Analysis of participatory political culture in modern society
Participatory political culture is the spiritual level of modern democratic politics. Without the establishment of participatory political culture, there will be no development of democratic politics. The following is my collection and analysis of participatory political culture in modern society. I hope you will like it.
Paper keywords: participation; citizen culture; citizenship; China’s participatory political culture
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Thesis abstract: Participatory political culture is gradually formed along with the secularization of political culture. The civic culture that Almond pointed out is the fusion of modern and traditional, Eastern and Western cultures. An ideal soil for participatory political culture. In the tradition of Western civic culture, the pacifist view of citizenship and the liberal view of citizenship present a binary confrontation based on different concepts of freedom. The rise of communitarianism and citizenship theory is in response to the modernization of the liberal view of citizenship. Sexual crisis. Although there is no winner or loser between the two sides in the debate, the ultimate beneficiary is the entire political and cultural theoretical community, and it also provides many useful inspirations for the construction of China's participatory political culture.
Political culture refers to the psychological aspect of politics. According to G. A. Almond’s famous definition: “Political culture is a set of political attitudes, beliefs and feelings popular among a nation in a specific period. The so-called politics Participation refers to the process in which citizens participate extensively in the political life of the country and fully express their wishes. It is an important part of the political life of modern democratic countries, and participatory political culture is the development of political culture, which means that members of society participate in politics. The psychological aspect, that is, people's various psychological attitudes towards political participation in life, they are internalized in the abilities and attributes of political people, that is, the content of human quality in political participation, so it is a potential, Unwritten and implicit culture.
Secularization and participation of political culture
The development of political culture is concentrated in the secularization of political culture and the formation of participatory political culture. Famous Western scholars such as Huntington and Almond summarized the development of political culture as the secularization of political culture, and the basic content of political culture derived from the Marxist subject development theory is generally consistent with the so-called secularization of the original content of political organizations. It is "the most important way for human beings to adapt to the external and internal environment" and is one of the objects created by human beings. Classical virtue politics gives political life the highest moral goal, and theological politics aristocraticizes it. Political life is only the exclusive preserve of a few elites. , and has nothing to do with ordinary people and ordinary people. When society transitions from traditional to modern forms, the "disenchantment" in the political field gradually lifts the mysterious veil over it, and people begin to regard political life as a part of their lifestyle. "Secularization means deep changes in people's worldview, way of thinking, and social role positioning standards. If we say that people in traditional society observe objective things based on general standards, they have a strong sense of belonging. Emotional color, then in the modern society with secularized culture, people can observe things in a clear and neutral way. In the process of evaluating and recruiting social roles, modern secular culture focuses on personal achievements rather than hereditary family status. . The secularization of political culture has also brought about the formation and development of participatory political culture.
Participatory political culture means that citizens begin to regard themselves as the main body of modern political life and actively participate in political life through various channels. They believe in their own political abilities. In traditional societies, individuals are inseparable from the political state. They are components of political society, and most individuals are passive obedients rather than independent individuals. The differentiation of state and society in the capitalist era enables individuals to acquire dual identities in social life and political life. “Political liberation on the one hand turns people into members of civil society and self-interested, independent individuals; on the other hand, it turns people into People become citizens and legal persons.”
The active citizens ("natural political animals") of the classical city-states and republics were eventually replaced by the passive citizens of civil society. B. Constant compared the "political freedom" of ancient Greek and Roman citizens with that of modern citizens. "Personal freedom" is divided into "ancient freedom" and "modern freedom", thus revealing the basic differences between the peaceful civil culture and the liberal civil culture. He pointed out that among ancient people, individuals as citizens were almost always sovereigns in public affairs, but they were slaves in all private relationships; while among modern people, individuals are independent in private life. , but it is only a superficial and limited sovereign in public affairs. Therefore, the freedom of ancient people was aimed at sharing social power among citizens; while the freedom of modern people is aimed at enjoying guaranteed private happiness. 2. Similar distinctions include I. Berlin’s “positive freedom” and “negative freedom,” and J. Habermas’s so-called “public domain autonomy” and “private domain autonomy.” Etc.
Each historical form of civil culture has its own characteristics, and they are each related to the development of economic, political, and social factors in different periods. It is worth noting that ** Libertarian civil culture and liberal civil culture go in two opposite directions on the issue of political participation: the former is based on collectivism and emphasizes the equal and active participation of city-state citizens or aristocratic elites in political life; The latter advocates more freedom from coercion in the private sector and focuses on pluralistic values ??and institutional norms. Therefore, the two do have different special dilemmas. First, they understand "freedom" mainly as "political freedom", that is, citizen participation. Public political life ignores the freedom of private life and the protection of individual rights. The danger is that it engulfs the space of personal life with public political life, that is, the "overpoliticization" of social life; Another dilemma lies in the overprivatization of social life brought about by individualism. Due to the enlargement of the social state, people no longer believe in their ability to influence politics, and their political behavior is manifested as alienation and indifference. Due to business With the development of society, people are more busy in material pursuits and obsessed with rich and gorgeous private lives. As a result, social unity has also suffered a considerable crisis. At the same time, we have to admit the fact that some individuals are not interested in politics by nature. Choosing to stay away, choosing to devote all his life to the rich and colorful private life, Habermas calls this phenomenon "a symptom of the privatization of citizenship." Because individuals have gained the freedom to decide what attitude to take towards political life, " They are not necessarily political animals. Even if they live in a society, they do not need to care about the politics of this society, actively participate in political life, or cherish the political system and values ??of the society."
Challenges of Communitarianism and Citizenship Theory
The rise of contemporary communitarianism is a response to liberalism’s public crisis. It is often called "the most vicious crisis of liberalism." Enemies". Their central thesis is that the value of homogeneity has not been fully recognized in various liberal theories of justice or in the public culture of liberal societies. They believe that even if the right **Consideration of the same entity is placed before freedom and equality, and it is necessary to pay equal attention to it. Liberalism has also responded to this in two ways: one is Rawls's political liberalism, which itself is a belief in autonomy. The other is liberal nationalism, which hopes to maintain citizen participation and national unity through the construction of a common national identity and national language. Participatory democracy is dedicated to deliberating differences. (that is, one of the active forms of political participation) to build new bonds of social solidarity and reconstruct participatory political culture. It can be seen that the participation crisis in contemporary society is indeed a major topic worthy of our attention, and it is also a challenge that all political theories must face up to.
Communitarianism is actually the echo of the active citizen tradition of pacifism in the contemporary world.
On the issue of political participation, the differences between communitarianism and liberalism still linger within the binary framework of the communist view of civil culture and the liberal view of civil culture. One emphasizes active political participation, and the other protects Freedom of private life. Communitarianism has been trying to argue that liberal individualism can no longer explain or maintain the boundaries of social sympathy, social identity, and any viable political community. However, this has not only failed to break out, but has only strengthened the negativity. The binary confrontation between citizens and active citizens is just an attempt to explain the inability of liberalism’s individualistic-based view of citizenship to maintain the boundaries required for political empathy, political identity, and any viable political community. So, is the relationship between the two kinds of freedom either/or?
Regarding the relationship between political freedom and personal freedom, Constant said that during the French Revolution, the enthusiasm for political participation of citizens increased initially to that of everyone later. Analyzing the situation of aversion to politics, he emphasized: First, the freedom of private life must be guaranteed by political freedom. If citizens do not participate in politics and thus give up effective restrictions on public power, then in the final analysis there will be no freedom of private life. Guaranteed; secondly, the great quality of a nation can only be developed when its citizens fully participate in the exercise of political power, because political freedom expands people’s spiritual realm, improves people’s ideological level, and shapes a collective intellectual quality of the country’s citizens And laid the foundation for the glory and prosperity of the nation. Therefore, the so-called freedom of private life and freedom of political participation are by no means an either-or relationship in Constant's view. The important thing is to learn to combine the two freedoms.
The recent emergence of citizenship theory is based on the opposition between individualism and communitarian collectivism that transcends liberalism, and attempts to combine the justice requirements of liberalism with the requirements of community membership. In order to overcome the "symptoms of privatization of citizens", the two major camps within the civil political system: "Aristotelian political parties" firmly believe that political participation itself is inherently value, thereby devaluing the value of private life, but this view is difficult to accept by most people; the other camp admits that many people have an inherent lack of interest in politics to varying degrees, so the requirements for active citizenship should be limited in order to Accommodating those different views on good life, they regard the various basic moral qualities required for political participation as instrumental means to maintain a just system. They demand a fair life in society and support the norms of equality in civil society. They all embody the fundamental values ??of liberalism and are committed to seeking the seedbed for cultivating citizens' moral character, such as the market, voluntary institutions of civil society, families, schools, etc.
The adoption of citizenship and citizenship, and citizenship. "The concept attempts to integrate liberalism's requirements for justice and the requirements for community membership. This is also a synthesis and transcendence of the two views on citizenship. They see that the health and stability of modern democracies depend not only on basic institutions and justice, but also on the quality and attitudes of democratic citizens—for example, their commitment to promoting public interests and holding political authorities accountable. The desire to participate in political activities, etc. Without the support of citizens with these qualities, democracy will falter or even falter. As Habermas said, such a constitutional system can only be valuable if it is supported by the people.
Constructing China’s participatory political culture
Since the reform and opening up, with the evolution of China’s marketization and democratization, people’s political concepts and behaviors have undergone profound changes. Citizens' self-awareness is constantly increasing, and the awareness of self-worth realization is combined with the traditional awareness of bottom-up development of the nation as a whole, gradually enhancing the sense of historical mission, social responsibility, and ownership, and paying more attention to the interests of the country and the people, as well as politics. Actively engaging in reform has formed a new pattern of political participation unprecedented since the founding of the People's Republic of China. Modern China's political culture basically reflects the participatory trend in the development of world political culture.
That is to say, they respect politics, advocate politics, and give positive value evaluation to politics, but at the same time avoid politics, are unwilling to participate in politics, or adopt a non-serious and perfunctory attitude when they have to participate. "Respect" is mainly because the Chinese people have always believed in "good nature" and their "original belief" in politics is to regard it as a noble cause of managing the country and serving the people. However, on specific issues, they tend to associate political participation with The immediate material interests are separated from each other, so they often adopt a "far away" behavior, which reflects an ethical view of political participation, which is different from the Western utilitarian view of political participation: Although Western political culture is based on the "distant" view of human nature, "Dark Consciousness", and then regard politics as sinful and dirty, but out of self-interest considerations, they often actively participate in it, and even take various measures to prevent rulers from putting their improper intentions into practice. The basic political attitudes of Chinese citizens have resulted in the polarization of political participation behavior: one pole is enthusiastic participation in extraordinary times, and the other pole is indifferent participation in normal times.
Modern political science theory shows that the operation of a stable democratic system requires neither fanatical participation nor participation indifference: it requires a calm, controlled, and institutionalized participation attitude. This ideal participatory attitude does not come from the traditional Chinese culture with "promoting good" as its core, which has an overly optimistic and idealistic estimate of human nature, too much trust in the government but insufficient supervision; nor does it come from the typical "suppressing evil" ” is the core of Western culture, its understanding of human nature is full of “dark consciousness”, and it has more than enough doubts about the government but not enough trust. The ideal soil for cultivating citizen participation should be the combination of Eastern and Western cultures - civic culture. At the same time, political participation is also closely related to the political quality of citizens, which is also what recent citizenship theories emphasize. The average score of the "Chinese "Political Man"" survey on the political quality of Chinese citizens is 3.3 points (out of 10 points), which is much lower than the standard of 5.5 points for the quality of citizens in democratic countries. Moreover, different social classes and different education levels Levels and other reasons have led to large differences in the political quality of citizens. This has further increased the complexity of the situation. It can be seen that we still have a long and difficult road ahead.
In addition, participatory political culture is also mainly related to my country's political, economic, cultural and mass media conditions, as well as social transformation, education level, the introduction of Western ideas, geographical conditions and personal personality and temperament. For example, our economic development is relatively backward and quite unbalanced, and our political system lacks specific implementation projects, etc. Therefore, to eliminate the negative constraints on the shaping of a participatory political culture, we need to coordinate the development of economics, politics and other aspects, pay attention to the synergistic effect of political socialization on participatory political culture, and cultivate modern people with basic attributes such as rationality, participation, and openness. Citizens and modern people.
Expansion: The connotation and characteristics of participatory political culture
Participatory political culture is the book "Citizen Culture" published by American political scientists Almond and Furba in 1963 The concept proposed in later became an important concept in political science and was widely used. Almond and Furba used the standard of the public's cognition, emotion and attitude orientation towards the social political system, political system, political authority and their role in the decision-making and implementation of the system, and classified the existence in social and political life. Political culture is divided into three types: (1) Participatory political culture, also known as civic culture, refers to the fact that members of society have a strong and clear understanding of the political system as a whole and the input and output aspects of the system. Emotions and value orientations, and have a positive understanding and high evaluation of one's rights, abilities, responsibilities as a member of the political system, and the effectiveness of political behavior.
"Democracy", "rule of law", "freedom", "equality", "human rights", etc. are values ??that are universally respected in modern political life and are the achievements of mankind's advanced political understanding. Only when the public correctly understands, firmly establishes and effectively practices these values ??can we promote the construction of political civilization and the development of democratic politics. ;