• Analyses & Alternatives
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.39-61
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• 2020

The Chinese Communist Party's 'with-Chinese-characteristics' discourse proclaims its superiority in reflecting people's genuine needs without poisonous partisan politics, as in Western democracies. The Party's Consultative Democracy is key to this superiority. To evaluate Consultative Democracy in Contemporary China from a perspective of popular sovereignty, which is the essential purpose of every kinds of democracy, this research looks into Consultative Democracy from two dimensions: theoretical dimension and institutional dimension. Theoretically, CCP's Consultative Democracy seeks its theoretical sources from their traditional thought as well as from Marxism, and especially emphasizes CCP's leadership to fulfill the consultation results. And through the analysis of various field investigations, we find that there are some prominent problems in grass-roots society's institutional mechanism for Consultative Democracy, such as insufficient connection between institutional innovation and existing legal system, inefficient consultation, insufficient representation of consultative subjects and weak motive force for sustainable development. By legitimizing certain groups or individuals as representatives in their consultative process, CCP can be de-legitimize by containing, dividing or denouncing others so that critics can be co-opted, neutralized or isolated. The CCP's consultative and representational processes are different from taking policy inputs as dialogue or negotiation as in democracies, it is a dynamic, largely one-way process of enforcement and direction with a clear political agenda: maintaining Party hegemony.