Defending Political Equality : A Confucian Democratic Response to Bai Tongdong’s Proposal of Hybrid Regime

Elton CHAN*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Journal PublicationsJournal Article (refereed)peer-review

Abstract

Tongdong Bai. Against Political Equality: The Confucian Case. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019. xxiv, 315 pp. Hardcover $39.95, ISBN 978-0-691-19599-5.

In an age when democracy is under siege, Bai offers a cogent reflection on the problem facing the liberal democratic order on its most fundamental level. In this review, however, I seek to engage with Bai’s position from the perspectives of both liberal democracy advocate and Confucianism. I contend that while Bai’s criticism is most powerful when democracy is conceived in a certain way, democrats do have a strong response if other conceptions of democracy are adopted. Along the lines of these conceptions of democracy, Confucianism would incline more toward democratic institutional setups than the hybrid regime depicted by Bai. In the following, I will focus on reconstructing Bai’s main line of argument for meritocratic hybrid regime before offering a response from the perspectives of both a democrat and a Confucian.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)131-149
JournalChina Review International
Volume26
Issue number3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2019

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