Abstract: Western democratic theories after World War II mainly include defensive democratic theory as a “political project”, transitology in comparative politics, and democratic theory of historical sociology as an “academic project”. For a long time, Chinese research on democratic theory lacks the ability to set agendas and treats Western “political project” as “academic project”. These are mainly manifested that defensive democratic theory is regarded as a classic in political thought, the research on comparative politics follows western transitology and there is a lack of high-quality case study and historical sociological research. The historical turn of democratic theory research highlights corrections of liberal democratic theory and gives enlightenments to us.