On The Patterns Of China’s Present Deliberative Democracv At The Grassroots Level

The theory of deliberative democracy, a new pattern of discourse democracy, started drawing attention among western countries in 1980s. It advocates a rational negotiation process through which citizens with equality and freedom can find common interests, change their preference, and finally reach a consensus. The core value in this theory is quite consistent with the goals of grassroots governance development in China. Therefore, introducing the patterns of deliberative democracy to China and putting it into the practices of grassroots governance are both necessary and feasible.China’s deliberative democracy is multilevel and multiform, which combines deliberations in and between parties, governments, people’s organizations and social organizations and at the grassroots level and so on. Among those forms of democracy, deliberative democracy at the grassroots level is the key link that differentiates it from the other forms. Its importance is reflected in three aspects:social governance, power supervision and scientific decision. Chengdu has established the Villagers Council and Yuhang District has carried out the democratic deliberations meeting at the subdistrict level. These two examples both gather wider experiences for the development of China’s practices of grassroots deliberative democracy. They also provide explanatory power and evidences proving that the theory of deliberative democracy can actually be applied to the grassroots level in China.At present, the most popular patterns of grassroots deliberative democracy in China are democratic decision-making pattern and democratic management pattern. The main difference between them is that democratic decision-making pattern requires local governments to have a certain degree of public policy decision-making power while democratic management pattern does not. On one hand, these two patterns both have the philosophy of deliberative democracy permeated common people and resolved contradictions between different stakeholders. Also they have improved government appearance and enhanced the social cohesion. However, on the other hand, the practices of grassroots deliberative democracy have been facing many problems, as well as theoretical, policy and operational predicaments. Therefore, we should summarize the core contents of the deliberative democracy theory and take measures as below: increasing systems supply of deliberative democracy, paying attention to endogenous development of grassroots deliberations, developing common people’s senses and abilities of deliberations, optimizing the technological means of deliberations, guaranteeing the public space for deliberations and encouraging folk think tanks to participate in deliberations. So it can truly reflect the strengths and functions of deliberative democracy at the grassroots level.