The Theory Of Legislation Of Democratic Participation

Legislation is fundamental for a state which is governed by the law. It involves the distribution of interests within a country, which has profound impact on citizens. The fairness of legislation depends to a large extent on the democratic participation which in turn emphasizes communicating and negotiating during the process and persists to fundamental principles such as openness, interaction, tolerance, and respects for the willingness of the public. It plays an important role in guaranteeing the quality of legislation, ensuring the procedural justice, and securing the minority’s legal interests. It therefore is an indispensible mechanism of the rule of law.However, the legislation participation in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is at its early stage. There lacks wide public involvement in the process of legislation. Also there is no mechanism to ensure public participation. Together they have resulted in a lack of interaction between the public and legislators. Along with the deepening of the Reform and Opening Up, the social classes of interests are forming and gradually emerges the diversification of interests. Consequently, it is undeniable that there exist differences among different interests. Therefore, it is important to draw lessons from the theory of pluralist democracy-allowing the existence of differing opinions-which in turn provides channel for expressing different views. Such a channel is just the democratic involvement in legislation. Guiding by the principle of tolerance and debate, there should be an increased width and depth of democratic participation of legislation. Meanwhile, it could enhance the effects of participation and increase the workability of involvement.The civil society is the cradle for the effective functioning of democratic participation of legislation. This is because the civil society concentrates and reflects different opinions and pursuits of different groups of society. It thus catalyzes the "bottom-up" democratic participation of legislation and more significantly, provides the engine for the establishment of the participating mechanism.The civil society of PRC is undergoing a process of forming. It is not yet sophisticated. For this reason, the current public involvement in legislation is facing a dilemma-not only externally there is no mechanism to guarantee the participation, but also internally there are elements to constrain the formation of the civil society. Nonetheless, technically there is still a hope to walk out of the predicament through legal reform and internal normalization.It is noteworthy that the democratic involvement in legislation is not just an issue of legal techniques. Its origin, development, and future are all associated with profound social, economic, and culture background. Correspondently, its challenges would come from the real society and its future development would depend on the future societal change. This paper analyzes the challenges and future of democratic participation of legislation of PRC from three categories:culture traditions and modern individual rationality, state and society, national sate and global governance. It argues that the future of democratic involvement in legislation is bright, although it has to face challenges from many aspects. While the social culture has been undergoing remolding, it meanwhile promotes the democratic participation of legislation.