论西方比较政治研究的“理念转向”:学术背景、基本历程与启示意义

On the “ideational turn” of Western Comparative Political Studies: Intellectual Context, Basic Course and Academic Implications

当代政治学研究越来越注重探究关于理念及其相近(或相关)因素(如文化、话语和政策框架定义)对政治变革和政策变迁的影响的因果关系。本文主要以最近30多年来西方国家比较政治研究中理路清晰、轮廓完整的“理念转向”为关注点,首先,框定了政治研究中所指涉的理念的概念涵义,进而叙述了它得以发生的宏大社会科学背景,还对其基本历程和主要著作做了概要性描述和提示性介绍。其次,文章尝试性地概括出该路向上实证研究中经常涉及到的三组变量关系及其各自的认识进展。最后,在社会科学认识论和方法论意义上,文章总结了该路向的论著所蕴含的启示意义:我们所处的是一个通常处于非平衡状态的社会世界,其中事态变化多由于内生动因,变迁很少是线性的,而变迁结果也就往往难以呈现所谓的正态分布。

Contemporary political science has increasingly focused on exploring the causal relation ship between ideas and their similar(or related)factors(such as culture,discourse,and framing process)for political transform and policy change.This article focused on the clear and comparatively complete clues of“ideational turn”in comparative political studies in Western countries in the past three decades.It first framed the conceptual meaning of the ideas referred to in political science,and then described the grand social science background in which it took place.It also gave a brief descrip tion and suggestive introduction to its history and major works.Based on this,the article tentatively summarized the three sets of variables that are often involved in the empirical study of this approach and their respective cognitive progress.Finally,in the sense of social science epistemology and meth odology,it proposed the implications for political research:what we are in is a social world that is usu ally in a non equilibrium state;the causes are mostly endogenous,and the changes are rarely linear,therefore it is often difficult to present the results by a so called normal distribution.