How can we understand the practical dilemmas facing modern democracy, including economic inequality and the populist backlash? How can we overcome them? In recent years, Michael Sandel’s critique of neoliberalism has argued that the current wave of populism largely originates from a market-driven, meritocratic society shaped by globalization: market triumphalism has produced significant economic inequality, while meritocracy has deepened the gap between the rich and the poor, fostering elite hubris and a politics of humiliation.

In this article we apply Rodrik’s (2011) theoretical framework of “The Political Trilemma of the World Economy” to investigate whether Garrett’s (1998) finding about the OECD countries’ experience of globalization can still hold in Taiwan. We find that Taiwan’s globalization process is different from that in the OECD countries.