Political Culture Dimension And The Choice Of Political System

The relation between political culture and political institution is an indispensable theme in modern political science. It is no way an easy task to define whether the former determines the latter or otherwise, though a helpful approach to investigate essential meanings of each politic and especially for constitution of democracy. Unlike traditional research method which is limited mainly on philosophical theoretical contexts, modern behaviorism political culture research targets on micro political actor actions in macro political system. Many Chinese scholars introduce this new type of research method in70s and80s20th century to investigate Chinese people’s political attitudes and China’s political development. But it is inevitable that western research method meets great challenge of Chinese particular cultural and social circumstance. Thus now days it is still a meaningful approach to interpret Chinese political development in the context of changes and transformations of particular political culture, especially considering this country’s socialism ideology, long history of Chinese cultural tradition. This essay uses the western political culture research paradigm, in combination of Marx’s historical materialism, scientific socialism method and Chinese political and cultural traditions, maintains a research approach to investigate Chinese political development in context of changes of political culture.This essay mainly focuses on Chinese political democracy system’s development from1954to present now, in which I will interpret its relationship with Chinese respective particular political culture that could be divided into political awareness, political values and political psychology. First, I will elaborate each different period’s dominant political ideology and their respective particular social and political backgrounds. Second, I will deliberate their particular political awareness, political values and, even political institutions in which they are influenced and formed. Third, this essay also will investigate each social and political rank’s political awareness and psychology, which are all formed in particular political system levels. Last, it is also helpful to analysis relationship between political institution and political culture across different periods of history.In the period of constitution of Chinese particular socialist democratic political system, Chinese government experienced many great domestic and world events, like socialist modernization, industrialization, Great Leap Forward, Cultural Revolution and world communism movement, in which Chinese Communist Part attempts a republican constitution of people’s democratic dictatorship regime. But in the process of socialist construction, CCP finds that it is greatly necessary to establish party’s authority in the endeavor to design a proper regime matching people’s democratic dictatorship, and to transform the republican values to party-centralization, in which central party committee as the dominant role in Chinese political hierarchy system. This political party committee centralization and its all-around usurpation of government is established by many political movements that dominated by strong communist ideology, and strengthened by particular social constructers, like commune and people’s common work units. Influenced by Chinese traditional political culture and especially under this centralization regime, workers, peasants and intellectuals formed their political psychology and behavior that rigidly in consistent with state political ideology.In period of adjustment of Chinese democratic political system, forced by social factors, like Cultural Revolution, political power handover, austere socialist industrialization and social construction, CCP turns from political socialist transformation to economic construction, in which reform, development and stability values are highly emphasized. Under values of unity and openness, CCP makes some change to the original centralization political system, and tries to use country’s laws and institutions to improve its own leadership forming a political system in which decentralization and collectivization are both emphasized. In this unary dominant and multi-layered political system, there is no substantial change for the social and political ranks, which though indeed shows more autonomy in their respective intimate political spheres.In period of stable development of Chinese socialist democratic political system, this country’s politics and economy becomes stable, though has to response to sudden social events, like public safety issues, domestic and world economical crisis, ethnical and religious issues, which all challenge CCP in new era. Under values of adjustment and ideological reforms, CCP deepens social and political reformation in scientific way, insists its leadership authority, and maintains institutional cooperation among rule of law, people’s sovereignty, and party’s leadership to construct a socialist democracy with Chinese characteristics. Meanwhile, CCP values highly the socialism spiritual civilization, or the socialist core value system, which are considered as an indispensable part of Chinese characteristic socialism and its politics. Quite different from previous political reforms, many vital basic issues in politics are changing, like central and local governments, party and government, politic and society relations. Especially the separation of politic and society influences highly all Chinese social ranks psychology, in which political socialist guidance and social openness combined more properly to start new direction of reform.This essay concludes in the analysis of many vital relations between political system and political culture in nearly60years history of China though three main periods, in an expectation to find the key elements that influencing Chinese political reform in future.