美国主流政治学期刊的中国政治研究:脉络、议题、方法、前景

Chinese Politics in Leading American Political Science Journals: Methods, Genealogy, Issues, Prospects

海外的中国政治研究已经走过百年历程。国外学者开展中国政治研究的视角、方法和路径对于本土的中国政治研究具有重要的参考和借鉴意义。对美国主流政治学期刊的中国政治研究的梳理分析发现,一方面,美国期刊中的中国政治研究在过去的一百多年经历了前所未有的转变并取得了较好的学术效果。这首先表现在研究议题从比较单一的宏观主题向更加丰富的中观和微观层次主题转型。其次,开展中国政治研究的方法也从简单的描述性分析发展为多元化的但以定量分析为主的方法论取向。另一方面,美国期刊中的中国政治研究也遭遇了发展的瓶颈。这体现在美国的中国政治研究与中国本土的中国政治研究之间存在着鸿沟(“向东”鸿沟),与美国的主流比较政治学之间也存在着鸿沟(“向西”鸿沟)。美国主流政治学期刊中的中国政治研究的发展前景取决于如何跨越两大鸿沟,进而实现新的学科定位并做出新的理论贡献。

Chinese politics study in other countries has been existed for morethan a hundred years. Foreign scholars perspectives, methods and approaches to study Chinese politics can generate important experiences and lessons for domestic scholars in China. This paper conducts a systematic analysis of Chinese politics research papers in leading American political science journals. On the one hand, Chinese politics research published by American journals has underwent unprecedented changes in the past century with quite satisfying results. Firstly, research issues have transformed from monotonous macro topics to meso and micro topics. Secondly, original research methods based on descriptive analysis have evolved into a new methodological orientation characterized by quantitative analysis. On the other hand, we find that Chinese politics research in American journals has faced new development bottlenecks. This is exemplified by the gap between America s Chinese politics research and China s Chinese politics study (also known as the “eastern gap”) and the gap between America s Chinese politics research and America s mainstream comparative politics (also known as the “western gap”). The prospect of Chinese politics research in American leading political science journals depends on how to bridge these two gaps in order to find a new disciplinary niche and make innovative theoretical contributions.