民主:在经验与规范之间

Democracy:Between Experience and Norms

一些西方学者往往把民主神圣化。其实 ,民主有其规范层面 ,也有其经验层面 ;规范指的是人们对民主的理想追求 ,经验即现实中的民主制度。前者主要从权利出发 ,体现为一种自下而上的民主 ;后者主要是一种权力运作方式 ,体现为一种自上而下的民主。民主发展的逻辑是在规范与经验之间的互动过程中实现的 ,它体现了权力与权力之间的相互制衡 ,权利与权力的相互限制 ,以及民主的自由价值与平等价值之间的特定平衡。分清这两个层面 ,对第三世界国家民主化事业的健康发展十分重要。中国民主化的道路选择受民族国家建设、市场经济发展、社会主义目标选择三重因素制约 ,充分体现了民主发展经验与规范之间互动的复杂性。

Democracy has often been made sacred by some Western scholars. In fact,democracy has two layers,namely the norm layer and the experience layer. Norm refers to people's pursuit of the ideal of democracy,while experience refers to the democratic system in actual life. The former mainly proceeds from rights and is the embodiment of democracy from the bottom up while the latter is mainly a way of operation of power,which is embodied as the democracy from the top down. The law of the development of democracy is based on the interaction between norms and experience. It embodies the mutual power constraint,the mutual restriction of rights and power,and the specific balance between the value of freedom and that of equality of freedom. The distinction of these two layers is of extreme importance for the healthy development of democratization in the third world countries. The course of democratization China has chosen is under the constraint of the triple factors of construction of national country,development of market economy and the goal of socialism. All this fully indicates the complexity of the interaction between the experience and the norm in the course of development of democracy.