西方选举地理学的研究进展

THE TREND AND PROGRESS IN ELECTORAL GEOGRAPHY

选举地理学是政治地理学的重要研究领域之一。本文以Web of Science中选举地理学的学术论文为依据,借助科学计量工具,系统回顾了1982—2018年选举地理学的发展脉络,归纳了西方选举地理学的主要研究领域和研究范式。研究表明:选举地理学主要包括投票地理、选举制度、选区划分、选票转化四个领域;与此相应,西方学界对选举地理的研究范式可归纳为空间分析、地理制图、政治经济学、后结构主义。展望未来,选举地理学在解释中国的地方政治、基层选举、社区自治,以及推动中国政治地理学的学科发展方面将值得期待。

Electoral geography has a long and complex history and once possessed a distinguished status within the discipline of political geography, which focused on relationships among democracy, space and political power involved in election. This dominance decreased after 1980 and the thematic coverage of electoral geography became partially obsolete. While social geography began to deal with more conceptual questions,electoral geography became utterly positivist and sank into its own ’moribund backwater’. Electoral geographers had to face the challenges of renewal. To understand electoral geography better, and to learn how to develop it in a contemporary Chinese context. The paper uses a tool for measurement based on the amounts of research papers—579 articles published mainly in English language journals after 1982—from Web of Science. We have teased the venation of electoral geography development from 1982 to 2018, summarized and analyzed the directions and trends of research on this field. From the perspective of a quantitative literature statistics method. Electoral geography mainly includes four dimensions: The geography of voting, Electoral systems, Redistricting and gerrymandering and ballot/seat conversion, which corresponds to four research paradigms of electoral geography in the western academia: Spatial Analysis, Geographic mapping, Political Economy, Post-Structuralism;the relative concepts and theories of electoral geography, which perhaps explains social movement and public issue, local politics and grassroots election, migration and community autonomous, global geopolitics and diplomatic policy decisions, as well it also facilitates comprehensive knowledge and theoretical system of Chinese political geography.