This essay critically revisits Jiwei Ci’s prudential argument for political democracy in China from the very Tocquevillian standpoint on which Ci’s core theoretical argument is predicated. I argue that Ci’s underlying assumption and argument regarding the enabling conditions of democracy actually depart significantly from Tocqueville’s own view due to Ci’s overly positive understanding of equality of conditions as directly constitutive of a democratic society and his assumed causal connection between capitalist society and political democracy. After clarifying what Tocqueville meant by (...) equality of conditions and discussing his prudential remedy for the perils of democracy, I conclude by suggesting an alternative pragmatic and prudential justification for democracy in China that is more consistent with the Tocquevillian conception of democracy. (shrink)

This paper reconstructs the political–theoretical triangle between liberalism, communitarianism and conservatism. It shows how these three positions are related to each other and to what extent they are actually incompatible. The substantive outcome is the following thesis: the conservative position poses a challenge to liberalism that communitarianism is unable to offer and that liberalism cannot incorporate as it could with communitarianism. This challenge lies in the conservative’s ideal of a traditionally evolved, purposeless form of civil association, and its associated view (...) on the justification of authority within such forms of association. This ideal cannot be incorporated into liberalism’s overall concern with individual autonomy, in contrast to the communitarian’s ideal of community. This will be shown through an investigation of two key elements of the conservative ideal of civil association: its ‘purposelessness’ and its justification of authority. (shrink)

Korean civil society is often criticized because of its dual nature, that is, the paucity of social capital in everyday life and the plethora of collective political actions in the national civil society. Although liberals view such duality as the critical impediment to Korea’s authentic democratization, which would represent a fundamental, liberal-pluralist transformation of Korean society, this article rather acknowledges its cultural uniqueness and utilizes it as the basis on which to construct a Korean non-liberal democracy that is culturally pertinent (...) and politically viable. First, this article critically re-examines the recent neo-Tocquevillian praise for social capital in light of Tocqueville’s original idea on the art of association, and reveals the liberal-individualistic assumption behind them, with which Confucian-Koreans are culturally unfamiliar. It presents a Korean version of Confucian civil society to promote democratic collective self-government and common citizenship, while rejecting modern Western moral individualism. (shrink)