Research On The Discursive Democracy Theory Of Dryzek

Democracy is the political ideal that people assiduously seek all the time; but as the development of globalization and the formation of highly reflective society, representative democracy, the most important modern democratic form, gradually shows its disadvantage rooted in its own limitations. To remedy this disadvantage, democracy theory turns to deliberation and puts emphasis on eliminating conflicts through discourses and discussions among liberal, equal individual citizens to seek a policy which can meet the aspirations of all citizens. Deliberative democracy as the renascent democracy theory and practice form enters a new development stage. After his inductions and analyses of previous theories on deliberative democracy, John S. Dryzek, a professor of political science at the Australian national university argues that deliberative democracy’rescues’election democracy; deliberative democracy contains two schemes:liberal constitutionalism thought and criticism thought, though both of these two thoughts have great limitations. He proposed a specific analysis approach of deliberative democracy theory based on his critiques of the two thoughts.The turn of democracy to deliberation must involves communication, and communication may exists in all kinds of layers, such as local layer, national layer, international layer, and even the layer beyond the boundary of human and nature. According to Dryzek’s analysis, the current deliberative democracy of liberal constitutionalism thought refers to the application/utilization of public authority, and it regards liberalism state organs,especially legislature and court as its end result, so discursive democracy has more university. What’s more important is that Dryzek finds that discursive democracy theory can be combined with the democratic forms carried by Chinese local layer organizations like consulting conference, talkfest, hearings, etc. During the constructive process of democratic politics, the construction of political civilization that Chinese government promos vigorously now will provide vital implications to other democracy theories.Firstly the author introduces the background that Dryzek put forward deliberative democracy theory, that is, the decadency of representative democracy and the critiques on disadvantages of the two western deliberative democracy thoughts; then the author responds to questions from social choice theorists and differences democratic theorists and further hackles the system frame of Dryzek’s discursive democracy theory, targets and manifestation fields for instance. Lastly, the author analyzes and evaluates the contributions and defects of Dryzek’s discursive democracy theory, and also explores the implications and help of discursive democracy theory to Chinese democracy construction.