Finding Light
Through the Cracks:
Reinventing Democracy
with Audrey Tang
Our latest book - Available Now
Our challenges aren’t waiting for us: Climate crisis, AI, geopolitical shifts, the erosion of democratic foundations — all moving at a pace that makes traditional legislative cycles look glacial. When governance is too slow or malfunctioning, decisions get made by others.
Taiwan took a different path — echoing the author Friedrich Duerrenmatt: "What concerns everyone can only be solved by everyone."
"There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in." Audrey Tang borrowed Leonard Cohen's lyric to describe what happened when civic hackers and student activists found cracks in the system. They didn't just protest — they offered something new. Like open-source software, they forked their government — and it keeps updating.
“Finding Light Throught the Cracks” follows Taiwan's democratic experiments through Audrey's journey — and the principles now spreading worldwide. For anyone who trusts that democracy can evolve — and become something that involves us all again.
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Endorsements
Endorsements
“In a world of rising authoritarianism, Finding Light Through the Cracks is a beacon of hope. This well-told story of democracy reimagined reads like a novel but with real world consequences. It proves servant leadership is still alive, provides lessons that apply anywhere in the world, and highlights what it takes to create systems for ordinary people to directly participate in decisions about complex, challenging issues. The result of this approach: increased respect and understanding that leads to robust, creative, and widely embraced actions. A must read for anyone in despair about the state of democracy.”
“Having applied collective intelligence approaches within government across the UK and Scotland, I can’t imagine a more perfect story than vTaiwan to encapsulate the potential of digital tools and deliberation to augment and reinvigorate democracy. Finding Light Through the Cracks offers an optimistic and human tale of democratic revitalisation — with the crucial lesson that there is no single recipe for democracy, but a need for iterative, adaptive processes that respond to our ever-changing world.”