The deep partisan divisions rending Taiwan's government are no secret. The opposition-controlled legislature has yet to approve the 2026 government budget, now six months overdue. It took more than seven months to approve a special defense budget to purchase weapons from the United States, after eventually reducing it by forty percent. Beyond finance, presidential nominations to key government positions are left unconfirmed or rejected. One institution of government after another is being hollowed out by the legislature's refusal to approve presidential nominees. While initially less visible, the impact of thwarting the appointments process may ultimately be more damaging to Taiwan’s democracy than rejecting the president’s budget proposals.
In Taiwan, key appointments at numerous institutions – from the Fair Trade Commission to the Constitutional Court -- are jointly made by the president and the legislature. The president nominates candidates and the legislature confirms them. But neither President Lai Ching-te, of the Democratic Progressive Party, nor the dominant coalition in the Legislative Yuan comprised of the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Taiwan People's Party (TPP) has been willing to reach consensus on nominees. While the president's posture has shifted over time from confrontational to somewhat conciliatory, the KMT-TPP position has remained fixed: weaponizing the confirmation power by vetoing nominees or declining even to schedule votes. Their aim appears to be creating an accountability and legitimacy deficit for the ruling party in order to advantage themselves in the next election.
With no serious efforts toward reconciliation underway, the appointments impasse seems likely to continue until the 2028 presidential and legislative elections. If the same party wins both the presidency and control of the Legislative Yuan, the vacancies likely would be swiftly filled. But that outcome would create a new problem: a massive concentration of power in one party. The staggered-term mechanism that was designed to spread appointments across several election cycles is being rendered meaningless by the accumulation of so many vacancies at once.
The staggered-term mechanism that was designed to spread appointments across several election cycles is being rendered meaningless by the accumulation of so many vacancies at once.
Affected institutions all face the same predicament: too few judges or commissioners, as the case may be, to carry out their legal mandates, resulting in a growing backlog of matters requiring attention. The Constitutional Court presents the most acute legitimacy crisis. Seven of its fifteen justices saw their terms expire in October 2024. President Lai nominated a slate of seven replacements in December 2024 and another slate in July 2025; the legislature rejected all fourteen nominees. The court was reduced to eight sitting justices. The KMT-TPP majority on the legislature then compounded the problem by amending the Constitutional Court Procedure Act in December 2024 to set a quorum of ten justices for constitutional adjudication — a number the court, with only eight members, could not meet. The court adjudicated only one merit case during its 2025 term, leaving more than 300 cases on its docket awaiting resolution.
The Control Yuan, Taiwan's government ombudsman, is empowered to censure and impeach government officials, audit state agencies, and receive citizen petitions alleging government misconduct or maladministration. It is led by twenty-nine commissioners whose six-year terms all expire on July 31, 2026, when it faces the prospect of functionally shutting down. Budget cuts have left the Control Yuan with a backlog of 100,000 petitions — requests from ordinary citizens seeking redress for wrongful administrative action, delayed benefits, or abuse of official power.
Several important independent statutory commissions are also affected. The National Communications Commission, similar to the US Federal Communications Commission, can no longer renew broadcast licenses or issue policies on social media governance or disinformation prevention because it has only three commissioners, one short of a quorum. The terms of four commissioners ended in 2024 and the legislature has repeatedly rejected presidential nominees. The terms of the three remaining commissioners end in July 2026.
The Central Election Commission will struggle to handle upcoming local polls in November with just eight of eleven seats filled.
The Central Election Commission will struggle to handle upcoming local polls in November with just eight of eleven seats filled. The number fell to four in late 2025, below the statutory minimum of five, but in this case the Legislative Yuan took urgent action and filled four seats with their own nominees, rather than the president’s.
The Fair Trade Commission, responsible for antitrust enforcement, is still operating with five commissioners rather than the usual seven. But the terms of three commissioners will end in January 2027, so this body also faces potential paralysis.
So far, the public has been largely indifferent to the spreading vacancies. A key reason is that President Lai has put acting personnel in place. The Control Yuan, Judicial Yuan, and prosecutor general’s office are all led at present by persons holding acting appointments made by the president alone, which do not require legislative approval. This could end, however, as the KMT has proposed setting a six-month limit on how long acting agency heads can serve.
Some institutions have embraced workarounds of dubious legitimacy. The Constitutional Court is the most visible case. After more than a year of paralysis, in December 2025 five of the eight sitting justices defied their own quorum requirement to convene. They then struck down as unconstitutional the 2024 revision to the Constitutional Court Procedure Act that imposed the quorum. But three other justices split with the five and issued a statement saying that the court lacked the legal capacity to render any judgments. The five justices have resumed issuing decisions but the validity of their rulings remains genuinely contested. The Legislative Yuan has responded by proposing to amend the Referendum Act to make Constitutional Court decisions subject to national referendums.
The National Communications Commission (NCC) presents another example. Although most broadcasting licenses expired last summer, broadcasters continue to operate because the NCC is allowing them to do so without valid licenses.
These workarounds raise serious rule-of-law concerns. Taiwan's executive branch has long followed the constitutional principle of statutory reservation, under which the executive may act only where the legislature has authorized it to do so. When agencies continue exercising authority through acting appointments and informal decisions, they invite legitimate criticism from the legislative majority for diverging from statutory bounds. Appointments to the Constitutional Court, designed to stand above politics, have become completely politicized. These dynamics mirror patterns observed in American politics under divided government, where opposing parties invest heavily in undermining the other side's institutional legitimacy rather than cooperating across partisan lines.
A regime can be said to be undergoing democratic backsliding when freedom of speech, the integrity of the electoral process, and judicial independence are undermined.
Rule of law is not the only concern. A regime can be said to be undergoing democratic backsliding when freedom of speech, the integrity of the electoral process, and judicial independence are undermined. In Taiwan's case, the paralyzed institutions are precisely those responsible for safeguarding each of these: the NCC for freedom of expression, the Central Election Commission for electoral integrity, and the Judicial Yuan and Constitutional Court for judicial independence and fair trial rights.
If the current impasse continues up to the 2028 election and one party achieves control of both the presidency and legislature, that party could appoint eleven of fifteen Constitutional Court justices, the heads of the Judicial Yuan and Control Yuan, all twenty-nine Control Yuan commissioners, the prosecutor general, up to five of seven Fair Trade Commission commissioners, and all seven National Communications Commission commissioners. This concentration of appointment power would effectively extinguish the independence of these institutions.
Democracies do not fail only through coups. They fail when institutions are starved of legitimacy until no one remembers why they mattered. The solutions are well-known: cross-party negotiation on nominees, restoring holdover provisions that cushion vacancies, and a shared recognition that independent institutions protect opposition and ruling party alike. What is missing is the political will to compromise.
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Yinn-ching Lu is a former law clerk at the Taiwan Constitutional Court and is pursuing a doctor of juridical science degree at Emory University School of Law.
Suggested Citation:
Yinn-ching Lu, “The Cost of Government Deadlock: Taiwan’s Zombie Institutions,” USALI Perspectives, 6, No. 11, June 15, 2026, https://usali.org/usali-perspectives-blog/the-cost-of-government-deadlock.
The views expressed in USALI Perspectives are those of the authors, and do not represent those of USALI or NYU.
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