[Review of the book Democracy on Trial: Social Movements and Cultural Politics in Postauthoritarian Taiwan, by Ya-Chung Chuang]

Most other research on Taiwan's democracy focuses on the process of democratization and institutional transformation. This book follows a cultural-anthropological approach to study Taiwan's democratization. The author studied the unfolding events of democratization by investigating the daily life of average people and social activists in both urban and rural Taiwan, among both Han immigrants from mainland China and the aboriginal groups, and during the authoritarian and post-authoritarian eras.