Criticism And Beyond - Elite Democracy Theory

As an important component of modern democratic theory, elitist democratic theory has a history of hundreds years. Based on the perspective different from traditional liberal democracy , the theory tried to explain and restructuring the basis of Western democratic system. It had a significant impact on remodeling the study path of the 20th century democrats because of the unique notion on democracy and the empirical research paradigm. Elitist democratic theory play a role of connecting link in the changing process form the traditional hegemony of liberalism to the coexistence condition of liberalism and pluralistic democratic theory. The development trend of the theory is a miniature of the change of democratic theory in the 20th Century.Although the elitist democratic theory has the irreplaceable value, but it has not got enough attention in previous studies in China and the evaluation toward the theory was also partially because of its own theoretical characteristics and some practical limitations for political reasons. To compensate for this shortcoming, the research tries to systematizing the development process and basic notions of elitist democratic theory, analyzing its core ideas include the theories of competitive democracy, elite politics and Iron law of oligarchy. And then, the analysis on elitist democratic theory will be incorporated into the great vision of Western democratic theory development in 20th century by summarizing the relationships between elitist democracy, liberal democracy and pluralistic democracy.For the Chinese researchers who care about the question of democracy,the most important value of elitist democratic theory is that it provides a unique perspective for democratic problems research which has the subtle relationship with liberal democratic theory. At the same time, the dual defects of basic theory and research paradigm should not be overlooked which caused by class position and the original intention of research. Based on the evaluation of its value and limitations objectively and comprehensively, this article also attempts to go beyond the research platform of the elitist democratic theory, and give a new answer to understanding and interpretation of democracy.