Presidential Leadership and Rhetoric

I am leading this project with Jonathan Sullivan. Our project on presidential leadership and rhetoric examines patterns of presidential speeches in Taiwan from 1993 to 2019, the entire period of democratic Taiwan.

Taiwan provides an excellent case for examining how presidents address domestic and international audiences as it faces constant threats from hostile China in an international dimension and high public pressures from voters engaging in contentious politics in a domestic dimension. By analyzing more than 20,000 presidential speeches with quantitative text analyses methods, we contribute new findings about presidential speaking patterns outside the U.S. This project has been funded under the scheme of REF 4* outputs at the University of Nottingham. Our research proposal is under review at several funding organizations.

1. How New is Taiwan’s New Southbound Policy? Twenty-Five Years of Talking about Going South (under review)

How new is Tsai Ing-wen’s New Southbound Policy (NSP)? Analyzing 25 years of ROC presidential discourse from 1993 to 2017, this article sets out to demonstrate southbound policies as a component of Taiwanese foreign and economic policy within the context of cross-Strait relations and the broader political and regional economic environment. Our statistical analysis shows that Taiwan’s engagement with South and Southeast Asian partners has distinct patterns of emphasis that differentiates it from cross-Strait relations, evidence of an attempt to diversify Taiwan’s economic relations. Equally, our finding — an increase in the salience of southbound policy is associated with an increase in cross-Strait engagement — suggests that southbound policy is not designed to replace cross-Strait interactions, but rather as a complementary process. Furthermore, we identify conditions where Taiwanese leaders are likely to adapt their foreign and cross-Strait policy rhetoric. The article concludes with a discussion of Tsai’s NSP appearing distinct from her predecessors and the necessity of continued attention to it.

2. Soft Power Runs into Popular Geopolitics: Western Media Frames Democratic Taiwan (published in International Journal of Taiwan Studies)

How does the Western media frame Taiwan? Analysing a large set of Western newspaper reports over the past two decades, this article provides the first systematic assessment of global coverage of Taiwan. Seeking to explain why Taiwan has been framed in the way it has, the article reports the views of journalists and editors and puts forward a framework based on popular geopolitics. The article concludes with a discussion of why media framing matters, and the implications for Taiwan’s public diplomacy and ‘soft power’ efforts.