Pettit's Theory Of Republican Democracy

In the late 20th century, "the revival of republicanism" movement is burgeoning. The relevant theories start the ascendant at all levels of history, theory and practice. And Philip Pettit is precisely to serve as a typical representative and important standard-bearer of the new republicanism, and has worked for more than a decade to take the revival of republicanism as a basis for contemporary political philosophy.In his opinion, the new republicanism is firstly a theory of freedom, followed by the other ethical demands such as justice, the community and welfare. Meeting these demands is only to serve the ideal of republican freedom. His great contribution is that he has put forward "a third concept of freedom" or a conception of "freedom as non-domination" as the core of the new republicanism, which is beyond Berlin's distinction between "two kinds of freedom". A conception of "freedom as non-domination" holds the idea that we should design social and political system to prevent state and government from becoming the dominant existence of the people's life. One of its basic aims is to establish a successful democratic system of the Republic, and to conceive ideal forms of the democratic system. The conception of contestatory democracy and a model of condominium government as non-domination are used as a defending instrument by Pettit. He hopes that the citizens can share the effective and equal power of social control by two kinds of prudent and normative democratic forms such as debated consensus and condominium rationality.In specific methods of research, this paper mainly takes a way of comparative analysis, and adheres to combining the theoretical analysis and the historical retrospective study. Pettit always takes a comparative analysis of the similarities and differences between new republicanism and mainstream liberalism, by describing and analyzing his theory of republican democracy and related topics.In the basic framework and structure, firstly, it tries to show the content and substance of Pettit's conception of "freedom as non-domination", by comparing three pairs of conceptions on the interference and non-interference, domination and non-domination, positive liberty and negative liberty; Secondly, on the basis of "freedom as non-domination", to create a new kind of contestatory democracy and a condominium model of government as non-domination, as well as their applicability in the context of the multi-culture and cultural differences; Thirdly, it reveals the main differences between Pettit's republican democracy and liberal democracy, and describes how Pettit's republican democracy is beyond the liberal democracy; Finally, it will discuss the significance, defects and especially inspiration of Pettit's theory of republican democracy for contemporary China.