Local elites are usually the controller of local powers, especially for those local political elites who can make an authoritative allotment for social values and also have a certain influence on the decision-making process of public policies. Even though Taiwan has experienced political democratization and liberalization and most of political, economic and social systems and structures imitate the West, it is worthy of further observations if the law-related cognition, the most important for democracy, has been established, if the concept of Confucianism is still deeply rooted in the mind of citizenry, if parts of Confucianism are preserved and the concept of law-related cognition is existed, and what kind of influence it will have on current political developments. This research is designed to study the relation between the personal characteristics and the values of democracy (the concepts of conflict, local authority limit, honest, minority benefit and political participation) and the relation between the concept of Confucian culture and the law-related cognition. This research assumed the law-related cognition of local elites shall depend on the relation between such concepts and law-related cognitions. This research finds that the relations between the democratic values of local elites and the personal factors are not really all existed. For the democratic values and the Confucian culture concept of local elites, the educational background of local elites and the level of interviewees are most important and their party supports, ages and statuses are second. Those local elites with different characteristics have significant differences in their values of democracy and concepts of Confucian culture, which is from the viewpoint of Micro. This research also finds that the democratic values of local elites appear negative correlation between: 1. the concept of conflict and the concept of local authority limit; 2. the concept of local authority limit & the concept of honest and the concept of political participation & the law-related cognition respectively; 3. the concept of minority benefit and the concept of political participation; and 4. the law-related cognition and the concept of Confucian culture; but present lower positive correlation between: 1. the law-related cognition, the concept of conflict and the concept of political participation, 2. the concept of local authority limit, the concept of minority benefit and the concept of Confucian culture. In future, we can make further operations to build a more perfect model with the style of scales. The whole model shows that the limit of central and local authorities, the concept of political participation and the concept of Confucian culture are commonly significant parts in these three models. The model will not reduce its significance because of increasing variables. The age is also significant for the anticipation of local elites but the educational background is not, which is possible because the interviewee with higher education attainments tends to be younger in our survey data. Actually, the study on domestically local elites is seldom seen and most of studies target at public general. That¡¦s because the study expends much time and many efforts. This survey data is really rare. However, the survey time is far remote from today and the public and social trends have been changed substantially. It is worthy of continuous observations for this issue.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Carleton University, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Abstract Olsson, Karin (2009). Den (över)levande demokratin. En idékritisk analys av demokratins reproducerbarhet i Robert Dahls tänkta värld. (Sustainable Democracy. Exploring the Idea of a Reproducible Democracy in the Theory of Robert A. Dahl). Acta Wexionensia 185/2009, ISSN: 1404-4307, ISBN: 978-91-7636-677-6. With a summary in English.   Everybody loves democracy. The problem is that while everybody calls himself democratic, the ideal form of democracy is hard to come by in the real world. But if we believe in democracy and believe that it is the best form of government, I argue that we should try to design a theory of democracy that is realisable – and reproducible. This thesis, then, focuses primarily on the question whether we find support in democratic theory for an idea of a self-reproducing democracy. It proceeds by means of an investigation of Robert A. Dahl’s theory of democracy. He is one of the most well-known and highly regarded theorists in the field of democratic research, whose work covers both normative and empirical analysis. When analysing the reproducible democracy, I argue that it is essential to study both normative values and empirical assumptions: the values that count as intrinsic to democracy, the assumptions that are made about man, and the institutions that are needed for the realisable and reproducible democracy. In modern social science man is often pushed into the background. This is also the case in theories of democracy, even though man (the individual) is the one who has the right to vote, the one who has the autonomy to decide – the one who has to act democratically in order to preserve democracy. The study yields the following findings. First, in Dahl’s theory political equality and autonomy come out as intrinsic values. Second, the assumptions made about man show that even if he seems to be ignored, he is always present. When Dahl construes his theory, he does it with full attention to man’s qualities, interests, manners of acting and reacting, and adaptability to the values of democracy. Third, the institutions needed to realise and reproduce democracy go further than the institutions of polyarchy. They need support from the judicial system, political culture, education and the market. Fourth, when it comes down to making democracy work and reproducing democracy, Dahl puts the full responsibility on man as he is not willing to allow too rigid constitutional mechanisms. Fifth, even though Dahl puts the emphasis on the empirical situation of the real world, he does not alter his normative ideals in order to make the theory more adaptive. For him, political equality and autonomy are imperative demands, too important to alter. And the only way to get full procedural democracy is to trust the democratic man.

Under the 1990s restructuring of the Swedish education system, ‘the fundamentaldemocratic values’ have stipulated clearly both in the Education Act and all of thenational curricula as one of the educational goals. This study aims to illuminate how thefundamental democratic values in the Swedish curriculum for preschool are implemented,its process and outcome on a micro level, a preschool. The role of the preschools inSweden has been changed especially after the new curriculum has been issued in 1998, and now, “to impart and establish respect for human rights and the fundamentaldemocratic values” is an important task of the preschools and expected to “activelypromote” in its work with children. Through a qualitative case study focused on apreschool in Forest municipality, Stockholm, the findings show the principal and thepedagogue in the chosen preschool are conscious of the importance of the fundamentaldemocratic values within the individual perspectives. This study also illustrates that thepedagogue have developed their understanding for the fundamental values continuously,through the several types of meetings, and have applied it to their daily activities.Furthermore, the findings also show that the pedagogue in the chosen preschool haveutilised ‘the five value keywords’ those were selected in the school district where thepreschool belonged. As a whole the research on the chosen preschool indicates theimportance of role of pedagogue at preschool for implementation of the nationaleducation policy. On the other hand, this study has clarified that Forest municipality hashad important role for the implementation process and evaluation of preschools in themunicipality. This fact indicates that how municipalities take initiatives affects successfulimplementation of the curriculum. As concluding remarks, this study argue the results ofthe present research indicate that the chosen preschool has supplied opportunities for bothchildren and parents to learn/exercise deliberative democracy, that may be seeds to fosteractive citizen.