Three models of democracy : intellectual and moral foundations of liberal democracy and preconditions for its establishment in contemporary China
Date
1993
Authors
He, Baogang
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Abstract
The thesis examines democratic ideas, their political implications and
democratisation in contemporary China. It intends to offer both a map of
the main democratic ideas, the key positions and arguments as well as a
series of critical reflections upon them, and particularly upon liberal ideas of
democracy in China. There are three overriding objectives. The first is to
provide an introduction to, and discussion of, three competing models of
democracy, namely, radical, official and liberal, in contemporary China.
Second, the thesis offers a critical review of liberal ideas of human rights,
evil and proceduralism, and provides a liberal constructive critique of the
intellectual and moral foundations of the Chinese liberal theory of
democracy. The third objective is to analyse carefully the issue of the
practical feasibility of liberal democracy as well as basic problems associated
with Chinese democratization from the aspects of political culture, civil
society and legitimacy.
The whole thesis is organized around the idea that the process of
democratization in China can be seen in terms of both intellectual and
practical activities of planting the democratic "seed" in Chinese "soil".
According to this metaphor, the thesis is divided into three parts to deal
with seed selection, raising seedling and soil amelioration respectively.
Part One deals with seed selection, that is, it will provide political
philosophical and practical justifications for Chinese liberal rejection of both
the radical and Chinese official paternalistic models of democracy, and of
Chinese liberal selection of the liberal "seed" democracy in contemporary
China. Thus, Part One analyzes the variants of democracy and illuminates
why liberal democracy is more attractive than the other models. This is
partly a chronological review of democratic ideas and partly a critical and
comparative analysis of them. It provides a very brief historical background
of, and a detailed theoretical introduction to, each model of democracy.
Part One consists of three chapters. Chapter 1 examines the radical ideas
of populist democracy viewed by Yang Xiguang (1968), Li Yizhe's group
(1974) and Chen Erjin (1976), and shows a shift from the radical to the liberal
model of democracy in the 1980s. Chapter 2 examines Deng Xiaoping's
official paternalistic model of democracy and the liberal critique of that liberal ideas of democracy. Chapter 3 undertakes a full-scale review of how
three contemporary Chinese liberal thinkers, Wei Jingsheng, Hu Ping, and
Yan Jiaqi, view democracy.
Part Two deals with raising seedling, that is, the attempt to raise the
liberal "seed" of democracy by eradicating and overcoming internal tensions
in Chinese liberal ideas of democracy and providing a more coherent
theoretical foundation for the Chinese liberal theory of democracy. Thus,
Part Two offers a detailed critical review of liberal ideas of human rights,
evil and proceduralism or constitutionalism, and discusses a number of the
issues associated with the intellectual and moral foundations of Chinese
liberal theory of democracy. It further explains the decline of the Chinese
Marxist idea of democracy and the rise of the liberal discourse of democracy.
More importantly, it focuses on moral and intellectual foundations for
Chinese liberal democratic theory and for Chinese political institutional
design.
Part Two consists of four chapters. Chapter 4 explores the problem of
the coherence of the Chinese liberals' ideas of human rights by examining
the roles of, and operation of, their ideas of human rights in the process of
realizing those rights. It also attempts to address a set of difficult problems
relating to putting their ideal of human rights into practice in China.
Yan Jiaqi argues that the idea that human beings are potentially evil is
the starting-point for the rule of the law and procedural systems (Yan, 1986c,
1988, 1991a, 54-8). Also Liao Xun (1987, 7) claims that the principle of
preventing evil is a theoretical basis for democracy. Chapter 5 attempts to
describe, discuss and develop this supposition of evil and to provide a
reliable theoretical foundation for the Chinese liberal arguments for
democratic institutional design.
Chapter 6 defends Yan Jiaqi's idea of procedural democracy by dealing
with the difficult question of the problem of the exception, raised by Carl
Schmitt, which challenges the coherence of procedural democracy; it also
undertakes a critique of Schmitt's doctrine of the exception and outlines the
liberal ideas of the exception.
Chapter 7 focuses on creating a solid moral foundation for Chinese
liberal institutional design by discussing what might be called the project of infusing rights-based morality into political institutions. That is, democratic
institutional arrangements require a morality which is characterized by
urgent recognition of the following: equal liberties, institutional protection
of rights and fair procedures. This chapter also examines and rejects a
number of arguments against that project such as the argument of the
independence of politics from morality, the practical argument concerning
the catastrophic consequences of that project and the cultural relativist
argument.
Part Three deals with soil amelioration, that is, it will demonstrate the
existing democratic "soil" in Chinese political culture, social structure and
leadership on the one hand, and investigate the problems associated with
"soil" for Chinese democracy on the other hand. In other words, Part Three
addresses the issue of the feasibility of liberal democracy as well as basic
problems associated with Chinese democratization.
Part Three consists of three chapters. Chapter 8 examines the emergent
democratic cultural conditions under which Chinese liberal ideas of
democracy will develop and prove feasible in China. It also examines a
number of cultural problems posed for the liberals in China.
Chapter 9 studies emergent civil society as a social base for Chinese
democracy. It assesses the positive impact of civil society on the Chinese
democratic movement in 1989. It also explores the dual roles of civil society,
the self-limitations and the problems civil society poses for Chinese
democratization.
Chapter 10 investigates the search for new foundations of legitimacy by
Deng's leadership and examines changes in legitimating techniques in
relation to the move towards democratization in China after 1978, and
particularly since 1989. The central objective is to investigate the
relationship between legitimacy (old and new forms of legitimation) and
democracy in contemporary China. The purposes of this Chapter are (1) to
identify changes in the conceptions of legitimacy, particularly the recent
adjustment of legitimating techniques; (2) to assess the impact of these
changes on the direction of political development by examining the
possibility of playing the democratic card by reformer factions within the CCP; and finally (3) to discuss the limits and the problems associated with
the Party's search for new legitimacy.
I have also included an appendix which critically examines David
Humqe's supposition of knavery in institutional design. This is an extended
discussion of the problem of evil in relation to institutional design
introduced in Chapter 5.
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