多元与共识:中国协商民主的发展趋势

1978年以来的改革开放使中国社会发生了深刻的变化,经济体制转轨和现代化进程的推进也促使中国社会结构发生着巨大的变迁。因此,中国协商民主的发展趋势首先是协商主体的多元化,新的协商主体不断产生和加入协商过程。其次是协商的方式和途径也越来越多,多元化的协商可以更加合理和公平的建立共识,进一步使得国家政策的制定科学化、规范化。     

协商民主概念的提出及其多元认知

协商民主理论研究兴起之后,如何界定协商民主的内涵就成了学术界的研究重点。在毕塞特看来,当初美国立宪者设计的以人民主权原则为基础、以权力分立与相互制约的体制为架构、以定期选举和政党竞争为动力的代议民主体制,就是"协商民主",就是一种深思熟虑的、审慎的、尊重人民主权的民主政治。而曼宁、科恩等学者开始拓展其内涵,将合法性、追求理性自治与公民参与的政治理想赋予协商民主。吉登斯、扬、德雷泽克等学者分别从"对话民主""交往民主"和"话语民主"角度进行了新阐释。协商民主概念经历了一个逐渐丰富和发展的过程。总体上讲,协商民主就是基于人民主权原则和多数原则的现代民主体制,其中,自由平等的公民,以公共利益为共同的价值诉求,通过理性的公共协商,在达成共识的基础上赋予立法和决策以合法性。     

New Developments in Deliberative Democracy

This paper inspects recent theoretical work in deliberative democracy. It identifies three distinct ways in which such theories attempt to justify their claims for an increase in deliberation. Each has its strengths; each has its implications for practice. If the new deliberative theories are to move beyond a critique of liberal democracy in order to articulate a legitimate and practical politics, the respective gains of these three types must be brought together.     

Citizens' Juries and Deliberative Democracy

In the face of widespread dissatisfaction with contemporary democratic practice, there has been a growing interest in theories of deliberative democracy. However theorists have often failed to sufficiently address the question of institutional design. This paper argues that recent experiments with citizens' juries should be of interest to deliberative democrats. The practice of citizens' juries is considered in light of three deliberative democratic criteria: inclusivity, deliberation and citizenship. It is argued that citizens' juries offer important insights into how democratic deliberation could be institutionalized in contemporary political decision-making processes.     

论中国式协商民主的逻辑形成

中国式协商民主就是中国特色社会主义协商民主,是中国共产党历史性创造的成果,它的形成是以深厚的历史文化和思想理论背景为线索的。这一线索蕴含在中国传统文化思想资源之中;蕴含在近代资本主义民主思想的传播和影响之中;更蕴含在马克思主义民主思想的决定性影响之中。可以说,中国式协商民主的形成是由中国传统思想文化的内在影响、西方民主思想传播的历史影响,以及马克思主义协商民主思想的决定性影响等三者共同构成的历史合力作用的结果,并沿着从统一战线到多党合作、从群众路线到人民民主、并在处理和协调不同利益矛盾,以及借鉴和创新等特定发展道路中不断演进的。     

Deliberative Democracy and Social Choice

The paper contrasts the liberal conception of democracy as the aggregation of individual preferences with the deliberative conception of democracy as a process of open discussion leading to an agreed judgement on policy. Social choice theory has identified problems - the arbitrariness of decision rules, vulnerability to strategic voting - which are often held to undermine democratic ideals. Contrary to common opinion, I argue that deliberative democracy is less vulnerable to these difficulties than liberal democracy. The process of discussion tends to produce sets of policy preferences that are 'single peaked'; and within a deliberative setting it may be possible to vary the decision rule according to the nature of the issue to be decided.     

Legitimacy Problems in Deliberative Democracy

The classic accounts of deliberative democracy are also accounts of legitimacy: 'that outcomes are legitimate to the extent they receive reflective assent through participation in authentic deliberation by all those subject to the decision in question' ( Dryzek, 2001 , p. 651). And yet, in complex societies deliberative participation by all those affected by collective decision-making is extremely implausible. There are also legitimacy problems with the demanding procedural requirements which deliberation imposes on participants. Given these problems, deliberative democracy seems unable to deliver legitimate outcomes as it defines them.
Focusing on the problem of scale, this paper offers a tentative solution using representation, a concept which is itself problematic. Along the way, the paper highlights issues with the legitimate role of experts, the different legitimate uses of statistical and electoral representation, and differences between the research and democratic imperatives driving current attempts to put deliberative principles into practice, illustrated with a case from a Leicester health policy debate. While much work remains to be done on exactly how the principles arrived at might be transformed into working institutions, they do offer a means of criticising existing deliberative practice.     

Deliberative Democracy and International Labor Standards

Political theorists have argued that the methods of deliberative democracy can help to meet challenges such as legitimacy, effective governance, and citizen education in local and national contexts. These basic insights can also be applied to problems of international governance such as the formulation, implementation, and monitoring of labor standards. A participatory and deliberative democratic approach to labor standards would push the labor–standards debate into the global public sphere. It would seek to create broad discussion about labor standards that would include not only firms and regulators, but also consumers, nongovernmental organizations, journalists, and others. This discussion could potentially improve (1) the quality of labor standards by incorporating considerations of economic context and firm capability, (2) their implementation by bringing to bear not only state sanctions but also political and market pressures, and (3) the education and understanding of citizens. Whereas the role of public agencies in state–centered approaches is to formulate and enforce labor standards, central authorities in the decentralized–deliberative approach would foster the transparency of workplace practices to spur an inclusive, broad, public conversation about labor standards. To the extent that a substantive consensus around acceptable behavior emerges from that conversation, public power should also enforce those minimum standards.     

The Practice of Deliberative Democracy: Results from Four Large-Scale Trials

The goal of deliberative democracy is to revitalize civic culture, improve the nature of public discourse, and generate the political will necessary to take effective action on pressing problems. While there exists a fairly substantial amount of literature on the desired features of a deliberative democracy, there is little empirical research on the practical feasibility of convening a large-scale public deliberative process.
This article describes a model of deliberative democracy which offers a practical opportunity for all citizens to participate, provides citizens extensive information about the nature of the policy problem, engages citizens in the same problem-solving context as elected officials, and uses rigorous methods. The practical feasibility of this model is assessed through four large-scale implementations, each addressing controversial and politically charged issues in cities ranging in population from 100,000 to 400,000. The conclusion from these trials is that it is possible to convene a large-scale public deliberative process that enables local governments to take effective action on previously intractable issues.     

Fear's Anger: Virginia Woolf's Psychology and Deliberative Democracy

In A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf implicitly addresses the necessary conditions for equal participation in deliberative democracy. Woolf's analysis indicates that proponents of deliberative democracy must be attentive to the angry, unconscious resistance that is part of reasoning in a deliberative system—especially when political deliberation results in a challenge to a person's identity. Woolf's solution for women writers, the material security represented by a room of one's own, can be applied to the larger problem of political deliberation as well. This leads to an expansion of the conception of substantive equality required for a deliberative democracy. Further, Woolf's insight challenges deliberative democrats to de-center capitalist economic relations. As a way of protecting the individual from the psychological dynamic Woolf describes in A Room of One's Own, deliberative democrats should advocate a non-competitive economic space for those threatened by the powerful psychological reactions to deliberation.     

Deliberative Democracy and the Politics of Recognition

It is commonly supposed that deliberative democracy and the politics of recognition are natural allies, as both demand a more inclusive politics. It is argued here that this impression is misleading and that the politics of recognition harbours significant anti-deliberative tendencies. Deliberative politics requires a public sphere which is maximally inclusive of diverse beliefs and perspectives, including those which dissent from orthodox understandings of group indentities. By contrast, the politics of recognition typically seeks to insulate such identities from challenge, both from within and without. Devices such as special group representation, while apparently inclusive, risk incentivising an anti-deliberative culture of deference to identity claims. An alternative model of inclusive politics, which involves a more contestatory political culture and a multiplication of deliberative opportunities, is sketched.     

协商民主研究综述

随着中国社会主义市场经济体制的不断发展和完善,中国社会结构分化日益加剧,新的利益主体的不断涌现,社会不稳定因素增多,凸显出的一些问题与矛盾使得某些现有政治运行体制运作的乏力,日益凸显协商民主的作用.     

网络公共论坛:虚拟空间中的协商民主实践

从逻辑关联看,网络公共论坛与协商民主具有内有内在契合性,它堪称虚拟空间中的协商民主实践.网络公共论坛努力地实践着协商民主的核心理念,它有利于拓展公共参与的空间,扩展公共参与,为公共参与清除时空和代表性等障碍,还有利于打破权威垄断,更能实现参与平等,推动政府官员与公民之间的直接对话.当然,网络公共论坛也是一把"双刃剑",其消极作用也不可忽视.推动网络公共空间中的协商民主茁壮成长、走向成熟是一个相当复杂的系统工程.四个重点问题需要注意:推动互联网建设和网络知识普及;加强网络民主政治的制度建设;构筑社区网络公共论坛;培育参与型政治文化.     

"民主的质和量"与党内民主建设

列宁曾提出过一个对民主建设具有重要意义的观点,这就是关于民主的质和量。民主的质就是民主的阶级规定性,民主的量则是民主的社会实现度;民主的质决定民主的量,而民主的量反过来又可以影响民主的质。因此,有着更高水平特质的党内民主,应该通过量的更大扩张,而不断地得到加强和发扬。     

Moral Pluralism, Political Justification and Deliberative Democracy

We can make progress in political justification if we avoid debates about the extent of moral pluralism. Just by having a political view we are committed to its realization but also to its defence upon justifying grounds. It would be inconsistent to seek to realize my view in ways that undermined my ability to justify it. Yet justifying a view implies that I am open to challenges to it, and that perpetually draws me potentially into dialogue with all others, regardless of my will, and into structures which allow an inclusive dialogue to take place, with decisions being made, on the basis of open public discussion, with which I may disagree. Thus a form of deliberative democracy, probably with representative institutions, is justified, without any normative assumptions being made.     

经由理性通往共识:协商民主的兴起及其局限

二战以来,民主几乎被理解成投票.投票提供了输赢机制,却没有提供旨在发展共识的妥协机制.为了克服以投票为中心的自由民主模式的缺陷,20世纪80年代后西方国家兴起了一股民主理论的慎议转向思潮--协商民主理论.协商民主将民主的过程理解为透过公开讨论和意见交换而形成相互同意的共识,换言之,经由理性而通往共识,正是协商民主的理论内核.在某种意义上,协商民主所具有的独特价值,在于它对偏好、竞争和个体性等与自由民主紧密相连的概念作出了相对不同的诠释.但是,它也存在内在的缺陷,如无法克服规模性、缺乏权力制衡性、成本巨大等,导致它无法脱离竞争性的民主框架而独立存在.通过探讨协商民主的发展渊源、理论内涵和认识论基础,并对其局限性进行分析,以更好地理解和认识这一当代重要的民主思潮.     

Game Theory, Information, and Deliberative Democracy

We contend that, with a suitably broad notion of rationality and a diverse set of motivations, the game-theoretic tradition is particularly well suited for generating insights about effects of deliberative institutions and that progress in the development of deliberative democratic theory hinges on making proper sense of the relationship between game-theoretic and normative theoretic approaches to deliberation. To advance this view, we explore the central methodological issues at the core of that relationship and address the arguments raised against the relevance of game-theoretic work on deliberation. We develop a framework for thinking about the differences in how the normative and the game-theoretic approaches frame and answer questions about deliberation and articulate an approach to a deliberative democratic theory that builds on the strengths of both of these theoretic traditions, properly informed by empirical scholarship.