Introduction: The Continuing Search for Deliberation and Participation in China

Abstract

Deliberative democracy has deep roots in human history, and something like deliberation can be found in many sorts of societies throughout the world. The enthusiasm for deliberative democracy that began in the 1990s stressed its application within established liberal democracies, spanning structured deliberative forums, informal citizen deliberations in the public sphere, and different stages of public policy formation. However and wherever it was achieved, the core claim was that legitimate collective decision making and policy making depends crucially on the right, opportunity, and capacity of citizens subject to those decisions to be able to participate in meaningful and influential deliberation about the content of those decisions. Given that its conception of democracy is—in the words of Chambers—“talk-centric” rather than “votecentric”, [4] it soon became apparent that the “deliberative turn” in thinking about politics should be able to reach settings such as global politics and societies where elections are not central or even present. Village elections notwithstanding, one such society is contemporary China, [5] and so our topic in this special issue is to take stock of developments in the application to China of deliberative thinking, what is being achieved in practice, and what this says about prospects for the democratization of China. Although historically the theory of deliberative democracy was developed in Western liberal democracies, to ask whether deliberative democracy can travel to other settings, beyond developed Western liberal democracies, is not the right question. It is better to investigate instead the degree to which deliberative practices that can form a basis for democracy can be found in the traditions and practices of particular societies and systems. Democratization understood as the building of deliberative capacity can J OF CHIN POLIT SCI (2014) 19:109–114 DOI 10.1007/s11366-014-9284-4