基层治理研究:当下反思、必要共识及未来想象

Grassroots Governance Research:Reflections,Consensus and Prospects

作为社会科学研究的重要领域,基层治理勾连了国家-社会关系、政府层级关系、社会领域内的微观行为,是解读中国之治的“富矿”所在,因此也吸引了多学科的研究者。由于研究领域及研究者的特征,这一领域非但议题庞杂,也充满了方法的争议、视角的竞争。基层治理研究应以寻求因果解释性知识为使命;这就意味着共同体须基于共享的宏观理论话语、中层理论概念和微观经验命题,在研究问题的提取、分析要素的设计与方法的选择上形成必要的共识,追求可嵌入到既有研究领域脉络中的共享性因果机制解释。在未来,这些局部性、竞争性的机制模型,可为共同体进一步探索基层治理的一般性、一致性知识提供元素;计算社会科学方法的出现可望为基层治理研究的范式转型开辟道路,基层治理的“一般原理”亦将极可能以前所未有的形式出现。

As an important area of social science,grassroots governance,which becomes the nexus of statesociety relations,hierarchical relations,and micro behaviors in the social sphere,is a rich deposit for interpreting China's governance logics and attracts plenty of scholars from different fields.Due to the characteristics of both research paradigm and scholars,this field is saturated by diversified topics,methodology controversies,and competing perspectives.The research of grassroots governance pursues causal and explanatory knowledge.The academic community of grassroots governance should reach the consensus on the question formation,the analytical factors design and the methods selection based on shared macro-theories,middle-level concepts and micro-empirical propositions,exploring common mechanisms that can be embedded in the vein of the field.In the future,the local and competing mechanisms may provide factors for the academic community to further explore the general and consistent knowledge.The emergence of computational social science is expected to promote the paradigm shift,and the"general principles"of grassroots governance will most likely appear in an unprecedented form.Devoting to the paradigm shift is the academic obligation for Chinese scholars to the modernize national governance and pursue the autonomy of the social science.