Political Science and Chinese Political Studies: The State of the Field

275 Pages·2013·1.831 MB·English

by  Sujian Guo (auth.), Sujian Guo (eds.)

Political Science and Chinese Political Studies

Sujian Guo
Editor
Political Science and Chinese
Political Studies
The State of the Field
Editor
Sujian Guo
San Francisco State University, Fudan University,
and Zhejiang University
ISBN 978-3-642-29589-8 ISBN 978-3-642-29590-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-29590-4
Springer Heidelberg New York Dordrecht London
Library of Congress Control Number: 2012942334
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Contents
1 Introduction: Political Science and Chinese
Political Studies – The State of the Field............................................... 1
Sujian Guo
Part I Overview of the State of the Field
2 Chinese Political Studies: Overview of the State of the Field ............. 11
Lynn T. White III
3 Political Culture and the Study of Chinese Politics ............................. 37
Peter R. Moody
4 Western Political Science Theories and the Development
of Political Theories in China ................................................................. 61
Guangbin Yang and Miao Li
5 Western Political Research Approaches and the Development
of Political Science Methodology in China ........................................... 85
Yuejin Jing and Guoqin Wang
6 Environmental Politics in China: An Issue Area in Review ................ 103
Fengshi Wu
Part II Methodologies in the Chinese Political Studies
7 The Logics of Comparative Politics and the Development
of Political Science in China ................................................................... 127
Yang Zhong
8 Political Science Research on China:
Making the Most of Diversity ................................................................ 135
Björn Alpermann
v
vi Contents
9 Choices for Chinese Political Science: Methodological
Positivism or Methodological Pluralism? ............................................. 151
Jon R. Taylor
10 The Perestroika Movement in American Political Science
and Its Lessons for Chinese Political Studies ....................................... 163
Shelley Rigger
Part III Scienti fi cation or Indigenization of Chinese Political Studies
11 Reflections on Scientific Inquiry, Academic Freedom,
and Enlightenment .................................................................................. 179
Jeffrey C. Isaac
12 The Dilemmas of China’s Political Science
in the Context of the Rise of China ........................................................ 193
Baogang He
13 Politics Against Science: Reflections on the Study
of Chinese Politics in Contemporary China ......................................... 215
Guoguang Wu
14 To ‘Fall in Line’ or To ‘Grab’: Thoughts
on the Indigenization of Political Science ............................................. 237
Shaoguang Wang
15 Let One Hundred Flowers Bloom, Let One Hundred
Thoughts Contend: Political Science
with Chinese Characteristics ..................................................................... 263
Jon R. Taylor
Chapter 1
Introduction : Political Science and Chinese
Political Studies – The State of the Field
Sujian Guo
New developments in Chinese political studies over the past three decades suggest
the fi eld might be at a crossroads. Scholars and students alike still vividly remember
texts used in graduate school and innumerable papers published by fi rst rate com-
parativists such as Gabriel Almond, Sydney Verba, David Apter, Seymour Martin
Lipset, Arendt Lijphart, David Collier, James Mahon, Giovanni Satori, Gary King,
David Easton, and many others. All of them have had a great impact on how we
study China and Chinese politics. In the area of IR, many IR theorists, such as Hans
Morgenthau, Kenneth Waltz, Robert Keohane, Robert Gilpin, Joseph Nye, Robert
Jervis, Stephen Krasner, Francis Fukuyama, and others have in fl uenced how we
study China and its foreign policy behavior. However, on the other hand, we have
observed that many Chinese scholars have challenged the applicability of western
paradigms, theories, concepts, and methods for studying China, and have attempted
to develop a “Chinese school” within the academic disciplines of political science
and international relations, often emphasizing China’s uniqueness, national identity,
intellectual tradition, local knowledge and national contexts in the study of Chinese
politics. It is time to examine and evaluate the state of Chinese political studies—i.e.,
what the fi eld has been, where it is now, and where it is going in the future, including
its achievements, challenges, and trends.
As part of this endeavor, the J ournal of Chinese Political Science (JCPS), published
by Springer, has published a series of special issues containing 14 retrospective
and prospective papers on the state of Chinese political studies considering the past,
present, and future of the fi eld. As the J ournal’s Editor-in-Chief, I have brought
together a group of distinguished political scientists both from inside and outside
China to contribute to these important special issues. Updated and edited here in
S. Guo (*)
San Francisco State University , Fudan University, and Zhejiang University
e-mail: [email protected]
S. Guo (ed.), Political Science and Chinese Political Studies: The State of the Field, 1
DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-29590-4_1, © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013
2 S. Guo
book length form, I believe their contributions should have a signi fi cant impact
on the intellectual development of the fi eld. Speci fi cally, the goal of this book is to
disseminate scholarship that can shed light on the ever changing fi eld of Chinese
political studies, stimulate re fl ective discourse as the fi eld continues to develop, and
provide valuable material for teachers and researchers of Chinese politics.
As noted, over the past 30 years we have witnessed a substantial transformation
of China studies, particularly Chinese political studies. This transformation is attrib-
utable to changes in China and its rising status in the world as well as changes in our
ways of conducting academic research. As area studies specialists, we are no longer
“isolated” from the larger disciplines of political science and international relations
(IR), but have become an integral part of them. A simple survey of J CPS and
other political science journals reveals that we have applied theories and methods
from these larger disciplines to Chinese political studies and that we have sought
to meet the standards of scientifi c research and theoretical relevance in political
science, IR and other relevant disciplines. The scholarship we produce today
has advanced far beyond the days of classic Sinology. However, theoretical and
methodological approaches in Chinese political studies are very diverse, and sub-
stantive issues in various Chinese contexts are being studied from a broader
comparative perspective. As Lynn T. White points out in his chapter included in this
book, “Chinese and Asian comparative research can help reverse the methodological
narrowness that obscures much actual politics in the world from being studied
circumspectly.”
This book centers around the assessment of the most important, yet controversial
issues relating to the state of the fi eld, and contains theoretically innovative
contributions that offer an up-to-date overview of the state of the fi eld of Chinese
political studies; combine empirical and normative approaches as well as theoretical
exploration and case studies; explore the relationship between Western political
science scholarship and contemporary Chinese political studies; and examine the
logic and methods of political science and their scholarly application to the most
recent developments in the study of Chinese politics. Along the way, the book also
discusses hotly contested and debated issues in Chinese political studies, such as
universality and particularity, regularity and diversity, scienti fi cation and indigeni-
zation, as well as the main problems, challenges, opportunities, trends and directions
for the disciplinary and intellectual development of Chinese political studies in the
context of a rising China. Debates are still unfolding, as shown in this book, but may
have a far-reaching impact on the intellectual development of the fi eld. I hope
everyone in the fi eld of Chinese political studies will be part of this endeavor.
In the existing related literature, the books closest to this one include Allen
Carlsen, Mary Gallagher, Kenneth Lieberthal and Melanie Manion, eds, C hinese
Politics: New Sources, Methods, and Field Strategies (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2010) and Robert Ash, David Shambaugh and Seiichiro Takagi,
eds, C hina Watching: Perspectives from Europe, Japan and the United States
(London: Routledge, 2007). The former deals with data sources and methods in the
study of Chinese politics while the later deals with more general topics in China
studies, such as politics, history, economics, foreign policy, and security studies.
1 Introduction : Political Science and Chinese Political Studies… 3
Our work here differs from these two volumes mentioned above by offering an
up-to-date overview of the state of the fi eld of “Chinese political studies;” assessing
its past, present, and future; emphasizing the role of Chinese scholars in transforming
the fi eld both within and outside China; and discussing the most hotly-debated
problems, challenges, opportunities, achievements, and directions in the disciplinary
and intellectual developments of Chinese political studies. For example, we examine
whether or not there would be a “paradigm innovation” or an emergence of a
“Chinese school” of political science with the rise of China and its intellectual
tradition and autonomy, whether or not Chinese political studies should resist
“westernization” and promote “indigenization” of political science, whether or not
Chinese political studies should “scienti fi cize” or “descienti fi cize,” and so on, all of
which are having important impacts on the ways we conduct political research now
and future developments of the same.
The book includes 14 chapters organized in three parts, under three thematic topics:
“Overview of the State of Field,” “Methodologies in Chinese Political Studies,” and
“Scienti fi cation or Indigenization of Chinese Political Studies.” Part I offers an
overview of the state of Chinese political studies, and suggests that substance, subjects,
theories, methods, scope and depth have been expanded and diversifi e d, with the
increased role and contributions of China-born scholars in the fi eld of Chinese political
studies over the past decades according to Lynn White’s evaluation.
In Chap. 2 , “Chinese Political Studies: Overview of the State of the Field,” Lynn
T. White III observes that the range of questions of interest to scholars of Chinese
politics has changed slowly over recent decades, but the depths of empirical probes
to answer them have quickly improved. One reason for this development is the rise
of China-born and Chinese-American researchers. Another is greater access to local
information in China after the start of reforms there. Future developments in this
fi eld are likely to enrich current American political science, which will require fresh
methods for adequate study of the planet’s most populous polity.
In Chap. 3 , “Political Culture and the Study of Chinese Politics,” Peter R. Moody
argues that it is both a truth and a truism that Chinese politics cannot be understood
without reference to Chinese culture (a truth and truism that would apply to any
other society as well). But within the academic discipline of political science political
culture has lost status over the past generation as not conducive to the development
of empirical political theory. The usual candidate for replacement is rational choice
theory. But properly understood, political culture is compatible with rational choice,
inasmuch as there is no single standard of rationality, but, rather, rationality varies
from society to society and era to era. Considerations of the cultural background are
necessary to provide content to rational choice theory, since without consideration
of culture context rational choice threatens to reduce to a set of colorless banalities.
In Chap. 4 , “Western Political Science Theories and the Development of Political
Theories in China,” Yang Guangbin and Li Miao offer an overview of the recent devel-
opment of Chinese political studies spawned by the transformation of Chinese politics
in the post-Mao era, focusing primarily on contributions from Chinese scholarship.
After a close examination of the applicability of western theories on transforming
politics in China, it reviews indigenous methodologies, theorizations on the Chinese
4 S. Guo
Communist Party, the state-society relationship analysis, and research on the
central-local relationship. Referring to original works from different periods, the article
portrays the indigenous contributions of the Chinese academia, and illustrates the
essential connections between real politics and theoretical progress.
In Chap. 5 , “Western Political Research Approaches and the Development of
Political Science Methodology in China,” Jing Yuejin and Wang Guoqin argue that
since 1980, the restoration and development of political science as a discipline in
China has bene fi ted from methodological improvements resulting signifi cantly from
the introduction of western approaches to academic research. The aim of this study
is to examine the evolution of the introduction based on articles published in Chinese
academic journals since 1990. There exists a wide diversity in research approaches
in political science, and the authors try to explain why each approach has had
a different impact on Chinese political studies and how the introduction of such
knowledge has changed the way Chinese political researchers understand method-
ology and political science as a discipline.
In Chap. 6 , “Environmental Politics in China: An Issue Area in Review,” Fengshi
Wu offers an overview of the study of environmental politics in China by taking a
thematic approach to review the existing literature (in both Chinese and English) of
environmental politics in the broad context of China studies. Examined themes
include the state and environmental governance, public awareness and environmental
social activism, and environmental foreign relations. Findings and arguments are
assessed with two important questions in mind: What differentiates the environmental
arena from Chinese politics in general? What new insights into Chinese politics can
be gained from the studies of environmental protection? This review fi nds that
scholarship on environmental politics contributes not only empirical fi ndings, but
also provides critical challenges to the overall knowledge and analytical frameworks
of Chinese politics.
Part II focuses on how to study Chinese politics on an epistemological level, i.e., it is
more concerned with the nature of political knowledge, how to acquire it, and to what
extent it can be acquired, rather than speci fi c forms of knowledge, methods, strategies
and research designs. The debate centers on the contending beliefs of the nature of
political knowledge and ways to convert the understanding of Chinese politics into
knowledge, which shows a serious tension and con fl ict between scienti fi c, universalistic,
positivist tradition on the one hand and particularistic, historical, and contextual
traditions in the study of Chinese politics on the other. Some question the “indigenization”
of Chinese political studies, argue that political studies in China should share the same
logic of comparative political inquiry and social sciences because political science seeks
to explore and explain general patterns and regularities that exist in political life,
phenomena, and behavior, and their studies show that Chinese political studies in China
has made progress in advancing political knowledge by adopting scienti fi c methods
from the western academic disciplines of political science, economics, sociology and
other disciplines of the social sciences. However, others focus on the limitations of
scienti fi c methods, question the direction of moving toward scienti fi cism or adopting
“a purely methodological positivist approach,” and advocate diversity in methodologies
in the study of Chinese politics.