On Political Compromise: A Value-Centered Analysis

Author: Long Taijiang
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-10-01
Features: This book analyzes some fundamental issues of political compromise, a common phenomenon in political life, from the perspective of combining norms with empirical evidence, with a focus on value. Human politics is also a form of conflict politics, and therefore, moving from conflict to consensus is one of the fundamental tasks of politics. In modern society, especially under democratic politics, political compromise is an important mechanism for achieving social consensus. At the same time, political compromise plays a positive role in many aspects of the healthy functioning of social and political systems. Therefore, objectively understanding and evaluating political compromise with an unbiased and ordinary mindset should be a basic requirement for modern political people. This book focuses on analyzing and arguing the following main points:
(1) Political compromise is a fundamental way to resolve political conflicts. The conflictual nature of politics determines that political compromise is a common basic political phenomenon in political life.
(2) The emergence of political compromise has objective rational reasons. Political compromise is a necessary form of public rationality in political life.
(3) Political compromise has significant value in political life: from a de facto perspective, the emphasis on power restraint in democratic politics inevitably leads to compromise among different powers, and deliberative democracy is, in fact, a form of compromise democracy; from a de jure perspective, political compromise is the price freedom must pay, and the spirit of compromise is a prerequisite for democratic politics; from the perspective of political development, political compromise is a very important strategy in revolutionary struggles and plays a significant role in the modernization processes of early-developing and late-developing countries. Finally, the book further analyzes the positive significance of political compromise for democratic politics, arguing that it is an important pathway for cultivating social capital in democratic politics.