Research On Habermas’s Theory Of Deliberative Democracy

Habermas’theory of deliberative democracy is built to solve the problem of social integration of modern complex society, to meet legitimate crisis of western democratic politics, it requires that the country must develop normative validity of law and policy to maintain social solidarity. The theory based on the philosophy of communicative rationality. Communicative rationality is a kind of inter-subject communicative ability to use daily language as medium, reach the purpose of understanding consensus. Paradigm transformation from subjectivity to intersubjectivity, from consciousness philosophy to communicative philosophy, breaks through understanding of the subject of previous philosophy, thus break the theoretical paradigm of western subjectivity philosophy of pure pursuit of competitive success, opend up the new way thinking of communicative rationality of understanding each other, form consensus through perspective transformation, lays the basis for the theory of deliberative democracy.Haberms argues that the main content of deliberative democracy theory based on communicative rationality included in the general sense of deliberative principle and democratic principle accurately defined, and the lateral system of citizens’ basic rights deliberately reconstructed, and included some principles of legal state in the realistic level, the people’s sovereignty principle, the principle of civil rights protection, administrative legality principles, the principle of separation of state and society. No common sense deliberative principles, democratic principles and systems of citizens’ basic rights deliberately reconstructed, there is no universal theory as a reference to principles of legal state; Also, there are not specific principles of legal state, deliberative principle、democractive principle and the lateral system of citizens’ basic rights can only be existed abstractly.Habermas’theory of deliberative democracy is based on the liberal constitutional democracy system, blends together the republicanism gathered the opinions of diverse principle of equal participation on this basis, he devised a unique deliberative program-"dual-track deliberate politics". This design will be distinguished between formally decision-making mechanism and informal discussion mechanism, formal decision-making mechanism refers to the election and the parliament as the center of constitutional democracy, informal discussion mechanism depends on positive factors of the civil society and political public sphere in the life world. He called the informal talk mechanism "the context of discovery", the formal negotiation mechanism is called "the context of justification", the influence of the former is mainly responsible for finding a wide variety of views and providing them to the latter, the latter is mainly responsible for reviewing the former and developing policies or laws accordingly. The two complements interact with each other, strengthen the effectiveness of deliberative democracy in program operations.Habermas’theory of deliberative democracy in the normative requirements, must be applied to the complicated social democratic practice and confirmed by democratic experience. Habermas’research on public sphere and civil society, is to solve external tension between the regulatory requirements and its social background of deliberative democracy theory, it provide a sociological model for deliberative democracy, to lay the basis of the theory of deliberative democracy. In Habermas’s view, free and equal contract principle of the market economy has shaped the subject consciousness of the citizens and equal concept, provided conceptive premise for the information of public sphere. Civil society provided organization basis for the information of public sphere, association, organization, and movement as three kinds of deliberative configuration of civil society play its democratic potential role in joint personal power, collected expression of public opinion, added to pressure on the political system. Legal state provided law protection for public sphere, if the basic rights of citizens are not protected by legal state, the integrity of the private sphere of citizens is nothing, public sphere of citizen participation in public affairs is less likely to produce.This paper will focus on the following questions our scholars generally ignored to discuss:Firstly, Habermas identifies the scientific research methods of historical materialism, emphasizes the study of politics from the material interests, affirm that economic inequality is the basis of political inequality.Secondly, in the discussion of Habermas’deliberative democracy, the law is a main thread through its theory, so he tries to unfold the whole issue of deliberative democracy around the formation of legitimate law.Thirdly, in the question of public sphere, he advocated that communication rather than publicity is the essence of public sphere. Fourthly, Habermas’s theory of deliberative democracy have played an important compass role in the subsequent western deliberative democracy theory and the construction of democratic politics in the European Union, for the construction of contemporary Chinese marxism political philosophy,it also has important inspired significance.