Description
Taiwan, formally known as the Republic of China, lost its United Nations (UN) membership in 1971. Since then, it has lost diplomatic ties with most states, including the United States. This has led Taiwan to become what experts have called a ‘contested state’ a ‘quasi sovereign state’. Despite their awkward status in the international arena, the Taiwanese government has made various attempts to seek more international recognition of its sovereignty.
With the question of “How has Taiwan obtained international recognition and participated in international organisations as a contested state” in mind, this paper will make use of the conceptual framework of ‘metis diplomacy’, first coined by Gezim Visoka. This framework was used in his analysis of how another contested state, Kosovo, gained international recognition of its status as a sovereign state. Thus, it will be used here to understand how and whether Taiwan has been able to achieve more international recognition. In addition to testing the suitability of this framework on a state like Taiwan, it will, through understanding the everyday discourse, everyday practice and everyday diplomatic entanglements of Taiwan, explore how Taiwan managed to expand its international presence of sovereign statehood, even though it is considered to be a “contested state”.
Through the use of discourse analysis and practice tracing as its main methods, this paper will argue that ‘metis diplomacy’, while less successful in allowing Taiwan to participate in international organisations, was quite successful in strengthening Taiwan’s de facto sovereignty and that the framework has been useful and applicable for the case of Taiwan.
