Taiwan's Millennial Generation: Interests in Polity and Party Politics

The political strategies used to attract Taiwanese Millennials is a puzzling topic. This article analyses the strategies the two main political parties have implemented in recent years to do so. In the literature on youth attitudes in Western democracies, politics is described as “boring,” a “big turn-off,” and a “killjoy.” I examine to what degree these theoretical terms can help define the youth’s perception of politics and I describe the youth-led demonstrations that have taken place. Using primary sources, this analysis unfolds the objectives, successes, and failures of the youth wings of two political parties founded in early 2006. The 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns are considered in relation to the theme of youth engagement. A key event in recent years was the March–April 2014 Sunflower Student Movement. The impact of this event and youth politics leading up to the 2016 presidential and legislative elections is discussed

The Anti-Bolivarian Student Movement: New Social Actors Challenge the Advancement of Venezuela’s Bolivarian Socialism

The decision of Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez not to renew the private TV channel RCTV’s (Radio Caracas Televisión) broadcasting licence in May 2007 became the focal point for students from different universities of Caracas to unite (with no political affiliation with opposition parties) and construct a movement that used youth, freedom of speech, nonviolence and reconciliation as the discourse to challenge Chávez’s regime. This apparent apolitical movement took Chavistas and opposition supporters by surprise. This paper examines the emergence, formation, and success of this movement and why it failed to convert and evolve itself as an influential opposition political force after 2007

From Passive to Radical Revolution in Venezuela’s Populist Project

In December 2001, Hugo Chávez and others changed Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolutionary project, which consisted of replacing a corrupt and elitist constitution with a fair and popular one, into a radical one. In its early stages the project corresponded to what Gramsci called a “passive revolution.” Attempts by opposition forces to crush the construction of a new populist hegemony (a coup in April 2002 and an indefinite strike in December 2002) were met with popular mobilization that reaffirmed Chávez’s hegemonic project. The radical revolution consisted of social programs designed to alleviate the suffering of the poor and consolidated a new hegemonic structure among Venezuela’s lower classes. The concept of “radical revolution” provides a theoretical alternative for assessing the extent to which a political project can be described as populist