The Frozen Garlic Manifesto

This is a blog about Taiwanese elections.  I have a PhD, work in an academic job, and write formal articles that analyze Taiwanese politics, but this blog is meant to be informal.

This is not a political advocacy blog.  I will not try to convince you that one side is “right” and the other is “wrong” or that you should vote for candidate X.  The one exception to this is my normative bias in favor of democracy.

I’ll try to be as accurate as possible, especially with numbers, but I’m not going to triple-check everything.  After all, as is the rule of blogs, I am writing this more for myself than for anyone else.   Sometimes it helps me to think through things by writing; sometimes you won’t be able to figure out what I’m trying to say because I, myself, have not figured it out either.  (You want polished ideas? Pay me money!)

Professionally, I think my job is to understand the past, not to predict the future.  However, in this forum I’ll be engaging in lots of speculation about the future, including my guesses as to who will win.  Take it all with a grain of salt.  I don’t have access to any inside information.  Most of my information about elections is gleaned from media accounts.

Above all, feel free to disagree with anything I say – elections are no fun at all if everyone agrees!