Constructing Taiwan: Finding Agency in a Contested Sovereignty

What does it mean to act or produce agency for a contested sovereign state? Typically, contested sovereign states are thought to produce agency through a call and/or fight for independence. However, I theorize that contested sovereign states can produce a stronger form of agency by performatively constructing their identity and producing counter-narratives that sustain themselves against other sovereign state(s) that claim sovereignty over the contested sovereign state. Using the Taiwan case study to explicate my goals, I perform content analysis on Taiwanese presidents since democratization as well as on specific Taiwanese responses to the Third and Fourth Taiwan Strait Crises. In this pursuit, I find that Taiwan has successfully produced and sustained their identity counter-narrative(s) against the mainland and have thus produced a stronger form of agency then directly claiming or fighting for independence. The Taiwan case study illustrates an important example of how contested sovereign states can produce agency through identity rather than a fight for independence.