Responsible Politics: The Logic Of Responsibility In Political Life

Responsibility is a sort of significant value in human society.A responsible life is a fundamental proposition for the human being,and a necessary condition to reach a desirable future.From the origin of society to the prosperous world of the day,responsibility is always related to daily life and the institution.Since the modernity became a character of the society,the responsibility has occupied a more prominent position in society and the state.The responsibility,as a rhetorical expression,ties different people,people and society,people and their countries,and even the global structure.There is no political stability and harmonious life without responsibility.Responsibility is a concept or value attracting interdisciplinary concerns.From the perspective of political science,research on responsibility has had various contents including political responsibility,accountable government and political accountability.These studies cover different aspects of responsibility in political life.However,research on responsibility from the perspective of political science needs a more systematic and comprehensive integration,which means to analyze what is an ideal relation between responsibility and politics,and how to build a desirable politics by responsibility in a macro view.Therefore,we should develop a new concept of “responsible politics”,aiming to analyze the logic that responsibility influences politics and to answer problems associated with responsibility in political life.The main intention of this paper is to research the political life based on responsibility with the importance of responsibility.This research attempts to broaden the political theory and to offer the path to a responsible life.It seems unnecessary to dissect the meaning of responsibility in that we use it every day.However,in academic,the divergence comes to responsibility as usual.Differentdisciplines,such as political science,philosophy,ethics and jurisprudence,convey various comprehensions for responsibility.This situation represents that we ought to apply multiple perspectives,and pluralistic emphasises for the research of responsibility.The social science is inclusive.It is appropriate to study the responsibility on a pure and single standpoint,or there is no utterly independent connotation in the responsibility.Therefore,we are capable of abstracting a general conceptual framework of the responsibility integrating different disciplines.The responsibility has its agent,reason,object and guarantee.These four factors jointly form the fundamental structure of responsibility.Responsibility is the cornerstone of Responsible Politics.The explanation of Responsible Politics must match the conceptual framework of the responsibility.This dissertation will adopt the methodology of sociology,and define Responsible Politics as a political pattern that the responsibility is axial.In detail,as a political pattern,Responsible Politics means different agents interact by the responsibility,and Responsible Politics highlights the responsible relationship and the responsible pattern.The specific power structure,institution and action must follow the responsibility.On the one hand,different agents get linkage with each other and should interact responsibly.On the other hand,politics counts on responsibility,and responsibility is an institutionalized behavioral model.After defining the concept of responsible politics,we ought to further clarify what on earth is the responsible politics integrating the structure,feature and operation field of responsible politics.This dissertation indicates four characteristics of responsible politics:(1)responsible politics is a sort of pattern instead of a pure institution.(2)Responsible politics is always developing itself rather than staying at static.(3)Responsible politics can represent a kind of international relation or global order.(4)Responsible politics is commendatory though it is value neutrality.Indeed,responsible politics is not only a theoretical building but also has its logic in reality.Responsibility exists in all human history and appears in distinct features in different stages.Thus,we can further expound Responsible Politics in three facets: Politics in Responsibility,Politics for Responsibility and Responsible Politics.These three aspects can summarizedifferent relations between responsibility and politics in societal development.Once we grab the connotation of Responsible Politics,we are able to review related theories in the western political thought regarding Responsible Politics.In the western political thought,the Idea of Responsible Politics in ethical politics can be collated from Plato,Aristotle and Cicero's thoughts.After the collapse of ethical politics,Machiavelli and some theorists of Contractarianism rebuilt the idea of Responsible Politics.Furthermore,Responsible Politics has its innovation under modernity.The constant changes of Responsible Politics respectively construct its moral foundation,democratic value and connective function.In Chinese political thought,the thought of Responsible Politics in Confucianism is a hierarchical order in accordance with “Ren” and “Li”,which conforms to a Chinese idiom “everyone occupies his own position”(ge an qi wei).Besides,Legalists,Taoism and Mohist also developed their specific thoughts of Responsible Politics.Since modern China,the idea of Responsible Politics got divergence.By contrast,the theory of Responsible Politics in the West and China has distinctive logic.Western thought is that “the right is before the responsibility”,and the Chinese view is that “the responsibility is before the right”.The history of state-building genuinely reflects the development of the pattern of Responsible Politics.In Western state-building,along the timeline from ancient Greece,ancient Rome,feudal society of western Europe,immature and mature modern state,the pattern of Responsible Politics follows the leap from personal relationship to impersonal relationship.Ancient China had two political models that are feudatory system and prefectures and countries system.Therefore,the different political pattern got different Responsible Politics.In Zhou's feudatory system,the model of “family-state” determined that Responsible Politics depends upon the ethic.In the prefectures and countries system,the pattern of Responsible Politics broke the pure ethic.At the same time,there were two dilemmas in the operation of Responsible Politics in ancient China,the conflict between the emperor and premier,and clerk(li)governance.These two problems can offer useful references to contemporary bureaucracy.After the establishment of P.R.China,China has set foot in the path of the modernization of national governance.The responsiblepolitics in China shows new pattern,and becomes an impetus for the modernization of national governance.Comparative study reveals that the western responsible politics pattern is based on social contract,and the responsible politics pattern in Chinese tradition focuses on ethnic contract.Lastly,this dissertation resorts to the analytical framework of sociology,and discusses the path to achieve responsible politics from the perspective of“idea-structure-action”.For idea dimension,responsibility is a habit of heart.The idea is the cause of responsible action,which is a value or cultural element for leading responsible behavior.In political life,the administrator should follow the administrative ethnics.The citizen should regard the public spirit as an idea of responsibility.In human society,the golden rule can be seen as a desirable idea of responsibility.The structure of responsible politics involves three parts that are “distributing responsibility”,“implementing responsibility” and “rectifying responsibility”.Distributing responsibility means how to allocate responsibility amongst different agents.Implementing responsibility emphasizes on how agents fulfil their responsibilities.Rectifying responsibility indicates how to use punishment to hold agents accountable.The action dimension mainly focuses on the activity of agents,which highlights that the agent gives the meaning of responsibility.An interactive network among agents constructs a meaningful relationship of responsibility.Meanwhile,the agent should use reflexity to control the unexpected outcome in the process of responsibility that makes the responsibility match the expectation.To sum up,responsible politics will develop itself according to the era and the state,and the theory of responsible politics remains lots of problems to be studied.This dissertation wants to enrich political theory as initial research.