Researchon Habermas’s Deliberative Democracy Theory

Habermas’theory of consultative democracy (HHCD) is based on the background of late capitalist society; by analyzing crisis of late capitalist society, it tries to subtly adjust capitalist system to realize democratic wills and democratic processes under the precondition of unchanged social system. He believed that the process of realizing rational consensus was the democratic process. HHCD is to reach a consensus by systematic construction of political system.Main contents of HHCD are taken as the object of the study. For the first part, economic, systematic, rational and motivation crises in late capitalist society are analyzed, reasons for the recession and disintegration of public domain are discussed and the historical background of the consultative democracy is systematically introduced; in the second part, the connotations are analyzed by studying basis and major contents of the consultative democracy theory, which is based on the theory of communicative action and is a democratic theory valuing procedures, inclusiveness and inter subjectivity and formed on the basis of critics on literalism and republicanism democracy; HHCD is evaluated in the third part of the paper. There are some limitations, the primary of which is that the target of democracy cannot be realized practically due to the departure from Marxist historical materialism and certain utopianism. The positive significance of the theory lies on that it supplements and improves democratic theory and offers recommendations for rational practices of EU politics. In the last part of the paper, enlightenment of rational parts in HHCD for improving and perfecting China’s construction of socialist consultative democracy is innovatively discussed majorly on issues concerning equality of consultation subjects, cultural cultivation in citizens, extension of political participation, and improvements of socialist consultative democracy system.