The Development of Civility In Taiwan

Abstract

Since the 1990s Taiwan has seen rapid and profound changes in public sphere deportment, labelled below as civility. Prior to that time, despite a government campaign beginning in the 1960s to improve public morality and behaviour, there was little if any change until democratization and the growth of civil society were underway. Aside from better treatment of strangers and caring for public spaces and facilities, the changes include identity shifts from subject to citizen and from belonging to a closed, primordial community to membership in the Taiwan polity, movements which empower minority political interests and benevolent government interactions with the populace. These changes indicate a democratization in Taiwan that has taken root not only at the government level but also at the grass roots.