Ruptures and Splits: Challenges to Recall Group Solidarity

by Aleksandrs Gross

語言:
English
Photo Credit: KOKUYO/WikiCommons/CC BY-SA 4.0

THOUSANDS OF STRANGERS island-wide worked together with remarkable efficiency so that the Great Recall Movement would succeed. Despite its failure to recall any of the targeted politicians from office, the Great Recall Movement holds lessons for how to rapidly mobilize civil society in response to impending threats to Taiwan’s democracy.

The movement was not without a fair number of growing pains: as activists organized themselves into groups, there were many cases of internal conflict, often leading the newly formed recall groups to split up.

During the recalls, there was not much if any media coverage of such internal group issues, giving the movement an appearance of solidarity that was often at odds with the experience of many pro-recall activists. But now that the recalls themselves are over, it is of value to revisit the sources of group tension. It is only by looking deeply into the sources of conflict that such conflicts can be avoided in the future of Taiwanese activism.

To find out what caused group tension I interviewed pro-recall volunteers from a wide variety of recall groups around Taiwan. What follows is the summary of their experience.

Recall Groups

TAIWANESE WHO WANTED to support the recalls in a meaningful manner most often had to make the choice of which recall group(s) to join. Recall groups were grassroots civil society organizations that operated on a purely voluntary basis. Most groups recruited several hundred volunteers, which meant that a more institutional structure was often developed to efficiently manage such large numbers of people.

Each recall group focused its efforts on recalling the particular KMT politician who represented the region the group operated in. Given that there were over 30 KMT politicians being targeted by the recall, this means that before many groups split, there was a corresponding number of groups to choose from. Choosing which group to join usually depended on finding the group operating nearest.

As the recall movement gained traction, especially in the second stage (collecting signatures) and third stage (mobilizing voters), many recall groups experienced internal divisions, leading to splits. During splits, a significant number of people often left the original recall group to form a new one, which means both groups would eventually become a mixture of volunteers from before and after splits.

Differences in Working Style

GIVEN THAT THE recalls were a civil society effort, they received no financial support from the government. Recall groups relied on the selflessness and generosity of each member to get their work done.

As recall groups grew in size, acquiring hundreds of members, sub-teams were organized. Each sub-team would have a leader responsible for training new members and directing the team’s work. The leader of each sub-team would make up the core of each recall group. The core team decided the priorities and policies of the whole recall group.

Given that the members of each sub-team were acting on a purely voluntary basis – sacrificing their time and energy, many would feel that it was unfair that someone else was telling them what to do. Some wanted the recall group’s decisions to be made via a popular vote (some groups followed such a procedure, but not all groups, and not always).

Hence one source of tension was on the decision-making style of groups, with some volunteers preferring a hierarchical group structure with clearly designed roles and responsibilities, while others wanted a much more horizontal structure, where decisions were made more democratically by popular vote.

Opacity of Core Teams

TO COMPLICATE MATTERS further, there were cases where the core team of a recall group would act in an opaque and authoritarian manner. For example, by not sharing internal discussions with all members of the recall group, not sharing how recall group funds were being managed, and disregarding the feedback of other volunteers. Such behavior reinforced the perception of core teams as being self-appointed, authoritarian, and out of touch with volunteers.

In response, one recall group leader said that, given the amount of work each recall group had to deal with, it was often unrealistic to include each volunteer in each and every discussion. Integrating the perspectives and experiences of each volunteer would make decision-making much slower. Though it might have been slower, the alternative approach made many volunteers feel stonewalled.

What didn’t help was that in many groups, there also didn’t seem to be one approach to deciding who would be part of a recall group’s core team. The core teams of some groups consisted of those who had joined the specific recall group earliest; some core teams consisted of those who had proven to be most responsible in their activism or had the most time to give. This being so, sub-team leaders and core group members were often not elected but selected. ******

Small Party Infiltration

ONE OF THE main objectives of activist groups was to present themselves as apolitical and, in this way representing, the voice of the people. Maintaining such a grassroots identity was crucial for these groups to resist the KMT-TPP camp’s framing of these groups as DPP actors–used to discredit the recalls.

Still, the recall campaigns offered an appealing opportunity for smaller parties – such as the Taiwan Statebuilding Party (台灣基進), Taiwan Obasang Political Equality Party (小民參政歐巴桑聯盟), and the New Power Party (時代力量) – to build local support and gain visibility in Taiwanese politics. Historically, minor parties have struggled to break the long-standing dominance of the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) was the first in recent history to significantly challenge this two-party structure, establishing itself as a viable third force in national politics.

Presumably, if KMT politicians were successfully recalled, they could utilize their newly established connections to either replace them in a Legislative Yuan by-election or be elected in the approaching borough chief (里長) elections in 2026.

Allegedly, supporters or members of small parties would infiltrate the core group of recall groups and attempt to take over control by kicking out group leaders and those members who would pose a challenge to their domination. There were cases of small party members or supporters hiding their ties to small parties, stirring up conflict within recall groups, encouraging more aggressive behavior when facing anti-recall citizens (such as swearing at them), and blackmailing recall group members who disagreed with their tactics. Recall groups in Taichung, Taoyuan, New Taipei, and Taipei all experienced such infiltration.

To avoid infiltration by small party members and more radical supporters, one may suggest screening volunteers and providing a proper training period before letting them formally join the recall group. Many groups did this, but not all had the luxury. Especially those groups that operated in less central areas struggled to recruit volunteers. Many volunteers wanted to join anonymously, and imposing entry checks would lead to fewer people supporting the movement in areas where there was little support to begin with. This is to say nothing of the difficulty of finding activists with sufficient experience in social movements and with an understanding of Taiwanese law, who could train new members.

Personal Agendas

ANOTHER FACTOR leading to group division was the desire of certain group members to accrue some form of personal capital through the recalls. Being able to label oneself as a recall group leader, subteam leader, or core team member would increase one’s visibility and social standing among pro-recall Taiwanese.

As a result, certain activists would be unwilling to split their power by delegating tasks to other team members or holding votes to make decisions. They preferred a top-down style of organization. There were even cases of group members being kicked out of recall groups if they sought discussion with core group members over what the next steps of the recall group would be.

As recall groups grew larger in the second and third stages, growing to hundreds of members, running groups in such an exclusive, self-serving manner gave many volunteers the impression that the working style of certain recall group members was no different from the working style of the politicians they wanted to recall. Consequently, many left and started their own groups. These groups often would become more effective and better organized than the groups they left.

Alternative Approaches

IN FUTURE ACTIVISM, how can volunteer organizations avoid such internal conflicts and splits? To answer this question, it must first be understood that the main cause of group tension and splits was not ideological differences, but differences in personality and temperament. Indeed, volunteers repeatedly mention how former KMT supporters who joined the recall were not the cause of group tension. Rather, the preferred working style and ambition of different members caused fracturing: preferring hierarchical versus consensus-based group decision-making, more independence in executing tasks versus working more closely with others, using the recalls to boost one’s career or secure future political influence, etc.

To counter such obstacles in future activism, one could suggest organizing more groups, each of which would be adapted to different volunteer personalities and goals. However, instead of solving the problem, this may in fact amplify it. Most obviously, each smaller group would have taken on more work.

Likewise, with more than one group targeting the same KMT politician, this would lead to coordination challenges – how does each group engage with their target audience without repeating the other group’s work and avoid being perceived as overly intrusive?

Also, when there is more than one group with the same goal, this may create an impression of there being competing interests in at least one of the groups. By thus discrediting the sincerity of individual recall groups, the goal of the campaign would also be discredited. It would be much easier for opponents of activism to frame it negatively.

Difficult Decisions

FUTURE ACTIVIST ORGANIZATIONS in Taiwan need to wrestle with several issues to ensure that their group maintains its solidarity without losing its efficiency. These issues can be boiled down to the following key points:

• Diversity is both a strength and a challenge: managing differences in personality, ambition, working style, and decision-making preferences is the most crucial effort for avoiding splits.
  • Differences in volunteer motivations, such as seeking personal visibility, leadership status, or political influence, will lead to different working styles that conflict with collective goals. Assessing volunteer motivations should be an essential part of volunteer onboarding.
• Organizational structure needs to be transparent and inclusive: while organizing sub-teams and appointing team members may help manage large groups, they have the tendency to become opaque and authoritarian. Agreed-upon decision-making procedures can help avoid such excesses.
  • Inclusive practices, such as organizing recall group meetings, voting for big decisions, and establishing safe channels for delivering feedback, may come at the expense of short-term efficiency, but protect long-term group solidarity and legitimacy.
• Grassroots activist organizations are vulnerable to co-optation: finding ways to impose safety checks without discouraging volunteer participation will help avoid infiltration.

Conversation as Center

AS THE RECALLS made painfully clear, organizing a large number of volunteers into a harmonious and efficient group is anything but easy. But maybe that’s not the point. After all, while the goals might be the same (though not always) and the passion may be shared, the personalities, working styles, amount of personal ambition, and political backgrounds of members couldn’t be more varied.

Learning to work with this variety, rather than getting rid of it (excluding avoiding small party infiltration), is the hallmark of a thriving democracy within activist groups. Perhaps it is better to have a failed recall that was democratic, not just in its aims but also in its means, than a successful recall that took an authoritarian structure to secure it. In the end, it is only inclusive approaches that can cultivate stronger long-term civic engagement.

The challenges of Taiwanese activism, then, is not to exclude or suppress different voices, but to remain in constructive conversation with them. How can groups place such conversations (about who to include, how to organize groups, how to avoid infiltration) at the core of their activism – this is the central question for the future of Taiwanese activism.