Brief History of IRI-Asia

Back in 2003, the long standing public demand for a referendum law in Taiwan gradually led to legislation. President Chen Shui-bian and the Democratic Progressive Party had made many campaign pledges in the year 2000 presidential election for such a law, promising that the right of citizens to initiatives and referendums that is already included in Taiwan’s constitution would be substantiated in Law by a DPP government. During Taiwan’s democratization process, the Taiwanese citizens have all along demanded legal access to the instruments of direct democracy, the initiative and referendum, but they were always opposed in this during the past decades of authoritarian rule. In the second half of 2003, as public opinion began to overwhelmingly approve the idea of the citizen’s direct say through referendum on major policy issues facing the country, and sensing that this would be a core issue in the coming 2004 presidential election, the KMT and PFP opposition parties gradually came to realize that they would have to follow public opinion and approve the enactment of a referendum law by the Legislative Yuan. Tense, and at times bitter negotiations on the adoption of a referendum law then finally began in the legislature in its July 2003 session. A law was finally passed on November 27, 2003, just a few months before the March 2004 presidential election. By international standards of direct democracy, it is a severely restrictive law in terms of the needed voter threshold and amount of signatures needed, as well as in terms of the issues on which the citizen’s can be made to decide by referendum. It also gives the power to the Legislature to review and refuse an initiative proposed by the people. Indeed, during the process leading to the adoption of a referendum law, a lot of arguments were made against direct democracy by local politicians and legislators, with some leading media-savvy legislators emphasizing the usual uninformed idea that it would lead to social chaos. It is in this volatile context that the TFD proposed and organized an international symposium on direct democracy, initiatives and referendums in mid-October 2003 in order to better inform public opinion, politicians, and cabinet members. Key experts and the founders of IRI-Europe and USA were the invited guest speakers in this project. During the three days of the guests’ stay in Taiwan, in parallel to the one-day symposium, informal meetings, working lunches and dinners, and a public hearing were organized with NGOs, legislators, officials of the National Security Council, officials of the Ministry of the Interior who oversaw the referendum process, as well as leading media figures. President Chen also received the guest speakers of IRI at the Presidential Office. The fundamental objective of the TFD was to give access to as many people as possible to independent expert opinion on direct democracy. As a result of this interaction in Taiwan between the TFD and the IRI-Europe and USA, the idea of establishing a sister IRI organization in Taiwan in order to help it implement direct democracy was borne. We first began with the idea of an IRI-Taiwan, but it immediately switched to an IRI-Asia concept as IRI-Europe and USA members had already been consultants for other Asian governments on a few referendums, which they had also monitored. The objectives of IRI-Asia were set as the same as IRI-Europe and USA, which is to promote and advocate direct democracy in the world, provide education on its mechanisms to all interested parties, gather the talents of experts and scholars to improve the referendum and initiative instruments, and to help monitor their use in Asian countries. The goal was thus set to make IRI-Asia the premier institution on direct democracy in the region, helping improve the instruments of direct democracy in Asia where they already exists (over 30 countries) or assist in implementing them where they do not. . The TFD then began to form a core group of 10 Taiwanese scholars and democracy advocates who undertook the TFD’s IRI-Asia project. The group was formed in the summer of 2004, and after a few meetings, first went on a European study tour that took them to 5 countries in 6 days in Sept-Oct. 2004. They discussed all aspects of direct democracy with European counterparts from old and new democracies, and also witnessed a national referendum in Switzerland, where they were extremely well and courteously received by authorities. A smaller number of members of this group later attended a pan-European conference on direct democracy held in Luxemburg in October 2005. The members of the group had by then met a few times to draw the rough outlines of what IRI-Asia could be and do based on extensive discussion with direct democracy experts such as Bruno Kaufman, Andi Gross, Andi Schmidt and Theo Schiller of IRI-Europe, as well as Dane Waters and John Matsusaka of the founding IRI in the USA. The TFD sponsored a few of these members to produce the first ever guidebook on direct democracy legislations and practices in Asia, a worldwide digital database on national level referendums, and studies, conferences and concrete projects on deliberative democracy. This is how TFD and its IRI-Europe and USA partners brought about the formal launch of IRI-Asia by its international steering committee in June 2006 in Taipei, gathering an initial Asian group of direct democracy advocates and scholarly experts from Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, India, The Philippines, Thailand, Bangladesh and Hong Kong, as well as the leaders of IRI-Europe and IRI-USA.