Deciphering Resilience in Fighting COVID-19: An Analysis of Taiwan’s Governance

• In Event: Policymaking and Responsiveness in Taiwan During COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Since December 2019, the whole world has been wrecked severely by COVID-19. Almost all countries, including the hegemony and major powers, have been on the verge of collapse amid the pandemic. Nevertheless, there are still countries that demonstrate remarkable resilience in fighting the new coronavirus. Taiwan is perhaps one of the most outstanding cases. Taiwan has maintained extraordinarily low fatality rate (7 cases in total) and infection rates (less than 1000 cases in total) without imposing any draconian lock-down policies. As a small state which shares close geographical proximity to China and weaves intense economic exchanges with China, Taiwan’s performance is so unique that deserves further exploration.
It has now been recognized that one key to Taiwan’s success lies in its swift and decisive actions in securing the national supply-chain of personal masks, one of the most crucial PPE (personal protective equipment) in preventing the coronavirus. Taiwan centralized the distribution system in late January and started massive mask production in early February. Taiwan’s strategy raises a few inter-related questions. First, why did Taiwan respond immediately with massive resource mobilization at the early stage of the COVID-19 crisis while many other Asian countries lagged behind in preparation? Second, why did Taiwan prioritize to focus on securing masks as the main crisis management tool? Third, how did Taiwan reach consensus with the business sector and concentrate the resource on securing the mask supply-chain?
In this article, we argue that Taiwan’s immediate response and emphasis on securing the mask supply is a result of a combination of wartime mentality and the institutional legacy of developmental state. The wartime mentality is necessary for quick and massive resource mobilization. Without such mentality, political elites and bureaucrats lack the political will for mobilization. Due to the isolation from the World Health Organization, political tension with China, and previous SARS experience, Taiwan’s political elites were pressured to respond preemptively to avoid exceeding health resource capacity. The strong will was clearly manifested in many of the early policy decisions, including the mask export ban in late January. Through process-tracing with government-issued documents and semi-structured interviews with a large number of Taiwanese bureaucrats and elites involving in the process of fighting the COVID-19, we show that the SARS memory alone, a conventional cause to which Taiwan’s COVID-19 success is attributed, cannot fully account for Taiwan’s choice.
The wartime mentality is necessary for Taiwan’s political will of swift response but not sufficient for understanding Taiwan’s capacity to mobilize the society for massive mask production. The developmental state institutional legacy, which is characterized by the coordinating mechanisms between the government and the business sector, accounts for the capacity needed for state resource mobilization. The developmental state legacy facilitates the cohesive bureaucrats, many of whom had SARS experiences, to “embed in” and “guide” the society. The textile industry used to be the nexus of Taiwan’s industrial policy and created a connected government-business network. The already established relationship enabled bureaucrats to quickly regulate the mask distribution and coordinate and integrate the private sector to concentrate on mask production.
Our finding has a general implication for other democracies that are grappling with the pandemic now. Echoing the major theme of this year, our article shows that institutional arrangements that promote pluralist communication can help democratic governments to better coordinate the business and society in managing or preventing the crises, including financial meltdown or the pandemic.

Authors

• Chia-Chien Chang, National Sun Yat-sen University

• Wei-Ting Yen, Franklin & Marshall College

• Li-Yin Liu, University of Dayton