Publication Type
Journal Article
Version
publishedVersion
Publication Date
2-2014
Abstract
Contributors to the debates about the compatibility of Confucianism anddemocracy and its implications for China’s democratization often adoptdefinitions of democracy that theories of deliberative democracy are criticalof. Attention to deliberative democracy is timely given its importancein democratic discourses and recent experiments in “deliberative” or“consultative” democracy in China. Would Confucian understanding ofpolitical deliberation help or hinder deliberative democracy? This essaycompares the concept of yi in the early Confucian texts with a contemporaryconcept of democratic deliberation. The differences between the concept ofyi in early Confucian texts and the concept of democratic deliberation showthat the presence of deliberation, even when they meet stringent norms,does not guarantee that the politics would be democratic. Rather, thepolitical environment and processes must be democratized for deliberationto be democratic. This comparative study considers how the similaritiesbetween two concepts, and other aspects of Confucian philosophy might bedeployed to close the gap between early Confucian view of ideal governmentand deliberative democracy. At the same time, it does not simply embraceall aspects of the chosen democratic theory, but argues that Confuciandeliberative democracy may differ significantly, for example, in approachingpolitics from the perspective of a comprehensive ethical theory. In doingso, it offers a different conception of deliberative democracy and showshow the chosen theory is limited by certain assumptions specific to its own context and that the understanding of deliberative democracy needs to beexpanded and modified to approach genuine universalism.
Keywords
Confucianism, deliberation, Confucian politics
Discipline
Arts and Humanities
Research Areas
Humanities
Publication
Political Theory
Volume
42
Issue
1
First Page
82
Last Page
105
ISSN
0090-5917
Identifier
10.1177/0090591713515682
Publisher
SAGE Publications (UK and US)
Citation
TAN, Sor-hoon.(2014). Early Confucian concept of Yi (议) and deliberative democracy. Political Theory, 42(1), 82-105.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/2548
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Additional URL
https://doi.org/10.1177/0090591713515682