesting, it’s just an audio recording played during protests,” and claiming that,

“Serious workers need to make money, so they are all working.”¹⁴⁶ As described in the first chapter, the Taiwanese labor movement was “institutionalized” during the course of democratic development, with protest activities required to meet

“social expectations” without being too loud in order to avoid influencing other people’s rights. Protest actions’ demands had to be “according to the law,” If all social protests had to be “according to law,” then where is the space for the development of social resistance? There not being social protests or different voices from society was considered peaceful, and even as what a normal civil society should look like.

At least from the perspective of international integration, Taiwan is a very clear example. There was no way for Taiwan to become a regular member of international society, as up until today, it remains excluded from international organizations. On this point of Taiwan’s embeddedness in the international community, this was a large negative influence the lack of development in Taiwanese society. The ruling political elites usually did not have contact with international viewpoints and closed off the country, encouraging only contact with select countries,¹⁴⁷ and they said, “You don’t have to necessarily come back right away after getting your Ph. D”,¹⁴⁸ this reflects how in Taiwanese society not only organizations structurally but on the level of the individual, this led to Taiwan being sealed off and not being embedded or integrated with international society.

Up to now, Taiwanese society has remained highly divided: from the shift of political power from the evolution of the political system, in the process of amending the Constitution, although military force entered into the process of democratization, Taiwan was thought by many researchers to be a newly

146 Dai Qi-xiu, "Dou fang luyindai qiuyiying qiang lao tuan kangyi bu renzhen, NOWnews jinri xinwen, December 4, 2017, https://www.nownews.com/news/20171204/2656183.

147 When the KMT was in power, it emphasized policy directed towards China. The DPP emphasized the New Southbounds Policy when it took power, emphasizing ties with Southeast Asian countries. This indicates economic thought based on the industrial manufacturing chain, taking economic issues as a social issue.

148 Zonghe baodao, "Liuxuesheng huiguo shiji? Ma Ying-Jiu: Na dao boshi bu yiding yao jizhuo huilai." ETtoday xinwen yun. November 17, 2012, https://www.ettoday.net/news/20121117/128623.htm.

democratized country. But for the ruling authorities to become a normal country, but after amending the Constitution, only social issues which would have led to a social explosion were amended while high benchmarks for constitutional amendment and special political systems were used to restrict other issues, leading Taiwanese social movements and civil society groups to become left out of the constitutional government and with constitutional government failing to advance in Taiwan.

As such, labor groups and the labor movement are important participants in Taiwanese democratization, whether in the authoritarian period or in the period of Taiwan’s democratic transition, democratic consolidation, or the present.

During this time, different political forms of participation and institutionalization of forms of political participation and change, relying on embedded democratic theory and the policy changes then can serve as a means of analyzing Taiwanese democratization, allowing us to more deeply examine the process and character of Taiwanese democratization and what direction the future of Taiwan’s democratic development may follow.