Study On Vincent Ostrom’s Concept Of Democracy

Vincent Ostrom pioneers a brand-new perspective on the research into democratictheory. He connects the concept of democracy with the civism based onself-governance，viewing the democratic core as a type of art and science concerningwith self-governance. The construction of democratic public order can be realized on thefoundation of deliberation and free choices through enhancing self-governing ability.Only when self-governing civism are motivated and citizens build the cooperation andco-understanding，this democratic society is likely to maintain the vitality that is due for.It is virtual democracy.This paper introduces in detail the theoretical background and realistic backgroundof putting forward concept of democracy by Vincent Ostrom. The democratic societytoday is becoming power-centered and manipulation-centered，which deviate severelyform the nature of democratic society. This crisis enables Vincent Ostrom to reconsiderthe democracy. With careful studies，he finds that an authentic democratic society shouldbe a self-governing one other than a country-dominant one. According to him，in thissociety，people should be equipped with the abilities of getting on well with each other indaily life and possess prominent self-governing competence and social competence.Vincent Ostrom desires to create a truly democratic society by enhancing theself-governing ability of solving the interpersonal problems. This paper also focuses onaccounting for connotation of self-governance，elaborating on the relation betweenself-governance and democracy，analyzing the factors that lead to the fragility ofdemocratic society，and finally coming up with the orientation of how to constructself-governing democratic society. Democracy is expected to work providing that thepoor know how to conduct self-governance and develop reciprocal relation as well asconstructive relation with people around. However，Vincent Ostrom’s concept ofdemocracy shows some limitations. His concept of democracy overly depended on civilsociety，which is prone to splitting the society. Meanwhile，he spared much time to carryout the research into culture tradition of distinct civilizations according to which he putforward various proposals. He concentrates particularly on the democratization progressof China. The analysis about the idea of civil spirit and Confucian culture is likely to provide some crucial reference value for the construction and improvement ofdemocratic order in China.