This is a disappointing book on an interesting and important topic for two main reasons: first, the nine chapters included in this volume are of very uneven quality and only a minority of them are both informative and original; and secondly, all the contributions were written in the late 1990s, thus before Chen Shui-bian's election, substantially diminishing their interest, in particular on issues such as labour, social welfare or nuclear policies, all of which have witnessed profound changes in the last few years.