Initial Research On Plight Of Democracy In Multi-national State

The wave of global democratization has been coming. However, what is needed for the effective run and due function of democracy? As known to all, the democracy planned by neoteric democratic theorists is grounded with nation-states; and there is a question here, that is, when we are facing kinds of multi-national states now, whether democracy can integrate kinds of interests of national groups with fully functioning itself or not? By using the concept of "democratic plight in a multi-national state", this essay attempts to make out tensions between interests of national groups as well as racial groups and the effective function of cultural identity in a society with kinds of national groups as well as ethnic groups; and in the meantime, make out how important the factor of "nation" is for multi-national developing countries in the process of political development.At first, the essay relatively systematically gets the considerations as well as discussions on the relations between the factor of nation and democracy by scholars home and aboard together, and then points out that the plight of democracy in multi-national states has roots from the contradictions between cultural heterogeneity in a multi-national state and cultural identity needed by a democratic society. The conflict can be found in following three aspects: from the mechanism of running democracy, the principle of majority of democracy conflicted with the interests of ethnic minority; from the cultural psychology, the mechanism of democratic communication conflicted with the differences in languages and cultural identity of nations groups; from the system of country, political integrity conflicted with multiculture. Concretely speaking, the principle of majority might harm interests of ethnic minority, the obstacles between different languages as well as the conflicts brought by cultural identity will block the normal run of democracy, and multiculture...