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 © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, speci fi cally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on micro fi lms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. 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While the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication, neither the authors nor the editors nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility for any errors or omissions that may be made. The publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com) 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.