Political Order 1: the Basics
- Jia Han
- Mar 2, 2024
- 3 min read
Jia Liang Han
The VOA published a recent interview of 刘军宁 about China’s political future [1]. I was asked to comment on it. 刘军宁 is a well-known Chinese scholar. Until now, I have not seriously considered any Mainland Chinese political scholars. The level of Mainland social sciences and philosophy is very low. (If you know Chinese, you might want to read [2,3].) Because of the request, I did watch the whole interview. Dr. Liu is better than most Chinese scholars. He did identify some key problems, for example, the successful path to liberal democracy was through the British-American approach while the French, Germany path led to violence and destruction. More serious problem, however, is that Liu, like most intellectuals, thinks that democratization is not too difficult. This is utterly false. In fact, I do not think most scholars in the world, past or present, have solved this problem. Any research I have seen so far only scratches the surface. I write this to outline the problems. Hope this will encourage people to learn the basics and carry out further research. Afterall, the American model of democracy was gradually developed. Most of the Founding Fathers wanted republic not democracy.
First, let us clarify some key terminology. China’s political discourse often uses the term political system. In Western academia, political order is used instead. (Political order is better because the political system is vague.) Also, the term nation-state (shorthand nation) refers to a modern political order. Nation-states appear after American Independence or the French Revolution. Thus, a nation-state is different from an ancient nation.
The base of our discussion is Fukuyama’s two volumes on political order [4,5]. These two volumes cover the history of the political order of many nations, including China. It is for senior/1st year graduate students majoring in political science. This level is high (I have yet to find one Chinese scholar/professor who knows these books well. I cannot rule out that such a scholar exists in China but does not speak out or write because of the political environment. …)
How to appraise a political order depends on criteria used. One may consider material wealth, people happiness, equality of wealth, justice, etc. One influential measurement is freedom, which was proposed by Hegel [6,7]. His idea is that more advanced society generally gives more freedom to its citizens. From Hegel’s work, Karl Marx proposed so called historical materialism (历史唯物主义). Fukuyama proposed the End of History hypothesis [8], which is based on Alexandre Kojève’s interpretation of Hegel’s philosophy. There are other variations.
Many years ago I believed Fukuyama’s End of History hypothesis. My question was how to transform China into a liberal democracy. For a few years, democratic transformation was my focus. To my surprise, there is little literature concerning democratic transformation in civilizations other than Christianity. This was why I wrote several short essays [9-12]. [13] is a brief account of democratic transition in current mainstream literature (based on several chapters in [5]).
I made a summary of Steven Smith’s Political Philosophy [14,15]. Note the diagram drawn in [15]. It shows how political philosophy evolved in time since ancient Greek. Liberal democracy got inputs from all these great philosophers. Note also E Kant and Hegel are not included in the book. In the future I will explain why all these are wrong, or at least need significant revisions.
References:
韩家亮：大陆人的哲学和社科问题 http://hx.cnd.org/?p=154740
韩家亮：怎样学习哲学的建议 http://hx.cnd.org/?p=154591
Francis Fukuyama, "The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution,"Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011. (A nation-state may be considered modern if strong, rule of law, and accountable (国家建设、法治、负责制——政治发展三大组件)
Francis Fukuyama, "Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy," Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014.
Peter Singer, “Hegel: A Very Short Introduction,” Oxford University Press; Revised ed., 2001.
Francis Fukuyama, "The End of History and the Last Man," Free Press, February, 2006.
韩家亮：民主与中华文明 http://hx.cnd.org/?p=20179
韩家亮：民主为什么扩展？http://chinainperspective.com/ArtShow.aspx?AID=171769
Steven B. Smith, "Political Philosophy," Yale University Press, 2012.
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