Taiwan's Participation in International Organizations

Vincent Wei-cheng Wang, University of Richmond

Abstract

Taiwan's quandary is a result of the "sovereignty game." Political scientist Stephen Krasner thinks that "A state like Taiwan can have Westphalian sovereignty, but not international legal sovereignty."9 "International legal sovereignty" refers to the practices associated with mutual recognition, usually between territorial entities that have formal juridical independence, while "Westphalian sovereignty" is political organization based on the exclusion of external actors from authority structures within a given territory.10