惊变与重组:维尔达夫斯基的政治文化研究

Surprise and Restructuring:Wildavsky's Study on Political Culture

政治文化时常被视为一个静止的、缺乏活力的概念,多数学者认为它偏好"稳定性",难以解释现实生活中的各种政治变化。维尔达夫斯基的文化模式理论另辟蹊径,尝试突破前辈学者过多关注政治文化静态层面的局限性,挖掘出其动态机制,力图将政治文化与政治变化统一起来。根据维尔达夫斯基的研究,可以找到政治文化变化的两条常见路径——"惊变"与文化重组。

This paper mainly explains the paths of changes in political culture, which was deeply studied by Wildavsky who was one of the most significant representatives of political cultural renaissance in the western countries during the 1980s and the 1990s. As we know, most scholars consider political culture as the safety net of maintaining the social stability and as the antithesis of changes in political culture, think that political culture is a set of political attitudes, political habits and political beliefs which is formed by the mechanism of ＂socialization＂, and emphasize that it prefers stability and it is very difficult to use ＂political culture＂ to explain lots of political changes in the real world. Thus we could inevitably say that it is a static concept without vigor. Of course, this kind of ＂stability＂ is compared with great changes or shifts in the field of society, economy and politics, and people often use this concept to explain the differences in social, economic and political shifts among various countries （or communities）, and therefore, it has become a very important research method in the field of comparative politics. However, if we want to explain political changes in only one country （or community）, it may become a very hard thing for those traditional theories of political culture which focused on ＂stability＂. Based on the current research situation, Wildavsky＇ s Culture Theory found a new way to attempt to break through pre^scholars＇ studies which paid more attention to the static state of culture, tried to illustrate the interactive relationship between political beliefs and social system, explored political culture＇s dynamic mechanisms, and finally advanced the combination of political culture and political changes. According to Wildavsky＇s study, we could find two common paths that how political culture changed： ＂surprise＂ and culture restructuring. Firstly, when the reality deviated from people＇s expectations all the time, then ＂surprise＂ would occur, and in the end people might turn to find another political culture pattern （or way of life） which fits with the present world more neatly. At that time, there would be great changes in political culture. Secondly, in the countries （or communities） such as America, whose political culture is diverse or plural, for the purpose of getting acclimatized to the new surroundings, different political culture patterns （or ways of life） would frequently ally with other ways of life, or break their alliance and even choose to ally again- that is to say culture restructuring which could be properly used to explain the political shifts in a country （or community） with cultural diversity. Thus we can see that Wildavsky＇s Culture Theory follows particular patterns and rules in interpreting changes in political culture and this theory＇s strong points are obvious. The more important is that we could find corresponding cases in our country or others for these two paths of changes in political culture as mentioned before, and that would give us much more valuable enlightenment to understand the changes in political culture. The innovation of this paper is that it combed through Wildavsky＇ s study on the paths that how political culture changed, and at the same time illuminated its extensihle significance combined with some examples at home and abroad. There are very few similar studies on this matter in our China presently.