论民主困境中的治理变革——读卡蓝默《破碎的民主》

卡蓝默的《破碎的民主》是一本根据20世纪后期社会变迁而思考治理变革的书。阅读这本书,可以看到,管理主义的社会治理模式对近代以来的民主追求造成了冲击,而20世纪后期的机构改革也无法满足新的社会历史条件下的治理要求。因而,必须探讨一种新型的社会治理模式。这种新型的社会治理模式应当是在合作理念下展开的,而不是传统的民主追求的简单重建。     

美国联邦参议院的协商民主及其实践困境

美国联邦参议院从建立之日起就追求精英式协商民主的目标,并曾在一定程度上取得了成功。从正式制度上说,参议院的规模、参议员的任职资格、选举、任期、独立性、职业化以及参议院的立法程序都有利于协商民主理念的贯彻。而谦恭有礼的政治文化和捍卫参议院荣誉的责任感等非正式的惯例与传统也对协商民主起到了促进作用。但是,从20世纪70年代以来,联邦参议院越来越沦为一个党派化的机构,精英式协商民主作为一个制度化的现实也正面临着前所未有的实践困境。     

论民主中的道德表达

作为一种国家形式,也是一种社会生活方式,民主在近现代社会的竞争力源于其价值规范性基础,换言之,现代法治国家的民主制度与理念具有强烈的道德意蕴。就此而言,民主是一个道德范畴。按照目前颇为盛行的民主类型的三分法,如果说自由主义民主所凸显的道德价值是个体的自由权利,共和主义民主所强调的是共同体的团结,那么审议民主所主张的就是在维护个体自由选择权利的前提下,努力以法律的形式来实现团结的价值诉求。     

民主"超女化"与"超女式"民主——自由主义民主与民粹主义民主之辨

晚清以降,中国人对民主("德"先生)的认知不断朝着"民粹化"甚至"圣化"的方向演进,颇似当下的"超女化".民主观念传入中国后,国人自始就对其抱有过高的期望;及至民初"改造代议制"风潮,对民主的推崇演化为更趋激进的民粹主义情绪;毛泽东时代由"人民群众当家作主"发展到"造反有理",最终催生出十年"文革".反思历史上民主的"超女化",辨析自由主义民主与民粹主义民主之别,对正确审视当前所谓的"超女式"民主,或许不无启示.     

党内民主与基层民主

政治体制改革的突破口,上有党内民主,下有社会基层民主。党内民主是全社会民主实践的火车头,起着领导、带动和示范作用;社会基层民主是全社会民主的根本,是民主建设走向纵深的基础。二者各有优势,各有特点,可以形成互为呼应、互为促进之势。政治体制改革的路径有两条:一条是自上而下与自下而上相结合的、自觉的体制内路径;一条是通过市场经济改革所逐步发现的、从不自觉到自觉的体制外路径。政治体制改革的突破口和路径选择,应当是党内民主与基层民主的结合,体制内改革与体制外改革的结合。做好这“两个结合”的大文章,将会有力地推动我国政治体制改革向纵深发展。     

实验社会心理学中的社会困境

社会困境是指个体理性会导致集体非理性这样的情境。大量实证研究考察社会困境中合作行为的机制,然而缺乏系统的理论框架。实验室研究中所用的社会困境可以从4个方面来分类：“给-游戏”与“拿-游戏”、两人困境与多人困境、对称与非对称困境以及重复与非重复困境。综合而言,以往实验研究主要从个体差异、任务结构以及知觉与策略等3个方面考察影响社会困境的因素,这些影响因素可以整合在一个概念框架中。未来的研究尚需要联合多个学科,澄清研究变量之间的关系,并继续丰富相关概念和理论     

论易道与天道、地道、人道合一

通行本《系辞传》有“道”字29个。如:“乾道”、“坤道”、“三极之道”、“天地之道”、“道济天下”、“昼夜之道”、“阴阳之道”、“君子之道”、“道义”、“显道”、“变化之道”、“圣人之道”、“天下之道”、“天之道”、“形上之道”、“日月之道”、“小人之道”、“为道”、“道”、“天道”、“地道”、“人道”、“其道”、“易之道”。我们可以将这些“道”简单地归纳为四类:a、天道:b、地道:c、人道:d、易道天道与地道合而言之曰“天地之道”。天道、地道、人道合而言之曰“三极之道”。     

陈永涛:道成肉身

那"起初原有的生命之道",就是使徒们所听见、所看见、亲眼看过、亲手摸过、道成肉身的上帝之道(参约壹1:1).这道不但太初就有,与上帝同在,而且这道本身就是上帝(参约1∶1).为了让这奥秘的亘古长存的生命之道可以在不同的文化一宗教、社会一政治处境中被听见、被看见、被触摸,这无形无象的生命之道就需要在特定的文化和社会处境中...     

协商民主的路径——公共权力制约的民主选择

协商民主理论主张以沟通、交往的理性实践观来实现公民主体与权力主体的平等交流,强调通过讨论、交流、对话等方式培养交往主体的公共理性精神,实现政治民主.协商民主以理性对话的柔性机制,创新了对公共权力制约的民主形式,符合当代中国政治民主化转型时期社会稳定的需要,可以作为政治民主化改革的重要路径.     

困境中的社区"参与式民主"——基层政府信任与居民参与社区社会政策的困境之思

本研究通过对南京市若干城乡社区的调查与解析,发现由于基层政府信任与居民参与社区社会政策之间存在着矛盾和冲突的困境,使当前充分实现社区"参与式民主"似乎还比较理想化.因此,本研究尝试对形成基层政府信任与居民参与社区政策之间内在矛盾和冲突的深层原因进行反思,期望可以为社区"参与式民主"从虚幻的民主景象走向民主的真实图景提供一些可行性的数据支持和建议.     

Voting in Bad Faith

What is wrong with participating in a democratic decision-making process, and then doing something other than the outcome of the decision? It is often thought that collective decision-making entails being prima facie bound to the outcome of that decision, although little analysis has been done on why that is the case. Conventional perspectives are inadequate to explain its wrongness. I offer a new and more robust analysis on the nature of voting: voting when you will accept the outcome only if the decision goes your way is an act of bad faith: you are not taking part in a ‘process that decides what we will do’. This analysis sheds light on understanding the intrinsic nature of voting and what we are doing when we make decisions collectively.     

The Epistemic Edge of Majority Voting Over Lottery Voting

I aim to explain why majority voting can be assumed to have an epistemic edge over lottery voting. This would provide support for majority voting as the appropriate decision mechanism for deliberative epistemic accounts of democracy. To argue my point, I first recall the usual arguments for majority voting: maximal decisiveness, fairness as anonymity, and minimal decisiveness. I then show how these arguments are over inclusive as they also support lottery voting. I then present a framework to measure accuracy so as to compare the two decision mechanisms. I go over four arguments for lottery voting and three arguments for majority voting that support their respective accuracy. Lottery voting is then shown to have, compared to majority voting, a decreased probability of discrimination. That is, I argue that with lottery voting it is less probable under conditions of normal politics that if the procedure selects X, X is reasonable. I then provide two case scenarios for each voting mechanism that illustrate my point.     

Values and Voting

We examined relations of the 10 types of values in Schwartz's (1992) theory of voting. Hypotheses were generated by relating the core motivations of each value type to the ideological messages conveyed by party policies and symbols. Eight parties that ran in the 1988 Israeli elections were arrayed by judges on three ideological dimensions: classical liberalism, economic egalitarianism, state and religion. Discriminant analyses yielded a function whose coefficients for value types corresponded to hypotheses for the state and religion dimension and ordered party supporters on this dimension. After dropping religious parties, another value-based function ordered party supporters on the classical liberalism dimension, as predicted. Both functions significantly improved the party classification of voters in a representative national sample (N=769). Economic egalitarianism, a nonsalient dimension in Israeli politics, was unrelated to values. Results suggest that all types of values may be politically relevant depending on context.     

The Effects of Mandatory Time Limits in the Voting Booth on Liberal-conservative Voting Patterns

One hundred and forty college students, in either (a) 2-minute time-limit or (b) a no-time-limit condition, voted their conscience on actual pending legislation in their state in a test of hypothesis that such time limits in the voting booth created a stimulus overload situation. Such a situation was expected to result in dysfunctional adaptation responses, with unintended effects on voting patterns. Results indicated that subjects in the time stress condition voted significantly more conservatively on these issues. This conservative shift is interpreted as a function of overload, with serious political implications for urban planners, whose response to increasing population density often has been to increase the tempo by which citizens are processed through the cities'institutional and social services.     

Democracy in Education

The point of departure in this article is the Danish debate about democracyin schools. This article presents a first step in a study of how the relationshipbetween democracy and education can be understood. A juxtaposition of thetwo concepts requires, first of all, an analysis of how the concept of democracyis used in the educational debate. In this article three models of democracy areapplied as an analytical framework: a liberal model (Hobbes, Locke, Kant, Rawls,Dworkin), a communitarian model (MacIntyre, Sandel, Nussbaum) and a communicative/deliberativemodel (Walzer, Benhabib, Taylor, Habermas). Numerous contradictions and tensionsbetween concepts of democracy and education can be found in such a juxtaposition,depending on which conception of democracy one chooses to apply. In this articleI discuss which conception affords us the most meaningful concept of democraticteaching. As an introduction, a brief historical overview of the interplay betweendemocracy and education in Danish school is provided.