John Dunn And His Democracy Study

Democracy is the most well-known word in today's political vocabularies. It also dominates political discourse of contemporary world. Being democratic means having the political legitimacy. This thesis is to explore some aspects in John Dunn's studies on democracy in order to reflect on what democracy really means.This thesis is structured five chapters, totaled thirty thousands words.The first chaper, John Dunn and Cambridge School. One side introduce Dunn's learning life and his interrelated bookmaking. on the other side introduce the characteristic of Cambridge School. The second chapter, based on Dunn's narrative of the history of democracy from the ancient Athenian polis to the modern world, this chapter introduce Dunn's intellectual history of democracy, and this chapter is to explore what the journey of democracy would reveal to us and what new understanding we can gain about democracy from its history. The third chapter, in response to the question of why democracy wins, the paper will examine Dunn's compelling rejection and criticism on some popular views and how his provocative answer could further our understanding of democracy. The forth chapter, by introducing Dunn's analysis on four types of democracy, these democracy are capitalist democracy, African democracy, democratic socialism and totalitarian democracy. This chapter wants to examine the relations between different types of democracy and democracy's predominant position today .The fifth chapter, this chapter will evaluate on Dunn's contribution to democracy theory in terms of both theoretical adequacy and practical implication.There are three main goals in this thesis: first, introduce Dunn's intellectual history of democracy. Second, introduce the characteristic of Cambridge School and this characteristic incarnate in Dunn's bookmaking. Third, grasp Dunn's study in practical implication.