超越韦伯式国家的国家—社会关系

State-Society Relations Beyond the Weberian State

关于国家—社会关系的研究,从其起源于韦伯的政治社会学传统来看,它继承了几个倾向。不管研究者的具体聚焦点为何,他们都有着就国家及其与社会的关系作出大规模归纳的偏好。关于国家的观念本身也带有传统欧洲国家形式的印记,仍然将其描绘为科层制的、韦伯式的官僚机构。与这种国家观相一致,该领域的分析者往往具有以下特点,即假定国家与社会之间即使并不总是实际上分开,但也可以在分析上作出鲜明的区分。本文指出,事实证明这些传统的研究方法越来越不足以把握国家—社会关系的现实。不仅在发达国家,而且在发达国家之外越来越多的国家,种种趋势都已经改变了韦伯式国家和与之相伴的国家—社会关系的总体类型。社会对国家的影响已经增加,并趋于多样化和采取多种形式。将国家与民族社会联系在一起的社会想象可能也正在逐渐变化。多个领域的研究,从公共政策、公共管理到本地治理、政治文化和经济社会学,都揭示出通过传统国家—社会二分法手段几乎无法充分把握国家—社会关系的重要维度。

From its origins in the Weberian tradition of political sociology, work on state-society relations has inherited several propensities.Regardless of its specific focus, it shares a predilection for large-scale generalizations about the state and its relation to society.Conceptions of the state itself, bearing the imprint of traditional European state forms,continue to portray it as a hierarchical,Weberian bureaucratic apparatus. Consistent with this view of the state, analysts in the field have characteristically presumed that a sharp analytical distinction, if not always an actual separation, between the state and society. This essay demonstrates how these traditional approaches have proven increasingly inadequate to capture the realities of state-society relations. Not only in developed countries but increasingly beyond them, a variety of trends have progressively altered the Weberian state and the overall patterns of state-society relations that accompanied it.Societal influences on the state have also grown, diversified and assumed new forms. The social imaginaries that have linked states with national societies may gradually be changing as well. Work in numerous fields, from public policy and public administration to local governance, political culture and economic sociology, reveals important dimensions of state-society relations that can rarely be fully grasped by means of the traditional state-society dichotomy.