Throughout the reform process of all countries, political stability undoubtedly attracted wide attention. During the process of modernization construction in the third world countries, owing to the economic structure, regime and social culture system changes brought by the economic development, most of the third world countries had the aspirations to facilitate the modernization and to promote economic development, with less importance attached to the political stability. So the result always was that, the modernization brought them a momentary prosperity, but at the same time, it also threw them into problems such as regime change, social turbulence and racial conflicts etc, which in turn resulted in retard and even stagnation and recession of economy due to unsustainable momentum. The continuous political order means stable order. If political order is no longer sustained, it will give rise to political destabilization. The political development means the transition from one political order to, another. During the transition, the political destabilization is inevitable, but the level and extent of destabilization are different. In fact, there are two ways to impel the political order transitions: revolution and reformation. The historical experience tells us that, the progressive reformation brings lower level and smaller extent of political destabilization than revolution. Therefore, to maintain political stability, it needs to establish a long-lasting political order. To establish a sustained and harmonious political order shall be the ultimate target of values and ideal pursuit of political development of every country. Seen from the history and logical pattern of political development, peoples are always trying to find an ideal order. However, different groups of people have different understanding of the ideal political order construction in different times.
Authoritarian is the important guarantee of maintaining the order. As mentioned above, one of contribution of Huntington''s political order theory is that, he recognized the vulnerability of political order in the countries which are trying to accomplish modernization and so he considered political stability as the basic social target just as same as the economic development to arouse people''s demand for political order. However, although Fukuyama''s "end of history" theory has its insurmountable defects, some of his opinions on establishing the state capacity have somewhat referential values. [37] It can be seen that, after the Second World War, when the traditional authoritarianism was abandoned, the sediment of new authoritarianism floated up. [38] If we take that the traditional authoritarianism is built up on the basis that the masses were not mobilized, then the new authoritarianism is built up on the basis that the society has entered into the course of modernization, and the masses have been mobilized into this courses and the modern political life—— the construction of arithmocracy with strong modernization orientation. Under this situation, people always prefer to execute the dominion in the name of constitution and law. And in the political life, there are nominal representative institutions or interests expression institutions, and so on. And that is why some scholars consider the new authoritarianism as a kind of "democratic transformation".[39]
Nevertheless, the excessive authority is bound to hinder economic development and social progress. For example, some countries built a conservative, rigid and highly power-concentrated regime in order to maintain political stability. It may be helpful in a specific period to maintain political stability, but it hampers economic development and undermines social progress. We saw that, with the waves of globalization surging one after another, the new authoritarianism was impinged inevitably. In fact, in the academic world, it has begun to distinguish the conditions and the causes of the democratization, and the hot discussions have been arisen on the topics like relationship of the elite strategy and the democratization, like whether the democratization shall be abandoned, etc. Meanwhile, it shows a tendency of setting the authority and the democracy against each other. After the collapse of former Soviet Union, Russia immediately turned to the track of the western liberal democracy. However, what it finally built is a "real authoritarian" democracy. If we can say, Yeltsin started an era of authoritarianism of Russia, then, Putin not only carried forward the most of policies that strengthening presidential system, but also pushed forward in many cases. So compared with Yeltsin, Putin did the exactly the same thing but more so. Just as Putin publicized that, "for Russians, a powerful country is neither an alien monster, nor something to fight with, on the contrary, it is the source of order and security, also the advocate and major driving force of any reform." [40] So the democracy in the Russia was called "controllable democracy". As a matter of fact, the democracy of Russia has more formal meaning rather than material meaning. It is thus clear that, the authoritarianism has not yet, and actually can never entirely eliminate.
The constitutional practices proved that, it is possible to realize the organic unification of the authority and the liberty in one constitutional order. Even though the modernization and the political stability seem like a sphinx enigma with binary irreconcilation, it is not truth. The experience tells us, to work out the enigma effectively, it has to formulate a widespread and thorough modern democracy system through perfect approaches of law. The early capitalistic countries creatively constructed the state power structure of the "separation of the three powers", the major political order of which is: the three powers are parallel and balancing, no one of them is superior to another. It is like a plan triangle, which is obviously more stable than "one point" form of power centralization. And the structure of "separation of the three powers" not only can avoid the malady of suppressing the democracy, with supplying the space and vitality to the democracy, but also achieve the stability of a "triangle". [41] Regardless the scientificity, reasonability and effectiveness of applying the natural science principle to the authority distribution here, from ancient to modern times, the political stability is always one of key priorities when political theorists and practitioners talk about the authority distribution and operation. Experience tells us that, the constitutional spirit produces dynamic stability and is beneficial to maintain an unvarying order. The centuries of political stability of Britain, firstly benefited from its inherent free economic order, beyond that, it has lots of things to do with its long standing theory of the rule of law, as well as its constitutional order. And the US created the precedent of constitutional order by promulgating the codified constitution, the function of which to maintain the political stability has been corroborated by its over two hundred years of constitutional practices through "countering changes with changelessness".
The variability and the diversity of the world tell us that, in this great changing and transforming times, the authority is a necessary and sharp weapon for any powerful country, and the liberty is an indispensable and standby remedy for any healthy and orderly society. Both authority and liberty are unified in the demand and practice of constitutional order. Firstly, the constitutional order is a diverse and tolerant order. "The modern society ruled by law shall be a multivalve logic society with no exclusion and high tolerance." [42] Britain is the motherland of constitutional government, one of most outstanding characteristics of its constitutional theory is the diverse claims and various value demand, mainly including: the formalistic constitutionalism, welfare state, procedural rule of law and neorationalism etc.; Secondly, the constitutional order is also a realistic but not conservative order. The rule of law is ideal and realistic. In another word, the constitutional ideal is actually an expression of "practice", which is the morality and development mechanism of the constitutional government. But the "practical" constitutionalism is by no means conservatism. Constitutional government is both ideal and realistic. The "realistic" decided the necessary of constitutional practice. At , last, the constitutional order also is a dynamically stable order. The constitutional practice occurred in diverse political culture and social environment, belongs to the sensu latu legal compromise and cooperation, and is the manifestation of human political civilization advancement. Sometimes, the promotion of political progress not only relies on the battles, but also on the consensus and agreement reached by making compromises and cooperation. This is almost an art of politics and the rule of law. [43] In current changing and transforming times, "practical" constitutionalism can be perfectly interpreted and fully expressed in the rational constitutional practices.
