A Behavioral Study Of The Dilemma Of Participatory Democracy In The West

In the 1950 s and 1960 s,two theoretical paradigms of liberal democracy based on liberalism and democracy and republican democracy emphasizing autonomy,dialogue and public spirit initially formed in the pedigree of western democratic theory.On this basis,the western participatory democracy theory came into being in the 1960 s and1970s.Although the western academic circles try to develop it into an alternative to the liberal democracy theory,up to now,the western participatory democracy under the direct influence of liberal democracy is in deep trouble.Taking modern western democratic theory as the analysis object,this paper attempts to dialectically analyze the logical relationship between western liberal democracy and participatory democracy with the help of praxeological theory,and normative prove the dilemma of participatory democracy under the influence of liberal democracy,and then discuss the enlightenment to the praxeological research of the dilemma of western participatory democracy.Liberal democracy restricts participatory democracy mainly by two micro-factors:firstly,on the assumption of human nature of liberalism,it takes selfish rationality as the assumption,and assumes that actors are governed by self-interest and makes judgments and choices with self-interest rationality;secondly,in terms of operation mechanism of democracy,liberal democracy aggregates the scattered individual preferences in the public choice vote by using specific rules and mechanisms to form public decision-makings.Participatory democracy absorbs the positive elements of liberal democracy,but it cannot completely avoid the constraints of the internal factors of liberal democracy theory.Although it is the core structure of representative system,elections and voting are also the only way of western participatory democracy.Taking voting behavior as the center,starting from the self-interest rationality of liberal democracy and the impact of public choice mechanism on participatory democracy,this paper holds that the dilemma of Western participatory democracy refers to the phenomenon that in Western participatory democracy,the decision-making reached by referendum can not promote democratic development and protect public good because the political participation of actors is driven by private interests rather than public interests.The paper takes Praxeological Research on the Dilemma of Western Participatory Democracy as the title,takes “raising research problems-constructing analysis framework-specific analysis of problems(performance,mechanism and causes)-raising problem countermeasures-conclusion(enlightenment and prospect)” as the research idea,and takes voting as the starting point,it systematically demonstrates the generative logic of failure of participatory democracy under the influence of the selfish rationality of liberal democracy.In addition to the introduction and conclusion,the full text has five chapters: Chapter 1 puts forward and defines the relevant concepts.In describing the concept of democracy,this chapter focuses on the separation of liberal democracy and republican democracy and the rise of participatory democracy,then,combined with the definition of democractic dilemma,it finally makes a scientific definition of the dilemma of participatory democracy based on the context.Chapter 2 constructs the praxeological research framework of dilemma of participatory democracy.Based on the elaboration of the content and essence of praxeological research and the discussion of democracy on the relationship between state,society and citizen,this chapter systematically constructs the basic framework of praxeological research of dilemma of participatory democracy.Chapter 3-4 demonstrates and analyzes the basic principle of the dilemma of participatory democracy.This part puts forward three different dilemmas of participatory democracy: the supremacy of economic interests,the supremacy of spiritual interests and the supremacy of individual prejudice,and further expounds its generation mechanism,causes and governance strategies on the basis of the analysis of the specific manifestations of dilemma of participatory democracy.Chapter 5discusses the enlightenment to the praxeological research of the dilemma of western participatory democracy.Western participatory democracy takes criticizing and perfecting liberal democracy as its important task.The research value of this paper is to systematically explain the possible reasons for western participatory democracy to criticize and attack liberal democracy at the theoretical level.On the research path,this paper takes voting and the behavior relationship between the government,society and citizens in the voting process as the starting point,and demonstrates the performance,mechanism,causes and governance of failure of participatory democracy under the influence of selfish rationality and public choice mechanism of liberal democracy.