This essay develops a structured comparison between Taiwan and the three Central and East European countries of Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary (the CEE trio). The purpose is to explore the social and institutional factors that impact democratic performance. The rationale of the comparison is presented first, followed by a tracking of democratic development in the four cases. The CEE trio is juxtaposed to Taiwan to show their initial differences in dominant social cleavage, electoral regime, party system, and constitutional structure. The CEE trio has a material cleavage, proportional electoral regime, multiparty structure, and parliamentary (or proparliament semipresidential) system, compared to Taiwan's prematerialist identity cleavage, single nontransferable vote turned mixed member majoritarian electoral system, two-party structure, and a semipresidential regime that tilts toward the president. The CEE trio was closer to Lijphart's ”consensus” model, while Taiwan clearly demonstrated features of ”majoritarianism.” Initially, the CEEs performed a little better than Taiwan in the Freedom House and Polity IV scores, ostensibly conforming to Lijphart's preference for consensus democracy. The social cleavage differences between the two, however, gradually have been reduced over the last decade, as the CEEs have turned more identity-centered at the expense of the traditional left-right divide, while Taiwan gradually has shifted to distributional politics in a period of economic slowdown. Institutionally, the two remain distant, as Taiwan's electoral reform made it more majoritarian, while the CEEs remained proportional (the shift of the Czech Republic from parliamentarism to semipresidentialism by instituting direct presidential election is an exception, but the president in all likelihood will be ceremonial). The CEEs' political competition became more conflictual with its shift to identity, while Taiwan shied away from blatant identity mobilization toward more urbane politics. The changes in Freedom House and Polity IV scores demonstrate the impact of changing social cleavage. Although institutionally more majoritarian, Taiwan's shift away from identity politics boosts its democratic performance, while the CEEs' development in the opposite direction dampens their democratic prospects, the proconsensus institutional model there notwithstanding. Through this structured comparison, we tentatively conform to Lijphart's suggestion that consensus democracy tends to be kinder and gentler, with a critical caveat that a more conflict-prone social cleavage may negate its moderating effect.