理解中国政治的概念策略——以《理解中国政治:关键词的方法》为研究样本

Conceptual Strategy for Understanding Chinese Politics——Based on the Study Sample of “Understanding Chinese Politics: the Method of Key Words”

如何概括和指称变迁中的中国政治现象,常常是摆在学者面前的一个挑战。毕竟,概念化谬误不仅会造成理解中国政治的障碍,而且会影响中西政治学之间的对话。文章从概念的命名、抽象、分类以及比较等环节出发,试图建立合理的概念策略:首先,在概念命名环节中应注意内涵与外延的严格对应,以避免概念拉伸的风险;其次,当进行比较研究时,可以采用抽象阶梯的方法——通过抽取、分类出某些共同属性并建立一般概念和中层概念——来更好地理解中国政治的"特殊性"。

It is always a challenge for scholars to summarize and name the changing political issues in China. The fallacies of conceptualization not only present barriers to understanding, but also influence scholars＇ dialogue. This paper aims to establish a logical conceptual strategy from different aspects, such as naming, abstracting, cataloguing and comparing. Firstly, to avoid conceptual stretching, the connotation of the concept must be strictly correspondent with its denotation; secondly, to better comprehend Chinese politics, the ＂ladder of abstraction＂ method to construct general and medium - level concepts will be introduced, by way of abstracting and cataloguing the common essence of different objects.