The Institutional Connection of Consensus Conference and Representative Democracy－A Case Study of Surrogate Motherhood in Taiwan

The institutional value of consensus conference is originated from the concept of deliberative democracy of the U.S. and European countries, which gradually develops into a kind of public deliberation institution. In recent years, the ideological trend of deliberative democracy has posed a significant influence on local academic and practical fields, and become the focus of many researchers in Taiwan. Many researches in the political science or public administration fields have been conducted since its introduction. The operation modes and ideology of deliberative democracy are also used with an attempt to hold the consensus conference bothered with controversial issues and value conflicts. At present, most researches tend to be introductions or discussions of theories relevant to deliberative democracy or introductions and assessments of the practical pattern of deliberative democracy, while seldom concern the institutional connections and institutional designs of deliberative democracy and representative democracy. The void effort spent for the aforesaid fields is urgently required for upcoming academic endeavor. he case study of this research is the “Consensus Conference on Surrogate Motherhood”, the first conference focusing on national public policy issue. It integrates the influences and effects of consensus conferences from the controversies and development of the policy problems of surrogate motherhood. Also, SWOT analysis and strategy process is used for this research. It also aims to assist the construction of relevant concepts, serve as a reference for pragmatic application, inspect the strategic environment faced by Taiwan regarding the development of the democratic mechanism of deliberative consensus conference, further assess the feasibility of its strategies or promotion as well as the selection of strategies to search for the most appropriate operating strategies for the institutional connection between consensus conference and representative democracy.