Research On Deliberative Dialogue Mechanisms During Local Governance At County Level In Contemporary China

Chinese society has been undergoing profound and complex changes since reforming and opening up and rapid development of socialist market economy. Social stratums and interests have presented a wide range of trends. Society with highly concentrated resources began to disintegrate, and citizens with independent citizenship became the major elements of social structure. When facing with the growing awareness of citizens’ rights and demands of political participation, the county government, who commits to provide high-quality public services to citizens living in this area, should explore the new governance structure in order to meet citizens’requirements, which could be regarded as a source of legitimacy for the county government. In contemporary China, many efficient deliberative approaches, such as deliberative democratic forum, open decision-making, public debate area and deliberation online and so on, have become effective governance tools for county government and improve the rational communication between civil rights and administrative powers.The deliberative democratic theory was developed in Western society in the1980s, and was spread to all over the world within a few decades. The deliberative democratic theorists recognize the social diversity, respect for the citizens’interests, advocate following such principles:equality, openness, accountability, trust and the freedom of speech, and praise highly the better argument. They lay stress on rational deliberation, dialogue and discussion to promise all the citizens involved in deliberation to freely and equally express their opinions, preferences and attitudes, and explain the relative reasons. The public policies or collective decisions should be made through such interactive communication and be recognized by all the participators, which can be regarded as a source of legitimacy for the county government. Similarities exist between the deliberative democratic theory and the deliberative dialogue mechanisms during the process of local governance at the county level:pluralism of participators, equal opportunities for participation, diversified forms for participation, procedural process for participation and legitimacy of decisions. The deliberative democratic theory has provided a theoretical support and deepened the foundation of deliberative dialogue mechanisms.With the tradition of consultation, local governments in China pay attention to respect public opinions and develop various deliberative forums during the process of local governance, which are becoming the institutionalized approaches for citizens to express their interests and requirements. Based on deliberative democratic theory, this paper attempted to analyze the development of deliberative dialogue mechanisms in local governance at county level, which includes the basis, process and effectiveness, to explore the problems and reasons existed in deliberative dialogue mechanisms, and to put forwards the relative suggestions.