Link Of Expansion And Orderliness: A Study On Chinese Citizens' Political Participation In The New Era

Political participation is a political activity in which citizens, through certain means, directly or indirectly influence governmental design-making and governmental activities. It is a concrete expression of"The people are the masters", as well as the essential requirement of"All the power belongs to the people". In China, since the implementation of Reform and Opening up, particularly since the new millennium, along with the remarkable economic and social achievements, the practice and theoretical research on civic political participation have also achieved rapid development, presenting new characteristics.With the requirement of the new era on expanding orderly civic political participation as its background, this thesis probes into the political participation of Chinese citizens in the new era, taking a combination of Western political participation thought, proletarian political participation view created by the Paris Commune and Huntington's political participation module on contemporary developing countries as its theoretical basis, as well as the practice on the subject, object and form of political participation in the process towards expansion and orderliness as its practical basis. In this thesis, the author summarizes three indispensable requirements on the development of civic political participation as"legalization","moderateness"and"progressiveness", arguing that legalization is the yardstick of political participation, moderateness gives the objective range for civic influence on governmental decision-making and progressiveness is the practical choice under the dilemma of political participation. Only when these three requirements are met can political participation develop coordinately in the interaction between expansion and orderliness. Finally, the author puts forward four expectations on the practice of civic political participation: (1) as the "Suppliers" and "producer" of political participation in contemporary China, political elites should fully display their"Cascading Effect"in directing the road of political participation;(2) as the widest practical area of political participation, the autonomous grassroots should guide citizens to fully exercise democratic rights, and gradually foster and improve their political participation ability, so as to lay a solid practical foundation for the expansion of orderly political participation;(3) actively cultivate participant-oriented political cultural so as to create a sound political order and political atmosphere for the reconstruction and upgrading of major conditions for political participation; and (4) vigorously promote the network construction of horizontal connections of social capital, with the development of social groups as the starting point, so as to provide "public goods" for the interaction between citizens and the government in political participation.