Tongdong Bai
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780262028431
- eISBN:
- 9780262323628
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262028431.003.0004
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
Rawls in The Law of Peoples argues that decent peoples should be tolerated by liberal peoples, but he offers few considerations about the relative merits of decent peoples to liberal peoples. In this ...
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Rawls in The Law of Peoples argues that decent peoples should be tolerated by liberal peoples, but he offers few considerations about the relative merits of decent peoples to liberal peoples. In this chapter, I discuss some problems with democracy, and argue that Rawls and other liberal democratic thinkers also acknowledge these problems. However, they fail to consider a crucial fact of modern democracies that prevents their internal “cure” of these problems from being effective, namely, the failure of democratic participation. I argue that an imagined decent society, the society of Confu-China, may handle this fact better, and thus may be a more realistic utopia for realizing the ideals shared between Confu-China and a Rawlsian liberal democracy.Less
Rawls in The Law of Peoples argues that decent peoples should be tolerated by liberal peoples, but he offers few considerations about the relative merits of decent peoples to liberal peoples. In this chapter, I discuss some problems with democracy, and argue that Rawls and other liberal democratic thinkers also acknowledge these problems. However, they fail to consider a crucial fact of modern democracies that prevents their internal “cure” of these problems from being effective, namely, the failure of democratic participation. I argue that an imagined decent society, the society of Confu-China, may handle this fact better, and thus may be a more realistic utopia for realizing the ideals shared between Confu-China and a Rawlsian liberal democracy.
Daniel A. Bell
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780691173047
- eISBN:
- 9781400865505
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691173047.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Asian Politics
Westerners tend to divide the political world into “good” democracies and “bad” authoritarian regimes, but the Chinese political model does not fit neatly in either category. Over the past three ...
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Westerners tend to divide the political world into “good” democracies and “bad” authoritarian regimes, but the Chinese political model does not fit neatly in either category. Over the past three decades, China has evolved a political system that can best be described as “political meritocracy.” This book seeks to understand the ideals and the reality of this unique political system. How do the ideals of political meritocracy set the standard for evaluating political progress (and regress) in China? How can China avoid the disadvantages of political meritocracy? And how can political meritocracy best be combined with democracy? This book answers these questions and more. Opening with a critique of “one person, one vote” as a way of choosing top leaders, it argues that Chinese-style political meritocracy can help to remedy the key flaws of electoral democracy. It discusses the advantages and pitfalls of political meritocracy, distinguishes between different ways of combining meritocracy and democracy, and argues that China has evolved a model of democratic meritocracy that is morally desirable and politically stable. It also summarizes and evaluates the “China model”—meritocracy at the top, experimentation in the middle, and democracy at the bottom—and its implications for the rest of the world. The book looks at a political system that not only has had a long history in China, but could prove to be the most important political development of the twenty-first century.Less
Westerners tend to divide the political world into “good” democracies and “bad” authoritarian regimes, but the Chinese political model does not fit neatly in either category. Over the past three decades, China has evolved a political system that can best be described as “political meritocracy.” This book seeks to understand the ideals and the reality of this unique political system. How do the ideals of political meritocracy set the standard for evaluating political progress (and regress) in China? How can China avoid the disadvantages of political meritocracy? And how can political meritocracy best be combined with democracy? This book answers these questions and more. Opening with a critique of “one person, one vote” as a way of choosing top leaders, it argues that Chinese-style political meritocracy can help to remedy the key flaws of electoral democracy. It discusses the advantages and pitfalls of political meritocracy, distinguishes between different ways of combining meritocracy and democracy, and argues that China has evolved a model of democratic meritocracy that is morally desirable and politically stable. It also summarizes and evaluates the “China model”—meritocracy at the top, experimentation in the middle, and democracy at the bottom—and its implications for the rest of the world. The book looks at a political system that not only has had a long history in China, but could prove to be the most important political development of the twenty-first century.
