The Composition Of Pluralist Democracy

Since the eruption of the modern bourgeois revolution, the western civilization hadstarted to expand by using the accumulated matter energy, while the western countriesprogressively gained and consolidated their superiority from all over the world. In themeantime, values in the west had also realized the global propagation. Supported by thecorporeally material factor and the spiritually cultural element, the influence of thewestern countries had consequently reached the peak in the 20thcentury and was notinclined to falling off even till the 21stcentury. Nowadays, the value originated from thewest, such as freedom, democracy, equality, human rights and etc had acknowledged bythe world, which had given rise to a series of social changes. Wave of democratization, asa sign of those changes, which later not only lead to a change both in politic system andeconomy system in many non-western countries, but also in the international politicalprospect, had been especially noticeable since the twentieth century sixty or seventytimes.In the world of democracy theory, there had sprung up many extraordinary thinkerswho were in the pursuit of the true meaning of democracy and exploring in many ways ofhuman democracy which approximated the ideal one. In the contemporary era, as one ofthose outstanding people, Robert·A. Dahl, who was famous for the pluralist democracytheory, was highly praised by the western scholars. In the 20th50s, Dahl did the fieldsurvey towards democracy according to the behaviorist theory. In the 70s, in thebackground of the renaissance of political philosophy, under the direction of the theory ofpolitical philosophy, Dahl completed his theory which gave a normative balance to theresearch which placed extra emphasis on descriptive democracy. Having got help fromthe empirical research, he found that in America, a pluralistic society which features forits multivariate proposal, interest, conflict and right and etc, the real situation of democracy was neither a direct one which could originate from the ancient Greek, nor asingle"Separation of The Executive"concluded by the modern thinkers, but the highlysociable decentralization of power. Numerous separated social organizations (especiallythe interest group) who held most majority of power played the political gameaboveboard according to their own interests and wielded a lot of influence on the relevantdecision made by the government in different areas. It was the exact pluralistic societythat maintained the American and even the western democracy. Therefore, the society isthe most crucial element, as well as the factor which was used to be neglected in thedemocracy research and practice. Dahl had raised in the The Preface to DemocracyTheory that"It seems to me no more like than putting the cart before the horse if theAmerica had the democracy was simply because they'd had the constitution first. It hearsnot right that if it was only after the society became democracy then the constitutioncould be remained, but it's all the way round in the reality."And in this way, Dahl'spluralist democracy theory dug out the social element besides the constitution, and theidea of"Restricts The authority by the society"had doubtlessly applied the supervisoryauthority with a brand-new system.In theory, Dahl criticized the Madison socialist that had a great effect on the wholeAmerican and populism that had always been attractive. Dahl illustrated the basiccomponents and ingredients of the pluralist democracy theory. Dahl pointed out thatrestricting the rights of the constitution and separation system is the core content ofMadison.Most of his attention is to avoid the tyranny of the majority or danger of thesects. However,through Dahl's analysis, due to power's highly social dispersion,if sectsconstituted by most of people doesn't appear,there will not exist tyranny of many people.So what Madison is concerned about will not appear. Meanwhile,when absorbingSchumpeter's elite national theory of reasonable components and recurring to themethods of preferential selects,Dahl pointed out that competitive elite nation has practicalvalue, but most of principles don't have reliability. The maximized objective,politicalequality and sovereignty,also have their own irrationality.To consolidate various typesof social organization of members of society is the main body of political participationand competition. Based on above understanding Dahl pointed out we cannot compare the majority with the minority to describe the actual operation of a democratic society.We canonly distinguish groups of all types and sizes.They are in a variety of ways trying toadvance their goals , and then the rule of multiple minorities is the essence of moderndemocracy.In order to bridge the differences arising around the concept of democracy, which ismeans the world democracy refers to the ideal of democracy and polyarchy refers to thereality of democracy.And then he set a series of standards to have the ideal of democracyand the reality of democracy measured.Dahl firmly believed that turning to pluralistdemocracy is a non-democracy task. Stability and further promoting the polyarchy is thetask of western democracies. In other words, pluralist democracy is the future ofdemocracy. However, Dahl also realized that the realization of democracy would beunder the influence of various factors,and therefore,his famous " Preface to the Theory ofDemocracy " says that there is no true democracy theory but only the various ethnictheory. And the form of democracy will be more abundant, so the democracy of futuregenerations will not and cannot be the democracy of the forefathers.In the sixties or seventies of the 20th century,the United States' social crisis brokeout, which made Western political system economic system,social system face severechallenges.What Dahl established called classical theory of pluralist democracy wasquestioned.It is through this crisis,he discovered the inherent drawbacks of the theory ofpluralist democracy--curing politics is inequality,civic awareness and public agenda aredistorted ,and finally public lose the ultimate control rights of agenda.As the explorationof explaining the problem, Dahl put forward the realization of more democracy ,takingsome remedial measures, promoting democratization of large companies. AlthoughDahl's theoretical assumptions cannot be fully implemented, the main points of theory ofpluralistic democracy can still accurately describe the democratic reality in the West andthe theory plays a very far-reaching impact on the democratic theory and practice in theWest.Since late 1970s, China has been gone through profound modernization transition,which reflects in the field of politic, namely , China move continually toward the moderncountry ,society and political party ,which means constructing modern constitution and system . And the theme of modern political system is to standardize the operation ofpublic power, so democracy has been acknowledged as the basic goal of modern society.As Chinese proverb goes, other people's good quality whereby one can remedy one'sown defects .Therefore , as a country whose democratic consciousness and practicehappened late, China's utilizing and learning other countries'theory achievements anddevelopment experience in democratic theory and system construction is a consequentchoice. So, Dahl's multiple democracy theory should be brought into inspection view ofChina's democratic development.This paper takes the factors of pluralist democracy constitution as inspection angle,and gives a brief analysis about Dahl's pluralist democracy theory. The basic structure ofthe thesis is:Introduction: The purpose is to get a preliminary understand of Dahl's pluralistdemocracy theory's fundamental point and its position and influence in Westerndemocratic theory, as well as summarize the current situation of the study about thetheory.Chapter 1: This chapter will introduce the way of Robert Dahl's democratic theory.Influenced by behavioristic politics, his early theory scanned democracy with"scientific"altitude, emphasized democracy's substantive analysis, and points out the fundamentalrole that society plays; taking American city Newhaven as a sample, the theory gave abrand-new explanation about American democratic reality as well as found out Americanpolitical rights'distribution in pluralistic society. In the background of the Westernpolitical philosophy transition caused by Theory of Justice,Dahl studied and judged theweakness of early research. Based on reinforcing equality, freedom in democratic theory,he pondered the issue which reflects democratic political equality, and taking Americanconstitution as sample, taking democracy as principles and aims, pointed out the realisticexistence political inequality. Those researches made his theory more abundant andconvincible, which also indicate the transformation from traditional to new.Chapter 2: The analysis about the theory's construction throws light on theoreticalprinciple. Represented by Schumpeter, the elitism democratic theory, Madisonism,pluralist democracy theory was Dahl's direct theoretical motion. Having recollected and criticized the above theory, Dahl discoursed the thought that society restricted power, andput forward the pluralist democracy theory, namely, featured by absolute socialorganization(mainly interest group) and authoritative society distribution, generalizingthe realistic democracy into polyarchy so as to differ from ideal democracy ,his theoryplanned the standard of polyarchy establishment.Chapter Three: Giving instructions to the basic protection factors of the operatingDahl's Pluralism Theory. After suffering the social crisis, Dahl made a self-examinationto the original theory,seriously accepted the theory challenges from different angles,made revision and improvement to his own theory,and clarified the basic factors ofachieving Pluralism—autonomic social organizations and the way of controlleddemocracy,a number of remedial measures,economic democracy and so on,andexplored the realization of possibility of further in developed countries.Chapter Four: The revelation of Dahl's Pluralism Theory on China of the developingdemocracy. From these aspects of democratic understanding of the corrective, theexistence of interest groups, the constraints of the elite and the strengthening of thedemocratic political culture, study a number of features presented by the contemporaryChinese democracy. Dahl`s Pluralism Theory serving as an adjunct, make a brief analysisof Chinese democracy developing referring to Pluralism Theory.Postscript: Dahl's forecast of the future of democracy. As the most authoritativecontemporary democratic theorist , Dahl concerned about not only the facts of Westerndemocracy,but also the future of democracy . From these angles of the variations indemocratic countries, the changes in the field of political life , the further more mature ofdemocracy in developed countries, democracy challenges encountered in the further, hemade a calm and careful pre-judgement about the existence and progress of Pluralism inthe future.