Getting Past Democracy
Getting Past Democracy
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超越民主
DOI：
10.2139/ssrn.234178
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发表时间：
2000
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
E. Rubin
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
E. Rubin
如今，人人都相信民主;尽管关于这个主题的文献数量庞大，而且还在不断增加，但所有的讨论都是在这个广阔的概念范围内进行的。然而，对这些文献的考察表明，这一概念从未完全摆脱它与直接民主的联系，这种联系可以追溯到这一术语的起源，并在整个西方历史上一直持续到世纪。自由主义理论、精英理论、多元主义理论和协商民主理论都证明了这种联系。因此，民主的概念无法描述在西方六、七个世纪的历史中发展起来的代议制政府，尤其无法描述现代的行政政府，在现代政府中，大多数决策不是由民选代表做出的，当然也不是由人民大会做出的。这篇文章建议我们把民主这个词放在一边，作为一个思想实验，并试图用其他术语来描述我们目前的政府。它所展示的政府形象是一个在政治（立法机关或行政首长和立法机关）和行政一级与各阶层民众积极互动的系统。这些互动包括政治层面的选举（其主要目的只是为了解决继承问题）以及各级的游说、协商和其他各种活动。这篇文章提出，如果我们关注这种互动的形象，并将自己从民主概念不可避免地产生的不相关或过时的联想中解放出来，我们不仅可以更准确地描述我们的政府，而且还能够为其改进制定更好的处方。
Everyone believes in democracy these days; although there is a vast and growing literature on the subject, all discussion occurs within the boundaries of this capacious concept. An examination of this literature, however, reveals that the concept has never quite escaped from its association with direct democracy, an association which goes back to the origin of the term, and continued throughout Western history until the nineteenth century. Liberal theory, elite theory, pluralist theory and deliberative democratic theory all bear evidence of this association. As a result, the concept of democracy fails to describe the representative governments that developed over six or seven centuries of Western history, and particularly fails to describe modern administrative government, where most decisions are not made by elected representatives, and certainly not by an assembly of the people. This article suggests that we set the term democracy aside, as a thought experiment, and try to describe our current government in other terms. It presents an image of government as a system engaged in active interaction with various segments of the populace at both the political (legislature or chief executive and legislature) and the administrative level. These interactions involve elections at the political level (whose primary purpose is simply to solve the problem of succession) and lobbying, consultation, and various other activities at all levels. The article suggests that we will not only describe our government more accurately, but also be able to frame better prescriptions for its improvement, if we focus on this interactive image, and free ourselves from the irrelevant or outmoded associations that the concept of democracy inevitably engenders.