When deliberative democracy travels to China: an example of cultural exceptionalism

© 2018 Dr. Li-chia LoGlobal interdependence has stimulated the necessity of establishing the conversation between the Western traditions and non-Western traditions. Political concepts developed in one society, for example in the West, may have different implications in another society, such as in non-Western contexts. The meaning of political theory is constantly transformed and show different interpretations from the trajectory that we used to know. One example will be the use of deliberative democracy which is a concept developed from the West. On the one hand, the development of deliberative democracy in China is deeply connected with the contexts of its culture, institution, socio-political traditions, and its local experiment. On the other hand, the adoption of deliberative democracy in China shows signs and conditions of democratization brought by incremental changes due to the cultivation of the deliberative capacity. The duality between the local contexts and the universal trend of democratization constitutes the basic theme of deliberative democracy in China. With the inspiration from Edward Said’s Traveling Theory and Giorgio Agamben’s concepts of exception and example, this dissertation will discuss why and how the development of deliberative democracy in China is heading toward cultural exceptionalism rather than embracing the universalism prescribed in the normative goal of deliberative democracy