China's Participation In Democratic Development Study

Participatory democracy, or semidirect democracy, is a new trend of development of democracy in contemporary western developed countries. It lays emphasis on introducing many more direct democratic factors on the basis of macro-representative-democracy and extending citizens' direct participation in national affairs and social organizations, i.e. public decisions are made partially by representatives elected by citizens and partially directly by citizens themselves. The guiding ideology of participatory democracy is ones whose lives are influenced by a certain decision should take part in the decision-making process.This dissertation takes over the western participatory democracy and investigates its theoretical and practical significance. The basic approach is to analyze the texts of western participatory democracy theory, contrast it with socialist democratic value and explore ways and strategies of developing participatory democracy in China. The theoretical significance is to review participatory democracy theory and illuminate the functions and importance of this theory for socialist democratic and political construction with Chinese characteristics. And the practical significance is to explore ways of Chinese democratic development and provides feasible countermeasures for the sake of perfecting socialist democratic systems, grass-roots democratic system in particular, and extending citizens' systematic political participation.The main part of this work is divided into four chapters. Chapter 1 is the theoretical review of western participatory democracy theories. The participatory democracy springs from western developed countries chiefly for two reasons; one is the representative democracy suffers the trust crisis and faces both theoretical and practical impacts, and the other is the swift development of information technology led by network offers ways and tools for citizens to enjoy more extensive democratic participation. As for representative figures and their ideas of participatory democracy, we mainly introduce .... Finally we summarize the concept of participatory democracy and contend although originated from the western democracy, participatory democracy does not belong to the western democracy but it possesses general value.Chapter 2 discusses whether participatory democracy matches Chinese political development. Democratization is the fundamental trend of Chinese political development. Participatory democracy has something in common with socialist democratic value in terms of the essence of democracy, scope of democracy and ways of realizing democracy. Nurturing democratic beliefs is critical to succeed democratization. By developing participatory democracy, numerous common people take part in the public affairs, study democracy, master democratic skills and are cultivated as powerful and responsible modern citizens, which greatly promotes Chinese post-democratization model. Moreover, developing participatory democracy and extending citizens' direct participation deepens and develops Communist Party's mass line, which is not inconsistent with insisting on Chinese Communist Party's leadership and sovereignty, and citizens' systematic participation benefits social...