Early Confucian concept of Yi (议) and deliberative democracy

• Main Author: TAN, Sor-hoon
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2014
• Subjects: Confucianism; deliberation; Confucian politics; Arts and Humanities
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/2548; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soss_research/article/3805/viewcontent/0090591713515682.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

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.