A Study Of The Development Of Socialist Deliberative Democracy With Chinese Characteristics

Democracy is the value goal which has been pursued jointly by all mankind.Democratic politics is not only the mainstream trend of the contemporary world political development but also the basic standard to weigh up the political legitimacy of all countries. Due to the historical nature, complexity and diversity of human political life proper, however, the inquiries into what the democracy is in theory have always been the topic focus that political thinkers have argued about for thousands years.Whereas, in practice, the arguing about which democratic pattern is better has always been the bargaining counters of which the sovereign states have accused each other.Thus, the contest among countries adopting different social systems has increasingly concentrated on the “conflicts of democracy”, which results in the concept of democracy fragmented, the connotations of it more ambiguous and the theories a total chaos. Obviously, “democracy is a good thing”, but what democracy really is and what democracy does are still open questions worldwide nonetheless.Deliberative democracy, as a new type democratic form to better realize people’s sovereignty and the “public good”, has witnessed the exploration in practice and thinking in theory since the mid-20 th century in both China and the west. Its basic meaning is to advocate citizens, on the basis of freedom and equality, to directly participate in public life by rational dialogues, communication, discussions and deliberation and other ways to maximize the public interest. Deliberative democracy,however, has taken on distinctly different development paths on account of differences in culture, history and tradition and other aspects. Chinese practical exploration originates relatively earlier but the theoretical research is comparatively backward. On the contrary, western theory exploration begins earlier but the practical progress makes not so much progress. The space-time dislocation of theory and practice development ofdeliberative democracy in China and the west has forced Chinese research mainly carried out initially in the western context, which causes discourse attachment in different degrees and seriously affects people’s correct cognition about Chinese deliberative democracy.Based on this, this thesis explores in depth the occurrence mechanism, inherent laws, theoretical construction, institution innovation and value goal of China’s deliberative democracy from the perspective of history, comparison and development,profoundly reveals its originality and vitality and tries to trace its source in practice and get to the root in theory though hard and thorough research, thus to manifest the distinguished feature, unique advantage and the value of the time of China’s socialist deliberative democracy. It hopes China’s socialist deliberative democracy to take the initiative in gradually increasingly ardent competition of democratic right of speech and to enhance its confidence in choice of road, theory and system construction.From the point of view of theoretical foundation, China’s socialist deliberative democracy is built during Chinese Communist Party saved the nation in peril, fought for national independence and is achieving a prosperous and strong country. It consciously combines China’s reality and the basic principles of Marxism and innovatively utilizes and develops the democratic political theory, party cooperation theory and the united front theory of Marxism and, on the basis of overall grasp of the inherent logic and universal laws of democratic development, constantly bring forth practical innovation,theoretical innovation and institutional innovation to achieve the goal that people are masters of the country.From the point of view of practice resource, China’s socialist deliberative democracy is built during Chinese Communist Party led the revolution, constructed and reformed the country and, based on Chinese unique cultural tradition, particular historic mission and distinct fundamental reality of the country, inherits Chinese traditional political culture and takes into consideration of Chinese socialist economic, political and cultural situations, and also gives full play to people’s subjectivity and initiative to achieve great innovations. It starts from the thought of the united front, comes into being in establishing the nation through consultation, develops in the strategy ofmulti-party cooperation and consummates in the policy of political deliberation, which both condenses the Chinese Community Party’s political wisdom and mirrors people’s fundamental wishes.From the point of view of international comparison, Chinese and western deliberative democracy belong to the same democratic form, but manifest many essential differences, mainly in structural differences such as dislocation in space-time,same mechanism with different approaches, exchanges and mutual references in value and heterogeneous isomorphism in nature. As the half century passes by, from the reality of political development especially, Chinese deliberative democracy has at present become an indispensible component of Chinese political system with Chinese characteristics while western deliberative democracy still mainly shows as an academic concept in theoretical circle.From the point of view of theoretical construction, the thesis highly appreciates the plentiful results achieved by the theoretical construction of deliberative democracy in China. However, due to the influence of western theories in academic circle which has formed since modern times, many problems worth being paid much attention to still exist, such as weak problem-oriented awareness, monotonous discourse expression form and absence of rational academic debates, which restricts to a large extent the theoretical creation of Chinese deliberative democracy. Therefore, only if the distinct feature of Chinese deliberative democracy is refined via history and logic, the cultural foundation of it is tamped via inheriting and innovation, the particular advantage of it is showed by comparison and reference, and the academic creation of it is boosted by analysis and construction can the theory and discourse system be enriched and developed.From the point of view of institution innovation, the 18 th session of the Chinese Community Party(CCP) claimed that socialist deliberative democracy is one significant form of people’s democracy, but there still exists problems such as institutional supply shortage and ineffective security mechanism compared with people’s increasing multi-participation political demand. Therefore, to ensure that it is carried out on the basis of proper institutions, rules, regulations and procedures, the institutionalinnovation of deliberative democracy of political parties, NPC, government, CPPCC,people’s organizations, basic-level and social organizations must be enhanced and the institutional arrangement must be improved step by step, and also the institutional mechanism of all deliberative channels need to be linked up and coordinated. Thus, a full-fledged, scientific, normative and effective deliberative democracy system should be sound and better and provides the institutional guarantee for a more extensive, more sufficient and sturdier people’s democracy.From the point of view of value goal, both history and reality show that socialistic deliberative democracy implies distinct value orientation of people’s democracy, which is the characteristic, particular and original democratic form in China. In the journey of realizing Chinese nation’s great rejuvenation, electoral democracy and deliberative democracy should be carried forward consciously to develop coordinately and to integrate and complement with each other, and to create the socialist democratic institution which both adapts to China’s condition and surpasses the western democracy,and both contains distinct advantage and conforms to the universal laws, and both embeds national characteristics and possesses international significance, which is conducive to the enrichment of human democracy forms, the modernization of national governance and the construction of socialist political civilization, and also makes its unique contribution to human political civilization.