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The Dialectic of Virtue Politics: Wang Zhiwang on Popular Political Participation

Date
-
Speaker
Shoufu Yin, Assistant Professor of History, University of British Columbia
Location
Graham Stuart Lounge - Encina Hall West, Room 400
Abstract

So far, researchers have largely applied categories and frameworks derived from “Western” experiences to trace and assess democratization—or the lack thereof—in other parts of the world. This article proposes a different approach. I examine a previously unknown event of democratization and explore how the perspectives gained from this experience can help generate new questions for understanding democracy worldwide. Specifically, in 1156, Wang Zhiwang, an imperial official of China, conducted a provincial-level “referendum” where all residents— 333,700 households representing a population of 1.5 million—influenced policy through a one- household-one-“vote” practice. I argue that Wang developed an immanent critique of “virtue politics”—the model advocating that the polity should be run by the virtuous ones. Wang problematized the epistemology of virtue politics, arguing that assigning epistemological authority to the supposedly virtuous ones could lead to crises. He contends instead that a government committed to promoting the common good is normatively obliged to invite each tax- paying entity to vote on taxation policy, to follow the majority choice, and to protect the minority. Wang’s argument that virtue politics entails the broadening of political participation highlights a critical yet often overlooked aspect of democratization and provides a fresh starting point for comparative political theory and political science.

Biography

Shoufu Yin is an assistant professor of history at the University of British Columbia. His primary expertise lies in the intellectual and political cultures of China and Inner Asia from the eleventh to the seventeenth centuries. Simultaneously, his interests extend to the global histories of political thought and imagination. He is currently finalizing two book manuscripts:

  • The China That Could Have Been: A Transcultural History of Rhetoric and Political Thought, 1100–1600
  • 1156 CE, China’s Referendum

He has been working on a third monograph-length project with the tentative title of

  • Translingual Historiography: the Manchu Ming History and a Global Intellectual History of the Seventeenth Century

His recent articles have appeared (or are forthcoming) in the American Political Science ReviewJournal of the History of IdeasHistory of Political ThoughtJournal of Asian StudiesT’oung PaoJournal of Chinese HistoryKorean Studies, and other places. He co-edits Between the People and the State: Chinese Statecraft from Early Ming to Xi Jinping, a forthcoming volume, and “Agency, Democracy, and China: The Political Philosophy of Jiwei Ci,” a special issue with Comparative Political Theory.