Contrasting approaches to political engineering: Constitutionalization & democratization
Contrasting approaches to political engineering: Constitutionalization & democratization
复制标题
政治工程的对比方法：宪法化
DOI：
--
复制
发表时间：
2001
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
P. Schmitter
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
P. Schmitter
在过去的25年里，50多个国家试图实现民主化，或者更多的时候是重新民主化，这引发了人们对政治工程的新兴趣，即有目的地努力设计政治机构，以确保随后的民主持续--如果不是蓬勃发展的话。来自不同学科的西方民主国家的学者以前一直致力于解释为什么现有法律和做法是稳定的(而且应该保持稳定)，但他们突然发现自己处于需要改变的背景下。在认为自己的机构，尤其是这些机构的不同起源和轨迹是理所当然的之后，似乎可以公平地说，这些政治学家、律师、经济学家和社会学家中的大多数都没有做好迎接挑战的准备。关于民主、法治、代表制、独立的司法、文官对军队的控制、支持性的政治文化、“受欢迎的”或“议会的”主权、国家认同等等，他们所阐述的理论和他们所接受的范式很少笼统地告诉他们民主是如何产生的。区域专家通过解释为什么他们各自的‘地盘’是独一无二的，不能被期望追随北美和西欧早期‘政治开发商’的轨迹--无论是出于文化“思维定势”还是“世界系统性”经济依赖的原因而谋生。
The attempt to democratize or, more often, to re-democratize over fifty countries in the past twenty-five years has promoted a new interest in ‘political engineering,’ i.e. in purposive efforts to design political institutions in such a way as to ensure the subsequent persistence — if not the flourishing — of democracy. Scholars in Western democracies from various disciplines who previously had dedicated their acumen exclusively to explaining why existing laws and practices were (and should remain) stable, suddenly found themselves in contexts that demanded change. Having taken their own institutions and, especially, the diverse origins and trajectories of these institutions for granted, it seems fair to say that most of these political scientists, lawyers, economists and sociologists were unprepared to meet the challenge. The theories they had elaborated and the paradigms they had settled into told them precious little in generic terms about how democracy, the rule of law, systems of representation, independent judiciaries, civilian control over the military, a supportive political culture, ‘popular’ or ‘parliamentary’ sovereignty, national identity, and so forth had come about. Regional specialists had literally made their living explaining why their respective ‘turfs’ were unique and could not be expected to follow the trajectory of early ‘political developers’ in North America and Western Europe — whether for reasons of cultural “mind-set” or “world systemic” economic dependence.