This event is co-sponsored by the Korea Program and Taiwan Program at Shorenstein APARC.

For decades, Taiwan and South Korea have been celebrated as proof that strengthening the rule of law can move authoritarian regimes toward democracy. This talk challenges that view by revisiting the legal histories of Taiwan, South Korea, and China. It identifies two paradigms of rule-of-law promotion: the Cold War “state-first” approach and the post–Cold War “democracy-first” approach. Different in style but similar in outcome, both shared the same flaw: foreign legal aid often reinforced authoritarianism. Taiwan and South Korea’s democratization was not evidence of legal modernization theory, but an outlier. Law is a neutral infrastructural power, and future rule-of-law promotion must be recalibrated to prevent authoritarian capture.

Speaker:

Weitseng Chen teaches at the National University of Singapore, specializing in comparative studies of law, politics and economic development in Asia. His published books include Regime Type and Beyond: The Transformation of Police in Asia (CUP 2023), Authoritarian Legality in Asia (CUP 2019), The Beijing Consensus? How China Has Changed the Western Ideas of Law and Economic Development (CUP 2017), Property and Trust Law in Taiwan (Kluwer 2017), and Law and Economic Miracle: Interaction Between Taiwan’s Development and Economic Laws After WWII (in Chinese, 2000). Chen was a Hewlett Fellow at Stanford’s Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, and practiced as a lawyer at Davis Polk & Wardwell. He was also a fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin. Chen earned his JSD from Yale Law School.

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