Research On Legislative Deliberation Mechanism

Legislative deliberation is the specific demonstration of deliberative democracy in the field of legislation. It ensures that laws are made in a democratic and scientific way. The fourth plenary session of the 18 th Communist Party of China(CPC) Central Committee requires that we should further advance scientific and democratic legislation, improve the communication mechanism between the legislature and the public, and conduct legislative deliberation. As an important part of the deliberation system, legislative deliberation is an important institution to advance scientific and democratic legislation, the modernization of the governance system and rule of law. There is no uniform recognition of legislative deliberation in the field of theory and practice. This paper attempts to hackle the legislative deliberation and its institutions in order to provide the theory research and legislative practice with theoretical foundation and basis. Besides, it analyzes the basic components of the legislative deliberation to perfect the institutions.This paper is composed of five parts apart from the introduction and conclusion.The first part is the general introduction to the legislative deliberation. The deliberative democracy developed in the 20 th century lays solid foundation for the construction of legislative deliberation institutions. This paper concentrates on combining China’s democratic practice and the deliberative democracy theory to find out the native resources of legislative deliberation and discuss the possibilities of the construction of legislative institution in China. It comes to the conclusion that legislative deliberation is the combination of socialism with Chinese characteristics election democracy and deliberation democracy. Legislative deliberation institutions are the best form of the combination. It refers to legislative events including rational dialogue and full consultation taking place in every legislation step surrounding the draft. According to the special nation conditions of China, legislative deliberation’s functions are to ensure that the rights of the citizens can be implemented, to make up for the deficiency of representative system, to perfect the people’s congress system and advance the progress of construction of rule of law in China.The second part mainly introduces legislative system and legislative deliberation institutions of representative countries in the common law system and civil law system. Particularly, it introduces the legislative deliberation practice in national and local legislation. In the course of drawing experience of legislative deliberation practice in developed countries, it summarizes the deficiency of legislative deliberation practice of China. Besides, it puts forward four aspects of experience we must draw in the process of construction of legislative deliberation institutions. These four are perfection of party’s participation in legislative deliberation institutions, acceleration of the legalization of legislative deliberation, emphasis on the functions of non-governmental organizations and emphasis on the extraterritorial experience of the development of legislative deliberation.The third part discusses the macrostructure contents of the legislative deliberation, namely, its legalization expression forms, its multi-level deliberation system, the specific ways and its external environment. This paper proposes the necessity and feasibility of the expression of legislative deliberation institutions by laws and the construction of the law system that legislative deliberation systems should be expressed in a special chapter in the Legislation Law and be concentratedly expressed in a separate law. Through the discussion of the combination of deliberation democracy and election democracy, it constructs multi-level legislative deliberation system, including legislative deliberation in the political consultation level, legislative deliberation in the congress level and legislative deliberation in the public level. The main forms of Socialism with Chinese characteristics deliberation democracy are conference deliberation, interview deliberation and written deliberation. Legislative deliberation mainly draws these three deliberation forms. Apart from the legislative deliberation, its external environment is very important. The stable political, legal and social environment matter whether the legislative deliberation can function well.The fourth part discusses the perfection of subjects of deliberative deliberation. The most controversial issue in legislative deliberation is that the deliberation subjects. This paper analyzes this issue from the perspective of functions, legal status and characters of the participating subjects. It puts forward that the legislature, the democratic parties, people’s organizations, social organizations and the public are the subjects of legislative deliberation. This paper begins from the functions and characters of the People’s Political and Consultative Conference(PPCC), coming to the conclusion that it is not the deliberation subject. Furthermore, it discusses how to build the mechanism to ensure the PPCC as the legislative deliberation stage.The fifth part discusses the procedural institutions of legislative deliberation. Legislative deliberation is not only the deliberation in the legislative procedure, but also the deliberation during the whole legislation process. According to the traditional division method, the legislation process is divided into three stages, that is, the preparation stage, the legislation stage and the after-legislation stage. This paper draws theory from the discourse theory of Habermas, combining the socialism with Chinese characteristics legislation institutions, puts forward legislative deliberation procedures covering the three legislation stages.In conclusion, the legislative deliberation institutions includes the fundamental principles, macrostructure, and the concrete deliberation procedures in the legislation process. The Communist Party of China is the ruling party and it leads the legislation. Legislative deliberation is a part of the legislative events. The Party leads the legislative deliberation by particular ways and through special channels. It is key to constructing a set of scientific institutions for the Party to lead legislative deliberation to function well. The National People’s Congress is the highest organ of state power, which is qualified to legislate. It is also an important task to reinforce the leading role of the National People’s Congress in legislation. As the leading channel in political consultation, the PPCC also plays the role of leading channel in legislative deliberation. The legislative deliberation subjects should connect and coordinate with each other to form a system that every subject participates equally in different ways. In the aspect of legislative deliberation procedure, legislative deliberation starting and coordinating mechanism, selecting the subjects mechanism, discussing and inviting certain subjects mechanism, ending the legislative deliberation mechanism, the feedback of the results mechanism, the evaluation and incentive mechanism should be designed.