Wednesday July 23, 2025 from 9:00 – 10:15 AM (ET)
Webcast (Online Only)
Event Description:
The Global Taiwan Institute (GTI) is pleased to invite you to a panel discussion titled “Taiwan’s ‘Great Recall’ Elections and the Impact on Taiwan’s Future Politics.”
Taiwan’s January 2024 elections produced a divided government: with Lai Ching-te of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) winning the presidential election, and an opposition coalition of the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Taiwan’s People’s Party (TPP) taking a majority of the seats in Taiwan’s unicameral legislature, the Legislative Yuan. Following serious controversies in 2024 over matters such as the government budget, legislative authority, and the role of the constitutional court—some of which threatened a constitutional crisis—civic activists upset over the actions of the majority legislative caucus organized recall efforts against a large number of KMT legislators.
As a result of the initial recall process, 26 KMT legislators now face first-stage recall elections (for potential removal from office), with most scheduled for July 26. This large-scale recall process—almost unprecedented in a modern democracy—has placed nearly a quarter of the seats in the legislature up for grabs. As the recall elections approach, both sides of Taiwan’s “Pan-Green” (DPP-led) vs. “Pan-Blue” (KMT-led) political divide have been seeking to mobilize excitement and engagement amongst their supporters, and both have proclaimed their recall campaign efforts as measures to defend democracy. What brought about this striking state of political developments? What are the major issues at stake in the recall elections? And how are the recall elections likely to impact Taiwan’s government and Taiwan-US relations for the remainder of the current legislative and presidential terms? GTI invites you to join us for this online seminar on Wednesday, July 23, as a distinguished panel of scholars will discuss the complex issues surrounding Taiwan’s “Great Recall” and what it could mean for the future course of Taiwan politics.
The panelists will include: Dr. Nathan Batto (Academia Sinica), Dr. Shelley Rigger (Davidson College), and Bo Tedards (independent analyst, formerly of the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy). The event will be moderated by GTI Senior Programs Manager Adrienne Wu.
The Panelists:
Dr. Nathan F. Batto is an associate research fellow at the Institute of Political Science, Academia Sinica (Taipei) and the Election Studies Center, National Chengchi University (Taipei). He holds a MA in political science from NCCU (1999), and received his PhD from the University of California, San Diego in 2007. His articles have been published in journals including Journal of Politics, Electoral Studies, and Legislative Studies Quarterly. His recent book, Making Punches Count: The Individual Logic of Legislative Brawls (Oxford University Press, 2024), explores why democratically elected representatives participate in physical violence in legislatures with a special focus on Taiwan and Ukraine but also drawing on the experience of many other countries including South Korea, Japan, Mexico, South Africa, and the United States. It was awarded the 2025 Richard Fenno Prize for the outstanding book in legislative studies. He is the author of the blog Frozen Garlic, which provides detailed analysis on political campaigns and elections in Taiwan.
Dr. Shelley Rigger is the vice president for academic affairs, dean of faculty, and Brown Professor of East Asian Politics at Davidson College. She has a PhD in Government from Harvard University and a BA in Public and International Affairs from Princeton University. She is a non-resident fellow of the China Policy Institute at Nottingham University and a senior fellow of the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI). She is also a director of The Taiwan Fund, a closed-end investment fund specializing in Taiwan-listed companies. Dr. Rigger is the author of two books on Taiwan’s domestic politics, Politics in Taiwan: Voting for Democracy (Routledge 1999) and From Opposition to Power: Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party (Lynne Rienner Publishers 2001). Her most recent book, The Tiger Leading the Dragon: How Taiwan Propelled China’s Economic Rise (2021) explains how Taiwanese businesses made it possible for the PRC–a country without private property or business as recently as 1978–to become the “factory to the world.”
Bo Tedards is a long-time observer of Taiwan’s political scene, who recently returned to the USA after living in Taiwan for over 25 years. He is a former staff member of the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy (TFD), where he served as director of the International Cooperation Department (2007-2010, and again from 2016-2022). In his first years in Taiwan, he worked for the Taiwan Association for Human Rights, the Institute for National Policy Research, the Taipei Times, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. From 2004 to 2010, he served as coordinator of the World Forum for Democratization in Asia (WFDA), a regional network of democracy advocates, and from 2013-2015 as director of Amnesty International Taiwan. He received his MA in law and diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Tufts University, and his BA in political science from Yale University.
The Moderator:
Adrienne Chih-fang Wu is the senior programs manager at the Global Taiwan Institute and the host and producer of Taiwan Salon, GTI’s cultural policy and soft power podcast. With an interest in exploring the intersection of culture and policy, her research focuses on how Taiwan can strengthen international connections through nation branding, cultural diplomacy and a strong civil society. She is a member of the UC Berkeley US-Taiwan Next Generation Working Group, and a member of the Foreign Policy for America’s Next Gen Initiative. Additionally, she was a 2024 Taiwan-US Policy Program Delegate and contributed to the German Marshall Fund’s compendium, New Generation Perspectives on Taiwan: Insights from the 2024 Taiwan-US Policy Program. Before joining GTI, she graduated from Ritsumeikan University and Kyunghee University with a Dual Master’s Degree in International Relations. She spent seven years living in Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan—including three years of teaching English in Japan and Taiwan, and a year of study at Waseda University while pursuing her B.A. in Honors East Asian Studies from McGill University.