Comparative Study On Benjamin Barber And Giovanni Sartori's Thoughts Of Democracy

Democracy is an ancient topic in the study of politics.Since modern times,theory of democracy has gradually become one of the core issues of political theory.Among many theories of democracy,liberal democratic theory is a mainstream theory of western discourse which dominates the modern interpretation of democracy.In the middle and late 20 th century,the shortcomings of liberal democratic politics were exposed day by day.The mainstream position of liberal democratic theory has also been challenged.In order to deal with the crisis of theory and practice faced by liberal democracy,western academic circles have reconsidered democracy.In 1984,Benjamin Barber put forward the strong democracy theory in an attempt to transcend the liberal democracy theory.He called participation to remedy the defects of liberal democracy.Strong democracy theory pushed the development of participatory democracy theory to its peak.In 1987,Giovanni Sartori published the Theory of Democracy Revisited.He cleaned up the concept of democracy in an all-round way.He urged that modern democracy must be liberal democracy and hoped to restore the mainstream position of liberal democracy theory in western democratic theory.Barber and Sartori's thoughts of democracy represent different trends in the development of democratic theory under the specific realistic background.The comparative study of the two democratic theories is a contrastive study of the development of modern western democracy.It can provide a good perspective for us to study democracy.This paper attempts to sort out a clear framework to make a comparative study on Barber and Sartori's thoughts of democracy from the aspects of realistic background,outline of thoughts,comparison of similarities and differences,and analysis of the reasons,and then ponder over the future development trend of western democracy.The basic ideas of this paper as follows: The first is to comb Barber and Sartori's thoughts of democracy,paving the way for further comparing their thoughts of democracy.The second is to find the similarities between Barber and Sartori's thoughts of democracyfrom the time duty and the logic premise.The third is to compare and differences between Barber and Sartori's thoughts of democracy from the value orientation,the democratic subject,the scope of democracy,the way of the realization of democracy,and to explore the reasons for the differences.Finally,on this basis,we ponder the reasons for differences and the future development of modern western democratic theory and practice.By studying and comparing Barber and Sartori's thoughts of democracy,we can see they originated in a specific context of the times and have the same duty of times.Facing the crisis of theory and practice encountered by liberal democracy,Barber and Sartori put forward their own democratic ideas with high sense of responsibility and mission.Barber's strong democracy theory tries to transcend the liberal democratic theory.Strong democracy is a kind of "participatory politics as a way of living",with citizen,participation,and community as the core elements.Citizens form political judgment in the process of political discussion,and make public decision.Finally they work and act together to transform conflict into cooperation and achieve public will.On the other hand,Sartori tries to reconstruct the liberal democratic theory and makes a clear definition of democracy from the descriptive,normative and contrastive view.He argues the competition-feedback system can remedy the defect of representative democracy and offer a good prescription for liberal democracy.Furthermore,the logical premise of Barber and Sartori's thoughts of democracy is that politics precede over economy.They emphasize that political democracy has priority over economic democracy.At the same time,there are many differences in their thoughts of democracy.In the aspect of value orientation,Barber emphasizes democracy but Sartori advocates freedom;on the understanding of the subject of democracy,Barber emphasizes citizens but Sartori advocates elite;in terms of the scope of democracy,Sartori limits democracy to the macro-political sphere,while Barber extends democratic spectrum from the national politics to the social neighborhood;in the way of realizing democracy,Barber emphasizes participation and self-government,while Sartori advocates meritocracy.Exploring the reasons for the differences between the two thoughts,the author thinks that the foundation of their thoughts of democracy is on the basis of different philosophies.Sartori's democratic thought is based on liberal political philosophy,while Barber's strong democracy criticizes liberal philosophy and constructs a new philosophical system.In addition,Barber and Sartori's life experience and social environment also had a great influence on their thoughts of democracy.Barber saw the advantages of direct democracy while studying in Switzerland,and therefore preferred citizen participation;When Sartori was a teenager,he lived under the dark rule of fascism,so he tried to find a "solid rather than advanced" democracy.Barber lived in the United States for a long time.He had an in-depth observation and understanding of the national political and neighborhood life of the United States.So the strong democracy theory extends to the neighborhood;Sartori lived in Italy,where politics was unstable after the war.And in the cold-war atmosphere,Sartori was full of longing for American-style democracy.So he firmly defends the liberal democracy.Barber and Sartori's thoughts of democracy enrich the western democratic theory.While affirming their contributions to the development of western democratic theory,we should also see the deficiency and limitation of their thoughts of democracy.Combined with the comparison of Barber and Sartori's thoughts of democracy,we can ponder over the development of western democratic theory and practice from a new perspective.Neither the western democratic theory nor the democratic practice should be seen in a rigid and rigid way of thinking,but a more cautious and open attitude should be taken.Modern democratic theory should defend the freedom,justice,virtue and development of mankind,and it needs to inherit,reflect on,create and transcend.Western democratic politics also needs to be perfected and developed in the aspects of democratic ideal and practice,citizen participation,local self-government and so on.