西方政治文明的历史发展

西方政治文明的发展经历了从古希腊罗马时代到近现代的发展历程。古希腊罗马时代将政治、文明等概念与城邦、公民、伦理、制度、国家组织等密切联系起来,对后来西方政治文明的发展产生了深远影响,是西方政治文明的萌芽。欧洲启蒙运动时期,在政治的意义上,"文明"这一观念从文明与野蛮的对立、表示个人与人类社会历史的进步和在理性与公正基础上代表良好的风尚与高雅的市民生活方式等方面得到新的发展。进入近现代,在法权制度的框架下,西方资本主义创造了丰富的现代政治文明,奠定了保障人的基本权利、人民主权、代议制民主、分权与制衡、法治、政府职能有限、政党政治、政治监督、正当法律程序、违宪审查等一系列政治文明的基本原理。

The Historical Development of Western Political Civilization

Modern western political civilization evolves from ancient Greece and Rome. During the Greek and Roman times, the concepts of politics and civilization were closely related to city-state, citizen, ethics, system and the organization of a country. This, being the first stage of the development of western political civilization, exerted significant influence on the later development of political civilization in the West. During the European Enlightenment, "civilization", in its political sense, achieved new development; it stood for the contradiction between "civilization" and "barbarism", the historical progress of individuals and human society, the moral social environment and refined life style on the basis of reasonability and justification. On entering the contemporary times, western capitalist countries, under the framework of legal and power system, have created rich modern political civilization, including such basic principles as the guarantee of basic human rights, the sovereignty of people, the democracy of the representative system, check and balance, governing by law, the restrictions of government functions, party politics, political supervision, justified legal procedures and the investigation in the cases of the violation of constitution, etc.