Actions Speak Louder Than Words: EADF and the Future of Democracy in East Asia

Abstract

While witnessing regression of democracy around the world in the past decade, many people from policy circles and academia proposed to build a coalition to prevent further backsliding in democracies. Nevertheless, these efforts have continued to be challenged by the fact that leading democracies are reluctant to leading the coalition, and that authoritarian regimes are investing more resources to sharpen their influence. This paper plans to take Taiwan’s efforts as an example to explain how a young and full-fledged democracy engages in the defense of democracy in the Indo-Pacific region. Details in this paper include: (1) a brief discussion of factors and actors in Taiwan’s process of democratization; (2) explanation of the mechanism through which the East Asia Democracy Forum (EADF) aims to incorporate and influence actors for democratic defense in this region. This is a qualitative research, with a process-tracing method.