新政治经济学:理论演变、分歧与融合

New Political Economics: Theoretical Evolution, Divergence and Integration

新政治经济学从20世纪50—60年代兴起,迄今已延续半个多世纪。作为一个具有较大影响力的经济学分支学科,新政治经济学重新把政治过程纳入人们的视野,并建立了一整套有关政治过程的起源、性质、演变和政策制定与效果的理论,探索出了诸多非常有意义的理论机制。但随着新政治经济学逐步走向繁荣,其内在的理论分歧也越来越明显,新古典范式的坚持与反叛并存,形成了众多细小的分支流派,这也直接导致新政治经济学后来的沉寂。而日渐强大的行为与实验经济学开始渗透到新政治经济学领域,并逐步形成了实验政治经济学、行为政治经济学等新的分支。新的探索还远没有成熟,不足以替代或者复兴新政治经济学。未来如果能够以契约论为共同的理论基础,以社会合作为核心研究主题,构建以有限理性为核心假定的理论逻辑,那么新政治经济学将有可能再次繁荣。

New political economy rose up in 1950 s-1960 s, and this wave has lasted for over half a century.As a branch of economics with great influence, new political economy brought political processes into the domain of researches.In addition, a whole set of theories about the origin, nature, evolution, policy and effect of the political process had been established, and many significant theoretical mechanisms had been explored.But with the prosperity of new political economy, its inherent theoretical differences had become more and more obvious.Persistence and rebellion coexisted in the neoclassical paradigm, which made many small genres formed.This directly led to the silence of new political economy.However, behavioral and experimental economics got powerful and began to permeate new political economy.New branches such as experimental political economics and behavioral political economics has gradually formed.But the new explorations are far from mature enough to replace or revive new political economy.In the future, if researchers can use contract theory as the common theoretical basis, take social cooperation as the core research theme, and use bounded rationality as the core assumption to construct the theoretical logic, new political economy will have the potential to usher in new prosperity.