Abstract
Chinese political studies need a paradigm revolution. Given China’s long historical tradition and rich legacy of historical records, historical political science could be the best starting point for a breakthrough. There are three major approaches in how issues about China are considered in historical political science: (1) produce a full description of how the form of the Chinese state evolved through history to reveal the origin of its contemporary form, understand the trend of political development, and discuss solutions to political improvement; (2) through historical and comparative political analysis, comprehensively explore the theoretical significance of China being the first to establish a modern form of state, while following the system of prefectures and counties for most of its history, and continuously expanding and maintaining its scale to rethink and rebuild the general theories on politics and state; and (3) reveal how China interacts with other countries in the political arena, contributing to global historical political science from China’s point of view, and studying the history of the evolution of the global political system to discuss the positive role that China can play in the improvement of the world system.
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Notes
Path dependence is of great significance to political research (Yang, 2003).
For preliminary discussions, see Tingley (2017).
Hobbes (2003: 3) spoke highly of the achievements in geometry, “whatever in short distinguishes the modern world from the barbarity of the past, is almost wholly the gift of geometry.” He believed that moral philosophers should make use of this method: “…if the patterns of human action were known with the same certainty as the relations of magnitude in figures,” “false opinions” would be “disarmed” and “the human race would enjoy such secure peace…” (Hobbes, 2003).
For detailed discussions on why humans’ social activities are complicated phenomena, how their research methods are different from those of natural sciences, and why it is not possible to find in them rules as people do in natural sciences, please see Hayek (2000).
Ch’ien Mu once criticized the so-called “progressive” historiography in modern times for using imported concepts to study Chinese history and said, “The primary mission of state governance historiography is to find a unique spirit within the state-nation itself” (Ch'ien, 1996: 11).
In Aristotle’s words, “if we, in dealing with anything, politics or other issues, trace back to its origin and understand why it happened, we can gain the clearest understanding” (Aristotle, 1996:4). However, by “tracing back to its origin,” Aristotle means “discerning all the elements of every city-state and analyze them one by one.”.
I attempted to analyze the functions of the government founded by Emperor Shun (Yao, 2018).
For analyses of the Enlightenment school of political science during the New Culture Movement and the neo-Enlightenment school of political science since the 1980s, see Ren (2015).
For the history of theories on China’s despotism, see Hou (2008).
The major advocate is Liu Zehua whose research led to the rise of a school of thought. His major work is Collected Works on the History of Political Thoughts in Ancient China (2008, People’s Publishing House).
The most fanatical doubter is Ch’ien Mu, however, some scholars from China's mainland have also been reflecting on it. Lyu (2017), for example, after reflecting and doubting the theories on the despotism of ancient China, believes that ancient China was a “conservation-oriented regime.”.
I previously elaborated on feudalism. See Yao (2012).
For cross-country comparisons of feudalism, see Feng (2006).
Based on “ancestral doctrines,” Deng (2006) studied the formation and evolution mechanism of many forms of government in the Song dynasty.
For research progress in such topics, please see Yan and Zeng (2018).
For a summary of representative historical sociologists in the twentieth century and their major achievements, please see Smith (2000). The author concluded, “Firstly, the acceptability and changeability of capitalist democracy connected the historical sociological research in all the three post-war phases. Secondly, the political and ideological changes in the internal and external relations of Western capitalist democracy led to the research topics of historical sociology in these phases” (Smith, 2000:224). Yang (2019) made a similar summary as well, “historical sociology is about the history of modern state and, in the process of studying modern state, historical sociologists summed up the political paths of modern state in formation, the class relations in the process, revolution, democracy, nation, and other major subjects.” See Yang et al. (2019). On the Disciplinary Resources of Political Science: What Did Chinese Political Science Learn and Contribute? CASS Journal of Political Science 1.
We are clear about at least one thing—the framers of the American constitution were obviously against partisan politics and would not agree with a competitive partisan system (see the tenth paper of Federalist Papers).
Ch’ien (2011: 2–7) touched on this topic.
Zhou (2019) said when commenting on the research of government in recent years, “in the research in the past few decades, many characteristics and facts about the operation of the Chinese government were discovered, but they are highly overlapping yet isolated… though the characteristics of state governance summed up in such theories are highly overlapping, an intrinsic and coherent underlying logic and internal mechanism is still missing.”.
For detailed discussions, please see Yao (2016: 54–55).
This concept was brought up by Ren (2019) by analyzing conventional political thoughts.
Lin (2016) took notice of this and noted in his analysis that the internal development logic of China requires that modernization and democratization must be achieved under the premise of “a complete China.” This is what the history requires of China in its modernization.
There is already research on this subject, e.g., Su (2018).
From Book of Documents: Canon of Shun.
From Analects: Zi Lu.
The English edition of the book was published in 1998 and the first Chinese edition in 2000 (Frank, 2000).
Tu Weiming is a firm advocate. See Tu (1989).
Hence, the so-called “liberal imperialism.” See Pitts (2012).
There are discussions on this topic in another book by the author of ReORIENT in collaboration with another. See Frank and Gills (2004).
Voegelin's Order and History (Vol. 4): Ecumenic Age is on this subject, but the discussion is not thorough.
Taking Wallerstein (1998) for example, the subtitle of the book shows that he believes the world system did not emerge until the capitalist mode of production was developed in West and North Europe.
One of the most important studies on this subject is Wan (2014).
Zhao Tingyang is critical of this stance. See Zhao (2005: 84–105).
This topic has been analyzed by Wan Ming, See Wan (2014: 51–59).
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Yao, Z. Agenda of Historical Political Science in China. Chin. Polit. Sci. Rev. 7, 29–61 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41111-021-00203-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41111-021-00203-3