Participatory political culture is the spiritual level of modern democratic politics. Without the establishment of participatory political culture, there will be no development of democratic politics. The following is my analysis of participatory political culture in modern society. I hope you like it.

Paper Keywords: participation; Civic culture; Citizenship; China's Participatory Political Culture

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Abstract: Participatory political culture is gradually formed with the secularization of political culture. Almond pointed out that civic culture, which combines modern and traditional, eastern and western cultures, is an ideal soil for cultivating participatory political culture. In the cultural tradition of western citizens, the concept of * * * and the concept of liberal citizens present a binary opposition based on different concepts of freedom, and the rise of communitarianism and citizenship theory is precisely to deal with the crisis of modernity of liberal citizens. Although the two sides of the debate have not yet won the battle, it will eventually benefit the whole political and cultural theoretical circle and provide many beneficial inspirations for China's participatory political and cultural construction.

Political culture refers to the psychological level of politics. According to G.A. almond's famous definition: "Political culture is a set of political attitudes, beliefs and feelings popular in a specific period. The so-called political participation refers to the process of citizens' extensive participation in the political life of the country, thus fully expressing their wishes. It is an important part of political life in modern democratic countries. Participatory political culture is the development of political culture, which refers to the psychological level of social members' political participation, that is, people's attitude towards political participation in life. They are internalized into the abilities and attributes of political people, that is, the content of people's quality in political participation, so they are a potential, unwritten and hidden culture.

Secularization and participation of political culture

The development of political culture is mainly manifested in the secularization of political culture and the formation of participatory political culture. Huntington and almond, famous western scholars, summarized the development of political culture as secularization of political culture. The basic content of political culture deduced from Marxist theory of subject development is basically consistent with the so-called secularization. Political organization is originally "the most important way for human beings to adapt to the external and internal environment" and is one of the objects created by human beings. Classical virtue politics endows political life with the highest moral goal, while theological politics ennobles it. Political life is only the patent of a few elites, and has nothing to do with ordinary people and ordinary people. When the society transits from tradition to modern form, the "disenchantment" in the political field gradually uncovers the mystery hanging over it, and people begin to regard political life as a way of life, especially as a tool to seek and protect personal interests. "Secularization means profound changes in people's world outlook, way of thinking and social role positioning standards. If people in traditional society observe objective things with general standards and have strong feelings, then in modern society with secularized culture, people can observe things in a clear and neutral way. In the process of evaluating and hiring social roles, modern secular culture pays attention to individual achievements rather than hereditary family status. The secularization of political culture has also brought about the formation and development of participatory political culture.

Participatory political culture means that citizens begin to regard themselves as the main body of modern political life and actively participate in political life through various channels. They believe in their political ability. In traditional society, individuals and political countries are inseparable. They are part of political society, and most individuals are passive followers, not independent individuals. The split between the state and society in the capitalist era has enabled individuals to gain dual identities in social life and political life. "On the one hand, political liberation makes people become members of civil society and self-interested and independent individuals; On the other hand, turn people into citizens and become legal persons. " Individuals in modern society have a strong sense of independence and believe that they have the ability to influence and change the operation of political life in order to obtain political results beneficial to their own interests, so they gradually become active participants. These all stem from the separation of political state and society, and the improvement of productivity and scientific and technological level. As American political scientists have pointed out, "If the modern world is undergoing a political revolution, we might as well call it' participation in the revolution'. In all the emerging countries in the world, the belief that ordinary people are related to politics, that is, they should participate in the political system, is widely spread. The broad masses of people excluded from politics demand to participate in the political system. Therefore, few political elites do not recognize their obligations to this goal. " It is precisely because of the universality of this trend that Germany calls this participatory political culture "world political culture".

However, this change in the image of political life dominated by participation only strengthens participation in the overall trend. When the evolution of this political culture is implemented in a political individual, it does not necessarily lead to the result of participation. Generally speaking, there are still three different levels of participants in political life. Their attitudes towards politics are different, and their distance from politics is far or near. Generally speaking, they are individuals who are far away from politics, obey politics and actively participate in politics. This pluralistic and mixed participatory political culture does exist in every country.

Types of civic culture

Almond and Fu Ba analyzed three different cultures of political participants: villagers' political culture, subjects' political culture and citizens' political culture, among which "political participation" was the focus of observation and comparison. The villagers' political culture describes the overlap of political leaders and religious leaders in traditional society. Villagers have no clear understanding of the political system, but they have strong feelings for the same body, but they have not formed norms and standards to regulate the relationship with the political system. The political culture of subjects refers to taking a passive relationship with the political system, which is only closely related to the output of the political system, but not actively participating; Civil political culture exists in a relatively developed society. Citizens actively participate in political life, consider themselves as active members of political life, have a clear understanding of their obligations and rights, and have comments and criticisms on political systems at any level.

Civic culture is neither a traditional culture nor a purely rational modern industrial culture, but a culture in which tradition and modernity are completely integrated. It is "a multi-culture based on communication and persuasion, a culture that combines consistency and diversity, a culture that allows change but gradually changes." The organic combination and balanced coordination of traditional elements and modern elements in political culture will promote the stability and healthy development of the political system. However, traditional culture, like modern culture, may lead to political participation or political non-participation. For example, citizens under the influence of traditional culture have strong feelings for political symbols, and they are driven into politics not for their own interests, but for this feeling; Modern culture makes citizens compare their political participation with other activities rationally, and they may choose not to participate. Therefore, tradition and modernity, participation and alienation, positive and negative coexist in a political entity, and the balance and coordination between them is conducive to the stable and healthy development of the political system.

The division of the above three participatory political cultures is only an ideal model in theory. In fact, in the political culture of any modern country, at least three kinds of participants can be found, which constitute the basic state of political participation, and any one of them plays its own role. Therefore, the culture of any political system is a mixture. Civic culture is a mixture of citizens, subjects and villagers.

The evolution of western civic culture has gone through the process from the harmonious civic culture of ancient Greek polis and ancient Rome to the aristocratic and socialist civic culture in the Middle Ages, and finally developed into a modern liberal civic culture based on individualism. The active citizens of the classical polis ("natural political animals") were finally replaced by the passive citizens of the civil society. B Constantine divided the political freedom of citizens in ancient Greece and Rome and the personal freedom of modern citizens into "ancient freedom" and "modern freedom", thus revealing the basic difference between socialist civic culture and liberal civic culture. He pointed out that in ancient times, as citizens, individuals were almost always sovereigns in public affairs, but they were slaves in all personal relationships. Modern people, individuals are independent in private life, but they are only superficial and limited sovereign in public affairs. Therefore, the freedom of ancient people aims at sharing social power among citizens; The freedom of modern people aims at enjoying guaranteed private happiness. Second, there are similar differences, such as I Berlin's "positive freedom" and "negative freedom", J Habermas's "autonomy in the public sphere" and "autonomy in the private sphere", and so on.

Every historical form of civic culture has its own characteristics, which are related to the development of economic, political and social factors in different periods. It is worth noting that the civic culture of * * * and the liberal civic culture have taken two opposite directions on the issue of political participation: the former is based on collectivism, emphasizing the equal and active participation of city-state citizens or aristocratic elites in political life, while the latter advocates more freedom from coercion in the private sphere and pays attention to diverse values and institutional norms. Therefore, they do have different special difficulties. First, they mainly understand "freedom" as "political freedom", that is, citizens participate in public political life, thus ignoring the freedom of private life and the protection of individual rights. The danger is that it engulfs the space of personal life with public political life, that is, the "excessive politicization" of social life; Another dilemma lies in the "excessive privatization" of social life brought by individualism. As a result of the huge social state, people no longer believe that they have the ability to influence politics and show alienation and indifference in political behavior. Due to the development of business, people are more busy with material pursuits and indulge in colorful private lives, so social unity has also suffered a considerable crisis. At the same time, we must admit the fact that some people are not interested in politics by nature. They choose to stay away and devote their lives to colorful private life. Habermas called this phenomenon "the symptom of citizen privatization". Because individuals have the freedom to decide what attitude to take towards political life, "they are not necessarily political animals. Even if they live in a society, they don't need to care about the politics of this society, they don't need to actively participate in political life, and they don't need to cherish the social political system and values. "

Communitarianism and the Challenge of Citizenship Theory

The rise of contemporary communitarianism responds to the crisis of liberalism, and it is often called "the most vicious enemy of liberalism". Its central conclusion is that the value of * * * has not been fully recognized in all kinds of liberal justice theories or in the public culture of liberal society. They think that even if we don't put the consideration of * * * identity before freedom and equality, it is necessary to pay equal attention to it. Liberalism also has two responses to this: one is Rawls' political liberalism, which itself is a retreat from the belief in autonomy; The other is liberal nationalism, which hopes to safeguard citizens' participation and national unity by constructing national identity and national language. Participatory democracy is committed to building a new bond of social unity and rebuilding participatory political culture by discussing differences (that is, one form of active political participation). It can be seen that the crisis of participation in contemporary society is indeed a major issue worthy of our attention, and it is also a challenge that all political theories must face squarely.

Communitarianism is actually the echo of the harmonious and active citizen tradition in the contemporary world. On the issue of political participation, the difference between communitarianism and liberalism still lingers in the dual framework of * * * and liberalism, one emphasizes active political participation and the other protects the freedom of private life. Communitarianism has been trying to prove that free individualism can no longer explain or maintain the boundaries needed by emotional * * * and identity * * and any feasible political * * * with identity. However, instead of going out, it has strengthened the binary opposition between passive citizens and active citizens. Just trying to explain that the concept of citizenship based on liberal individualism can't be maintained by emotion, identity and any feasible politics. So, are these two freedoms either one or the other? What does it matter?

Regarding the relationship between political freedom and individual freedom, Gong Sidang analyzed the situation from the initial enthusiasm of citizens to their aversion to politics during the French Revolution. He emphasized: First, the freedom of private life must be guaranteed by political freedom. If citizens do not participate in politics and give up the right to effectively restrict the public, then in the final analysis, the freedom of private life will not be guaranteed; Second, the great quality of a nation can only be developed if its citizens fully participate in the exercise of political power, because political freedom expands people's spiritual realm, improves people's ideological level, and shapes citizens' group knowledge quality, thus laying the foundation for the glory and prosperity of the nation. Therefore, the so-called freedom of private life and freedom of political participation are by no means either one or the other. It is important to learn to combine the two freedoms.

In recent years, the emergence of citizenship theory is based on the opposition between individualism beyond liberalism and collectivism of communitarianism, trying to integrate the justice requirement of liberalism with the membership requirement of the same subject. In order to overcome the symptoms of "citizen privatization", there are two camps in "citizen * * * and ism": "Aristotle * * and ism" firmly believes that political participation itself has intrinsic value, thus belittling private life. Another camp admits that many people are born with different degrees of lack of interest in politics, so it is necessary to limit the requirements of active citizens to accommodate those different views on a better life. They regard all kinds of basic moral qualities needed for political participation as tools to maintain the justice system. The social life they demanded and the support for the equality and norms of civil society all reflected the fundamental value of liberalism. They devoted themselves to seeking the seedbed for cultivating citizens' morality, such as the market, voluntary organizations in civil society, families, schools and so on.

The concept of "citizen's harmony and citizenship" attempts to integrate the justice requirements of liberalism with the membership requirements of the same subject, which is also a synthesis and transcendence of the two concepts of citizenship. They see that the health and stability of modern democracy depends not only on the basic system and justice, but also on the quality and attitude of citizens in a democratic system-for example, their desire to participate in political activities to promote public interests and hold political authorities accountable. Without the support of citizens with these qualities, democracy will be difficult or even shaken. As Habermas said, such a constitutional system is valuable only if the people try their best to support it.

Constructing China's Participatory Political Culture

Since the reform and opening up, with the evolution of marketization and democratization in China, people's political concepts and behaviors have undergone profound changes. Citizens' self-awareness, the combination of self-realization and the traditional sense of bottom-up development of the nation as a whole, gradually enhance their sense of historical mission, social responsibility and sense of ownership, pay more attention to the interests of the country and people, pay more attention to politics and actively participate in reform, forming an unprecedented new pattern of political participation since the founding of the People's Republic of China. The political culture of modern China basically reflects the trend of participation in the development of world political culture.

The basic political personality characteristics of modern citizens are: recognition and loyalty to a small community or political entity, and personal sense of belonging and responsibility as a member of the country or other larger political entities; Have a full perception of the interaction between the political system and individuals, and have a strong sense of political effectiveness. Believe that you have the ability to transform or influence the political environment, actively participate in the political process or participate in political activities: establish a new concept of political legitimacy based on rationality and performance, and expect to evaluate a person's social value by his acquired ability and contribution rather than his innate background and attributes; Have strong political behavior ability, understand political theory and political practice experience, have rational, skeptical and critical spirit, demand reasonable expectations for public goals and personal interests, trust others, tolerate differences, cooperate with others, be willing to compromise, attach importance to public interests, abide by legal norms, not blindly doubt, not arbitrary and other political and moral accomplishments. Political modernization and secularization of political culture are a lasting process. Once modern citizens with the above personality characteristics are blocked in this process, democratic politics in developing countries will lay a solid social foundation.

As far as the present situation in China is concerned, there are generally three levels of participants in "civic culture": one is narrow-minded people: citizens who know little or nothing about the political system; Second, submissive participants, also known as passive participants: "citizens who have become part of the political system and are aware of the impact or potential impact of the political system on their lives. Third, active participants:. What they show is the input process to society, that is, they have a certain understanding of the process of prompting them to get involved in politics, and form an attitude of encouraging themselves to take advantage of various opportunities for participation, that is, they believe that as long as they work hard, they can influence the political affairs of the country. "

Some scholars have suggested that one of the ways to cultivate participatory political culture in China is to gradually eliminate narrow-minded people, actively cultivate obedient participants, and attach importance to and correctly guide active participants. There is a tendency to deny the legal status of "narrow-minded" political participation, and they are eager to eliminate "narrow-minded". People who hold this view believe that we developing countries urgently need to establish and improve democratic politics, so we will inevitably have concerns corresponding to this urgency-I am worried that the reduction of citizen participation and the spread of indifference will hinder the development of democracy: but' this not only violates the proper meaning of' citizen culture' itself, but also is more idealistic in reality. Perhaps only through some channels to adjust the proportion of the three. As for eliminating a certain level, it may destroy the balance of "civic culture"-non-participatory political orientation and participatory political orientation constitute a "balanced political culture", because there is "political enthusiasm, participation and rationality, but it is balanced because of negativity, tradition and commitment to narrow local values". In addition, it is difficult for the political participation of the whole people to always appear in an institutionalized form, so it is more difficult to control and guide, which will bring new problems to government work.

It should be pointed out that there are profound differences between China's participatory political culture and that of western countries. If the crisis of citizen participation in western countries stems from the tradition of individualism, it is the phenomenon of low participation caused by excessive privatization of social life; Then, the development of China's political culture is the transformation from the former modern "subject culture" to the modern "citizen culture". In China society where absolutism and patriarchal clan tradition are deeply rooted, there are "people", "people", "people" and "villagers", but there are no "citizens". The construction of civil society and civil culture is an important step in China's democratization. Due to the historical differences between Chinese and western political cultures, we cannot simply copy and directly apply western political theories.

In his book "Politicians in China", Zhang made an investigation report on the political quality of China citizens, including political concepts (or attitudes towards political participation), political knowledge and skills, and political participation experience. The results show that the basic political attitude of China politicians can be summarized in four words: stay away from them. That is to say, we respect politics, advocate politics and give it a positive value evaluation, but at the same time we avoid politics, are unwilling to participate in politics, or adopt an indifferent and perfunctory attitude when we have to participate. "Respect" is mainly because China people have always believed in "goodness in nature", and their "primitive belief" in politics is to regard it as a lofty cause of managing the country and serving the people. However, on specific issues, they tend to separate political participation from immediate material interests, so they often take a "stay at a respectful distance from others" behavior, which embodies an ethical view of political participation. Different from the western utilitarian view of political participation, although western political culture regards politics as evil and dirty out of the "dark consciousness" of human nature, it often actively participates in it for its own interests, and even takes various measures to prevent rulers from putting improper attempts into practice. The basic political attitude of China citizens leads to the basic characteristics of polarization of political participation: one is the enthusiasm of participation in extraordinary times, and the other is the indifference of participation in ordinary times.

Modern political theory shows that the operation of a stable democratic system needs neither enthusiastic participation nor indifferent participation: it needs a calm, temperate and institutionalized participation attitude. This ideal attitude of participation does not come from the traditional culture of China with "promoting goodness" as its core. The estimation of human nature is too optimistic and ideal, and there is more trust in the government than in supervision. Nor does it come from a typical western culture with "suppression of evil" as its core. Its understanding of human nature is full of "dark consciousness", and it has more doubts than trust in the government. The ideal soil for cultivating citizen participation should be the combination of eastern and western cultures-citizen culture. At the same time, political participation is closely related to citizens' political quality, which is also emphasized by recent citizen theory. China's "political man" scored an average of 3 on the survey of citizens' political quality in China. 3 (full mark 10), far below the standard of citizen quality in democratic countries (5. 5). Moreover, different social classes, different education levels and other reasons lead to great differences in citizens' political quality, which makes the situation more complicated. It can be seen that the road ahead of us is still very long and difficult.

In addition, participatory political culture is mainly related to China's politics, economy, culture and mass media, social transformation, education level, introduction of western ideas, geographical conditions and personal character. For example, our economic development is relatively backward and unbalanced, and our political system lacks specific projects to implement. Therefore, in order to get rid of the bad restrictive factors in shaping the political participatory culture, we need the coordinated development of economy, politics and other aspects, attach importance to the coordinated role of political socialization in participatory political culture, and cultivate modern citizens and modern people with basic attributes such as rationality, participation and openness.

Expansion: Connotation and Characteristics of Participatory Political Culture

Participatory political culture was put forward by American political scientists almond and Fu Ba in the book "Citizen Culture" published in 1963, and then became an important concept in political science and was widely used.

According to the public's cognition, emotion and attitude towards social and political system, political system, political authority and its role in system decision-making and implementation, almond and Fu Ba divided the political culture existing in social and political life into three types: (1) participatory political culture, also known as civic culture, which means that social members have strong and clear cognitive emotion and value orientation, and are positive for their rights, abilities, responsibilities and the effectiveness of political behavior as members of the political system. This political culture is accompanied by a political system with a high degree of political democratization; (2) The vassal political culture, also known as subject culture, refers to the fact that members of the political system have a clear understanding, emotion and value orientation on the role, structure, authority, norms and their own responsibilities in the system output, but the orientation on the political system output and the self-orientation of social members as political participants are very low, and this vassal political culture permeates the centralized political system; (3) Narrow political culture refers to the fact that members' cognition, emotion and value orientation of the authority, system and norms in the political system are in a very vague state, and people have no ability to influence political decision-making and its implementation. For example, the political culture existing in rural areas in some countries is narrow political culture. Almond and Fu Ba believe that narrow political culture is backward political culture, which is accompanied by the traditional autocratic political system; The political culture of vassals is also a relatively backward political culture, which is often the political and psychological basis of centralized political system; Participatory political culture is an advanced political culture, which not only promotes the development of democratic politics, but also strongly supports the effective operation of democratic politics. Participatory political culture has its specific stipulation: (1) emphasizes "rational national identity". The so-called rational national identity means that the public consciously regards national unity as the supreme value pursuit, consciously abides by national laws, and has a strong sense of obligation, responsibility, mission and loyalty to a unified multi-ethnic country. In short, the public has a broad sense of "national interests are above everything, national laws are above everything, and national unity is above everything". (2) Emphasize that "the legitimacy of political power comes from democratic authorization". "Sovereignty lies with the people" is the theoretical cornerstone of modern democratic politics. It is believed that the legitimacy of political power comes from the authorization of the people, democratic election is the best way to grant it, and only the political power elected by the people is legal. This political idea is a complete denial and criticism of the traditional concept of "divine right of monarch" and the concept of blood inheritance, and also a reasonable sublation of "charismatic authority". (3) Emphasize "rational political participation". The so-called rational political participation refers to active and orderly political participation based on safeguarding and realizing the interests of citizens. Rational political participation is the premise and foundation of political democracy. Without rational political participation, there will be no political democracy. The greater the breadth and depth of rational political participation, the higher the degree of political democratization. People's rational political participation behavior is dominated by the correct concept of political participation. The more the correct concept of political participation is deeply rooted in people's hearts, the higher the degree of rational political participation and the faster the process of political democratization. (4) Emphasize the political mentality of "openness, cooperation and tolerance". This political mentality refers to the political mutual trust within a political group or with other political groups, which is open rather than closed, enthusiastic rather than indifferent, supportive rather than evasive, tolerant rather than demanding. This kind of political mutual trust is crucial to the safe operation and stable development of the national political system. Lack of an open, cooperative and inclusive political mentality may lead to mutual suspicion, mutual accusation and misunderstanding among political individuals or groups, which may further evolve into fierce political contradictions or conflicts, thus bringing political instability. (5) Emphasize the value orientation of "paying equal attention to political input and political output". Political input and political output are two links in the interaction between political system and environment. The input is mainly the public's demand and support for the political system, and the output mainly includes policy formulation, resource extraction, product distribution, behavior control and so on. Political scientists have found that in the traditional political form, people pay more attention to political output than political input, while in the modern democratic political form, people not only care about political output, but also care about political input. It is believed that in order to promote political democratization, people must pay more attention to political input and establish a strong value orientation of political input. (6) Emphasize the concepts of democracy, rule of law, freedom, equality and human rights. Democracy, rule of law, freedom, equality and human rights are universally respected values in modern political life and are the advanced achievements of human political understanding. Only by correctly understanding, firmly establishing and effectively practicing these values can the public promote the construction of political civilization and the development of democratic politics. ;