当代西方民主的基础与危机——右翼民粹主义与多元文化主义对抗的政治冲击

Foundation and crisis of contemporary western democracy: The political impact of the confrontation between right-wing populism and multiculturalism

从现代国家构建历程来看,当代西方民主有效塑造合法性需要三重基础:一是从传统地域国家过渡到民族国家,二是从身份社会演化为市民社会,三是在大众崛起背景下将代议制民主改造为选举民主。随着民权运动的发展,蕴于个人自由的多元主义分化为价值多元论和多元文化主义,前者主张普遍平等的个人权利,后者则追求对不同文化群体成员的差异化对待。西方的繁荣和进步助长了多元文化主义的蔓延,使保护少数文化群体成为“政治正确”。当繁荣不再,政治正确也就成为逆向歧视,因而右翼民粹主义强势崛起。右翼民粹主义与多元文化主义的对抗将权利政治重塑为身份政治,威胁着作为现代性基础的理性化个人假设,也就侵蚀着民主有效运行的基础,使西方民主体制陷入危机。

In terms of the construction process of modern states, it needs three foundations for contemporary western democracy to effectively shape political legitimacy: the first is the transformation from traditional geographic country to nation-state;the second is the evolution from status society to civil society;the third is the change from representative democracy to electoral democracy under the background of the rise of the masses. With the development of the civil rights movement, the pluralism which stems from individual freedom has been divided into value pluralism and multiculturalism. The former advocates universal equal individual rights, while the latter pursues differential treatment to members of different cultural groups. The prosperity and progress of the western world have encouraged the spread of multiculturalism and made the protection of cultural minorities the political correctness. But when prosperity ceases, the political correctness becomes reverse discrimination and right-wing populism thrives. The confrontation between right-wing populism and multiculturalism reshapes the rights politics into the identity politics, and threatens the hypothesis of rationalized individual as the basis of modernity, hence eroding the foundations of effective democracy and engendering the democratic system into crisis.