The Phantom Public And Elite Democracy:Lippmann’s Political Thought Research

Lippmann who is the 20th century’s greatest news columnist, throughout his life he wrote numerous review articles, left a lot of political work, has a profound influence on American society. This article mainly focus on Lippmann’s public view and democratic theory, to comb and introduction Lippmann’s political thought of the beginning of the 20th century and try to reveal the deep reason of his thought behind. Lippmann reveals the essence of public opinion for us, and defines the public as the ignorant and irrational phantom, which overturns the traditional public image in our minds. Lippmann doubts over the ability of the public, he is aware of the ills of democracy itself subtly, then he triggered the reflection and criticism of traditional democratic theory, which it leaded to the debate on democracy between Lippmann and Dewey. With the advent of the era of mass democracy, Lippmann and Dewey were both aware of the democratic system itself, but their solution was different. Dewey called on more democracy and encouraged the mass to participate in the political life, in order to eliminate the ills of democracy. However, Lippmann had lost faith in the masses, then he advocated the elite democracy. From now on, The information is increasingly diverse in today’s society, we should reflect on the relationship between the news media, democracy and the public deeply.There are five chapters in this article. In chapter one, I introduced the basis of selected topic, research methods and the research status of domestic and foreign academic circles on this issue.Then in the second chapter, I mainly try to introduce Lippmann’s life and its era background in order to grasp the Lippmann’s political thought. Throughout his life, he witnessed the progressive movement, the first world war, the world economic crisis of capitalist, the second world war, the Vietnam war and the cold war and many other major historical events. Lippmann also had experienced from the acceptance of socialism to support the progressive and liberalism, and to choosing conservatism in the end..The second part focuses on the thought source of Lippmann. we can clearly find William James and George Santa,Irving Babbitt and Graham Wallas those affect him. To some extent, their thoughts had a certain influence on the formation of Lippmann’s public view and democratic theory.In the third chapter, I mainly discusses the "phantom" public view of Lippmann’s systematically.In the fourth chapter, on the basis of its public view, I explains the content of the elite democracy and its influence, then introduce the debate of democracy between Lippmann and Dewey and its influence in the early 20th century.I come to my conclusion in the chapter five, I mainly introduces and evaluate Lippmann’s political thought. Lippmann’s elite democracy theory has a profound effect on later generations, and it also plays a huge role in promoting the reform of the American progressive movement at that time. Of course, it also has limitations and deficiencies in Lippmann’s political thought.