Since John F. Copper published his first book on Taiwan's elections and democratization in 1984, he has published over a dozen volumes on Taiwan. No other scholar has written so many books in English on Taiwan's politics. Back in the 1980s and even early 1990s few political scientists were paying much attention to Taiwan's political scene. It was during that period that Copper made his main contribution to the Taiwan studies field.

In Taiwan at a Tipping Point, Copper follows a tried and tested formula that he developed for Taiwan's 1989 elections and has maintained for almost all its major local and national elections since then. These are often first published as single election studies in the Maryland series in Contemporary Asian Studies and then with limited revisions are republished in book form to look at two elections. These studies give readers a rich picture of Taiwan's election campaigns with detailed description of the candidates, the issues, the political communication and analysis of the results. His books stand in stark contrast to much of the dry statistical analysis of Taiwan's elections that often fail to give readers a sense of how colourful Taiwanese campaigns can be.

This book comes highly recommended by Copper's peers. Back cover endorsements argue it “should be mandatory reading for all Taiwan-area specialists,” or that it is the “definitive study of political change in Taiwan since 2014.” Another states it “is a book for both specialists and interested general readers.” One describes the book as “balanced” and another praises the author for not being “politically correct.” Unfortunately, I disagree with those glowing endorsements.

Back in 2013, I reviewed Copper's previous book The KMT Returns to Power: Elections in Taiwan, 2008 to 2012. Reading his latest book, I find myself coming to very similar critical conclusions. Since the mid-1990s there has been a transformation in the quantity and quality of the literature on Taiwan's politics. Each year there are dozens of serious political science volumes published on Taiwan. This has meant that at least in the field of Taiwan political science, Copper's work no longer gets the kind of attention that it did 30 years ago. It is true that the literature for the more general reader interested in Taiwan is less well covered, but even here readers can find much more sophisticated analyses in excellent academic blogs or reviews such as Taiwan Sentinel, New Bloom Magazine, Ketegalan Media, Taiwan Insight, China Leadership Monitor and Frozen Garlic.

One immediate problem is that this book is largely made up of previously published material. There are only four chapters and of these the two core chapters (two and three) have already been published elsewhere. In order to justify turning this into a book we would ideally need a strong introduction and conclusion. Unfortunately, neither really helps in bringing the book together coherently. The introduction gives us an overview of political developments leading up to the 2016 elections without any real picture of what are the core concerns of the book. I lost count of the number of questions raised in the first six or seven pages but none will really be satisfactorily answered in the book. The conclusion is more of an update that offers some discussion about what has happened since Tsai came to power and some forecasts for the future. The actual core chapters do have more value in that they have a clear structure and do offer some useful and detailed analysis of the 2014 and 2016 campaigns. However, as mentioned earlier, they had largely been published already.

Although the book brands itself as being political science, there is minimal engagement with political science concepts. The only theories that receive treatment are explanations of Taiwan's elections promoted by non-academic pundits such as the “watermelon” and “pendulum” theories. In the concluding chapter Copper attempts to frame the DPP's rise as an example of popularism but this term is never adequately defined. Politicians in Taiwan like to use the term to condemn their opponents. In this book, Copper seems to use the term as a means to criticize the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and he contrasts this with what is described as the “anti-populist” Ma Ying-jeou.

In my previous review I was critical of the author's lack of engagement with Taiwan's political science literature. Although this time there are more citations, on careful reading the book does not really engage with that literature. Instead the book relies mainly on online media sources. It might have been improved with interviews but these are also absent.

Often the author employs important concepts far too casually. Like many writers looking at Taiwan he uses the term Taiwan independence without really explaining what he means. There is a very rich and sophisticated literature on identity questions in Taiwan, but this is again not engaged with. Similarly, the author talks about political polarization but does not give any real evidence or give readers a sense of the rich debates within the literature on this question.

Another criticism of Copper's last book was that it was often one-sided against the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). This seems to be the case again, particularly in the analysis of the domestic reforms undertaken by the Tsai administration in chapter four.

In places the author makes serious factual errors. For instance, the author states that the DPP opposes foreign labour because they do not support Taiwanese nationalism and do not tend to vote for the DPP in elections (p. 183). However, we need to remember that it is almost impossible for foreign labourers to gain the Taiwanese citizenship (except through marriage) that would allow them to vote. Similarly, often the causal links Copper makes are not convincing. For instance, he blames the DPP for a decline in exports to China as a result of it provoking China following its 2014 election victory (p. 116). But given that the DPP was still a relatively small opposition party at the time I was not persuaded by this argument.

Although I enjoyed the author's colourful description of Taiwanese politics, I would not recommend this to someone interested in recent developments in Taiwan's politics. In addition to the high-quality writing now available in academic blogs, there is now a wealth of peer-reviewed journal articles and books where we can gain much more reliable analysis.