‘Great Recall': Taiwan's Democratic Experiment

The Diplomat

17-07-2025

On July 26, Taiwan will head to the polls – or rather, roughly one-third of Taiwan will do so. For this is no ordinary election, but a globally unprecedented experiment in the use of a relatively obscure democratic mechanism: the simultaneous recall of 24 members of Taiwan's parliament, the Legislative Yuan. Known as the 'Great Recall' (大罷免), it has the potential to reshape Taiwanese politics.
The modern form of recall, in which citizens collect signatures to hold a kind of referendum on whether an elected official should be removed from office, was created in Switzerland in the 19th century and adopted in many U.S. states in the early 20th century, as part of a wave of reforms to combat corruption in politics.
One admirer of the concept was Sun Yat-sen, founding father of the Republic of China. Trying to create a constitutional government from scratch, he listed recalls alongside elections and referenda as core elements of his principle of popular sovereignty. In due course, these rights were enshrined in the first Constitution of the ROC, adopted in 1947, which was brought to Taiwan after World War II.
Recalls have thus been a part of the political landscape for Taiwanese people for decades, memorably internalized in the discourse by the fact that Taiwan's election law is always referred to as the 'Election and Recall Law' (選罷法). But recalls have been used only sporadically, as indeed they usually are in other countries.
The reason is simple enough: voters anywhere generally resent being told that they made a mistake, and they generally prefer not to have more elections and campaigning than necessary. Therefore, mainstream politicians tend to hesitate to reach for this mechanism, for fear of public backlash, and even activist gadflies usually decide that the low rate of success would not justify the effort.
So what explains the current 'Great Recall' in Taiwan?
Voters in January 2024 delivered a divided government, with the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) retaining the presidency but losing its legislative majority. The Kuomintang (KMT) won a slight plurality of the 113 seats, then managed to form a majority through an alliance with the smaller Taiwan People's Party (TPP), which had won eight seats, all from the nationwide party list ballot.
Taiwan has lived with divided government before. Voters around the world sometimes prefer this arrangement, hoping it will force parties to cooperate. However, since it can easily lead to gridlock, various mechanisms are needed to cope with such situations. In Taiwan, as in many other countries, the most important of these is the Constitutional Court.
After taking office on February 1, 2024, the new KMT-TPP majority moved quickly to enact a series of controversial measures. One of the earliest was a package of laws expanding the legislature's own powers. These sparked public backlash, culminating in the 'BlueBird' protest movement led by civil society. The KMT and TPP rushed the legislation through anyway. The government responded by referring the package to the Constitutional Court, which later in 2024 struck down the most controversial parts of the package. This was the system working normally.
However, the KMT-TPP majority also decided to launch an attack on the Constitutional Court itself, quickly passing a measure to effectively prevent any further constitutional interpretations, removing this crucial mechanism for addressing gridlock. At the same time, the majority also enacted sweeping cuts to the annual budget, most notably cutting or freezing critical national security expenditures.
Combined with the overt liaisons with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) during this period – notably the meeting in April between the KMT caucus leader Fu Kun-chi and Wang Huning, the fourth-ranked CCP leader – a sense of national crisis emerged. Many Taiwanese began to worry that their democracy was being weakened at the behest of Beijing.
In response, citizens mobilized to take matters into their own hands. As repeated protests had hardly slowed down the pace of legislation, they turned to the recall mechanism. Originally the movement targeted Fu and the most controversial members of the caucus, to punish them as individuals. But it spread like wildfire throughout the country, as the idea took hold that the KMT caucus as a whole should be punished by eliminating its majority.
Recall efforts were launched against all 37 district members of the KMT (recalls are impossible to use against members elected from the nationwide party lists, thus sparing the TPP). Two stumbled right away at the first stage of signature collection, and four more failed at the more difficult second stage. With five more still under review, recall ballots may be held in as many as 31 districts total: 24 on July 26, plus between two and seven afterwards.
The signature collection campaigns themselves were impressive. Using almost all unpaid volunteers, over a million signatures were collected across the country in the 60 days allowed. The movement was backed by a flowering of cultural creativity. For example, after a KMT legislator disparaged Taiwan's film industry (while the legislative majority was cutting budgets for its support), over 100 filmmakers forged an alliance that produced a series of short films explaining why citizens should support the recall.
It is not easy to assess how many of the recalls will pass. It is even more difficult to determine whether the legislative majority will actually change hands. Even in cases where recalls are successful, by-elections will need to be held, and alternative candidates from the KMT might well be able to hold the seats.
Nonetheless, the 'Great Recall' can already be considered a success. It has provided a platform for citizens to concretely express their displeasure at the performance of the Legislative Yuan. The heightening of citizen awareness of the dangers of foreign influence and the experience of taking direct action against politicians will act as a deterrent against future bad behavior.
In short, the 2025 'Great Recall' is bringing Taiwan's democracy to the next level. Taiwanese society, by its own efforts, is enhancing its political resilience against the manifold threats posed by the CCP. This can only be welcomed by Taiwan's friends in the international community, and indeed friends of democracy anywhere.