On Iris Marion Young’s Inclusive Democracy

Iris Marion Young’s thought on democracy originated from the observation of the contradictions and conflicts in Western society,especially in the United States,since the 1970 s,as well as the dialogue with the emerging feminist trend of thought,the liberal distributive justice debate and the theory of deliberative democracy.Her idea about democracy becomes mature after reflecting on the root causes,processes,and aggregated democratic theories of structural inequality,as well as traditional consultative democratic theories.Young points out that hierarchical division of labor,being the root cause of structural inequality,leads to formal democracy issues in politics.She adopts a methodology of critical theory and believes that both aggregated democracy theory and traditional consultative democracy theory adopt a normative research paradigm,which neglect differences and their contributions to solving formal democracy.However,Young acknowledges that traditional consultative democracy theory values the process of political communication.After absorbing the reasonable factors of traditional consultative democracy theory,Young comes up with an inclusive democracy ideology with structural differences,equality,asymmetric reciprocity perspective,and the concept of publicity.In order to solve the problem of inequality,Young advises formulating economic,political and social justice policies through substantive democratic processes and institutions.On this basis,Young proposes eliminating hierarchical division of labor by abolishing the hierarchical division of labor system.ensure equal participation of citizens in political discussions by building a political system that integrates direct and indirect participation;encourage citizens to form an asymmetric and mutually beneficial perspective through inclusive and irrational communication methods.By building inclusive and differentiated public spaces,we can ensure that public discussions can proceed smoothly.In a word,these four paths are all aimed at ensuring that social groups with structural differences can truly participate in political discussions.The Ideology of Inclusive Democracy respects the reality of diverse social differences.She regards structural differences as an important resource to alleviate the tension between collective interests and special interests,theory and practice,takes care of procedural justice that is difficult to reach in distributive justice,and also pays attention to irrational problems which Habermas has not deliberated thoroughly.However,the solutions she proposed were limited to call for inclusive dialogue at the moral level,and could not change the relations of production.Therefore,inclusive democratic thinking will inevitably become a utopian fantasy.