What is Taiwan's digital democracy?

After the 2014 Sunflower Movement, the civic programmers of g0v and Taiwan's government joined forces, using digital tools for policy discussion, open data, countering false rumors and responding to COVID-19. The book Plurality portrays this as the world's most advanced real example of digital democracy.

In early 2020, when most of the world had barely heard of the new coronavirus, Taiwan was already starting to run short of masks. The map app that showed where masks could be found, and how many, was built not by the government but by civic programmers. Over ten years, Taiwan has grown this way of working, in which citizens and government act together through digital tools.

In short

In Taiwan, since a student movement in 2014, civic programmers and the government have worked together [1]. Opening up government information. Bringing citizens' voices into law-making. Dealing together with false rumors and with COVID-19. They have built these arrangements with digital tools.

The book Plurality portrays Taiwan as the world's most advanced place, where technology and democracy are not enemies but closely intertwined allies [1][2].

For example

The Sunflower Student Movement (2014). On March 18, 2014, students frustrated by the substance and process of the "Cross-Straits Services Trade Agreement" with China occupied the Legislative Yuan, Taiwan's parliament [3]. On March 30, according to the book, "half a million people took to the streets in the largest demonstration in Taiwan since the 1980s" [4]. On April 6, Legislative Yuan Speaker Wang Jin-pyng accepted the demand for a review process, and the occupation ended soon afterwards [4].

During the occupation, hundreds of members of g0v, a community of civic hackers, helped with "broadcasting, documenting and communicating civic actions" [4]. Cabinet member Jaclyn Tsai invited Audrey Tang, later one of the book's authors, to be a youth "reverse mentor" (someone who teaches a senior person the perspective of the young), and began to attend and support g0v meetings [4].

The Mask App (2020). Because Taiwan had earlier lived through the SARS epidemic, masks were already running short by late January 2020 [5]. Civic hackers led by Howard Wu built an app that mapped mask availability using the government's open data [5]. That open data had been pushed for and reinforced by the g0v movement. According to the book, this allowed Taiwan "to achieve widespread mask adoption by mid-February" [5].

Cofacts and "humor over rumor". In Cofacts, a project that grew out of g0v, citizens quickly respond to posts spreading online and to messages forwarded to them in chat apps [6]. Research has shown that "these systems can typically respond faster, equally accurately and more engagingly to rumors than can professional fact checkers" [6].

When a rumor spread during the pandemic that the mass production of masks would cause a shortage of toilet paper, Premier Su Tseng-chang (the head of the Executive Yuan, similar to a prime minister) "famously circulated a picture of himself wagging his rear to indicate it had nothing to fear" [6]. The book writes that with approaches like this, Taiwan fought off the "infodemic" (an epidemic of false information) "without takedowns, just as it fought of[f] the pandemic without lockdowns" [6].

In more detail

Why Taiwan?

Chapter 2-1 compares Taiwan to an island on the boundary between tectonic plates [7]. It is pushed up a little every year and its people live prepared for earthquakes. In the same way, the book says, the clash of Taiwan's diverse cultures, history and values has built a prosperous and innovative society [7].

According to the book, Taiwan's first direct presidential election in 1996 coincided with the spread of the internet, so that in Taiwan "the internet and democracy were something of Siamese twins" [8]. The Kuomintang (the "Blue" camp) and the Democratic Progressive Party (the "Green" camp) are deeply divided, but beneath this, the book says, lies an "overlapping consensus" that values plural democracy and freedom [8].

Civil society as the foundation

The book writes that g0v "symbolizes the civil-society foundation of digital democracy in Taiwan" [2]. Most of the efforts covered in chapter 2-2 came out of g0v and the people around it [2]. The alternative versions g0v built by "forking" government websites became popular, and ministers "merged" them back into government services [2].

The government side

After the Sunflower Movement, Tang became a Minister without Portfolio (a minister without a ministry of their own) "responsible for open government, social innovation and youth participation" [4].

The PDIS (Public Digital Innovation Space) that Tang set up in 2016 supported two platforms [9]: vTaiwan, a space for citizens' discussion, and Join, the government's petition site. On Join, officials "must respond if a proposal receives sufficient support" [9]. PDIS also helped create a network of "Participation Officers", civil servants in each department responsible for citizen participation [10]. In August 2022 the Ministry of Digital Affairs (moda) was created, with Tang as its first minister [10].

The Presidential Hackathon and Quadratic Voting

In the Presidential Hackathon, mixed teams of civil servants, academics, activists and technologists compete with proposals [11], such as air-quality monitoring and early warning systems for wildfires. Participants and citizens helped choose the winners using Quadratic Voting (a voting method in which each additional vote for the same option costs more) [11]. The prize was a microprojector showing the President of Taiwan presenting the award. The book writes that winners could use it as "leverage" to get government agencies to cooperate [11].

A decade of results

The book first notes that tracing cause and effect precisely is "beyond our scope here", and then sets out indicators [12]. For example, up to April 2021 Taiwan had only 12 deaths from COVID-19, with no lockdowns [12]. Voter turnout "is among the highest in the world outside countries where voting is compulsory", and "91% consider democracy to be at least 'fairly good'" [12]. At the same time, it notes that Taiwan is "the jurisdiction targeted for the largest volume of disinformation on earth" [12].

What is debated

Weaknesses the book itself admits. The pandemic response was outstanding at first, but after mid-2021, the book writes, problems with producing and distributing vaccines "led to significant loss of life" [12]. Taiwan has written a 2050 net-zero goal (cutting greenhouse gas emissions to net zero) into law, but "its progress thus far has been modest" [12]. The book sees a challenge in how to keep up, as institutions, the cohesion and participation that arise in times of crisis [12].
The "huge flop" argument. A 2023 article in The Daily Beast reported that Taiwan's democracy was praised for things like the Mask App, but that the momentum of vTaiwan and of digital participation had faded years earlier [13]. It pointed out that the government has no obligation to adopt recommendations, that Cofacts never became a main tool of the government's fight against disinformation, and that legislators preferred tougher measures such as fines [13].
It depends on the government's will. A review in Netopia points out that nothing happens unless the government seriously intends to bring Polis (a tool for organizing opinions) into its decisions [14]. It also says that no political decision has started from Polis since 2018 [14].
Interviews from Japan. In interviews by Japan's Digital Democracy Research Unit, Yu-Tsang Lin (林雨蒼), formerly of PDIS, said in substance that it was possible because of strong support from the minister of the time [15]. Jia-Wei (Peter) Cui (崔家瑋; written 崔嘉偉 in the report) of vTaiwan gave as reasons for the slowdown that the government shifted its effort to other channels such as Join from 2019, that key members left, and COVID-19 [15].
The view that it should not be seen as a failure. The book Broad Listening describes Taiwan's experiments in deliberation as one long story [16]. It begins with a deliberation by 20 citizens on health insurance in 2002, runs through vTaiwan, and continues in 2024 with meetings of citizens chosen by lottery. On that basis, its author writes that the slowdown of vTaiwan should not be seen as a failure [16].
It is not Tang's achievement alone. The book names Kao Chia-liang and others as the founders of g0v, credits the Mask App to civic hackers led by Howard Wu, and describes Cofacts as a project that grew out of g0v [2][5][6].

Where it fits in Plurality

Taiwan is the very subject of Part 2 of the book (2-1 "A View from Yushan" and 2-2 "The Life of a Digital Democracy"). Chapter 2-2 ends by saying that the task of the rest of the book is to articulate "the generalizable philosophy behind the strategies of the world's most admired digital democracy" [17].

Chapter 3-3 says that Estonia, Finland, Singapore, South Korea and others have also excelled in elements of Plurality, but that "none of these have institutionalized the breadth and depth of ⿻ approaches to socio-technical organization across sectors that Taiwan has" [18].

Related articles: - Digital democracy — the idea for which Taiwan is held up as the leading example - g0v — the community of civic hackers - vTaiwan and Polis — a space for policy discussion, and its tool - The Sunflower Movement, Cofacts and Quadratic Voting — individual cases - The three paths — the "third way" that Taiwan is said to show

Sources

Plurality, 2-0 "Information Technology and Democracy: A Widening Gulf", section "Reclaiming our future" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/2-0/eng/ ［CC0］
Plurality, 2-2 "The Life of a Digital Democracy", opening and the section on g0v — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/2-2/eng/ ［CC0］
Plurality, 2-1 "A View from Yushan", section "Place of convergence" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/2-1/eng/ ［CC0］
Plurality, 2-2, section "Sunflower" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/2-2/eng/ ［CC0］
Same, section "Pandemic" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/2-2/eng/ ［CC0］
Same, section "Information integrity" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/2-2/eng/ ［CC0］
Plurality, 2-1 "A View from Yushan", opening — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/2-1/eng/ ［CC0］
Same, section "Vibrant democratic generation" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/2-1/eng/ ［CC0］
Plurality, 2-2, section "vTaiwan and Join" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/2-2/eng/ ［CC0］
Same, section "Other programs" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/2-2/eng/ ［CC0］
Same, section "Hackathons, coalitions and quadratic signals" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/2-2/eng/ ［CC0］
Same, section "Decade of accomplishment" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/2-2/eng/ ［CC0］
Nick Aspinwall, "Taiwan Tried to Digitize Democracy With vTaiwan. It Was a Huge Flop" (The Daily Beast, 2023-11-01) — https://www.thedailybeast.com/taiwan-tried-to-digitize-democracy-with-vtaiwan-it-was-a-huge-flop/
Ralf Grötker, "Why Technology Can't "Fix" Democracy" (Netopia, 2026-08-16) — https://www.netopia.eu/why-technology-cant-fix-democracy/
Digital Democracy Research Unit, "現場取材からみえた台湾デジタル民主主義の理想と課題、そして日本発『デジタル民主主義2030』への指針" (2025-02-19, in Japanese) — https://note.com/digitaldemocracy/n/naaa818d919c7
Broad Listening, 11-1 "The Evolution of Deliberative Democracy in Taiwan" (in Japanese; English translation in the same repository) — https://github.com/digitaldemocracy2030/broad-listening-book/blob/f69c60c838a91b91668abf109d7093b240610139/en/11_01_taiwan.md ［CC BY-NC 4.0］
Plurality, 2-2, closing paragraph — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/2-2/eng/ ［CC0］
Plurality, 3-3 "The Lost Dao", subsection "Nodes of light" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/3-3/eng/ ［CC0］

We welcome error reports and questions ("What is…?"). Submissions become public issues.

Report an error in this article ・ Ask a question