Structure, History And Behavior

The rise of new institutionalism is an extrusive trend in political science after 1980s. Historical institutionalism was virtually the first version of the new institutionalism to emerge in the discipline of political science. As the counteraction of the behavioralism and grand theory, historical institutionalism developed a new theory pattern of institutionalism, in this pattern, it inherited the tradition of attach importance to institutions in old institutionalism on one hand, and integrated the new Marxism and new Webberism on the other hand. Since bring, it continue to enlarge the frame and realm of research, and advance the independence of theory and methods. Now, historical institutionalism is one of the new institutionalisms consistent with sociological institutionalism and rational choice institutionalism.Along with the developing of historical institutionalism, its theoretic influence went on enlarge, and the relative studies about it continued to manifold gradually. There have been three research tropisms to this realm in political science up to now. The research of institutional tropism has emphasized that historical institutionalism is one of the new institutionalisms. The research of public policy tropism has emphasized the important influence of its public policy study. The research of culture tropism has emphasized its concussion to culture theory. All of them have caught hold of some sides of historical institutionalism, but neglected the other sides at the same time. On the base of unification of history and logic, this dissertation aim to illustrate the science value of historical institutionalism in political science on the standpoint of the developing of political science.The postulation of this dissertation is that political science is a special social science. This particularity decides that the standard about the knowledge of political science is the unification of practice and technicality. On the base of this postulation, we can prove that the paradigm of classical political science or the old institutionalism is an ambivalent paradigm. Because the political science is a special science that meet the demands of American political institutions, the special mission of maintains and improves on some regime decides that the attribute of political science is a practice science, a system knowledge that about some special regime. But the political science carried on the tradition of nature science from its beginning. The early political scientists had tried to advance the political science to a general science as nature science. So the political science as a practice science began to conflict with the political science as a general science; the political science as a political enterprise also began to conflict with the political science of an activity of scientific research. This conflict led to the disorganization of the old institutionalism and the restructure of the behavoralism and rational choice theory. But the restructure of the behavoralism and rational choice theory couldn't resolve the inherence contradiction of political science. Because both paradigms treated political science not as a practice science but only a general theoretic science. On the background of the post behavoralism, historical institutionalism rebound the research of institutions through the accepting of some technique of behavoralism and rational choice theory. In the restructuring of the political science, historical institutionalism restate the practice attribute of politicalscience on the one hand, and concern for building the theory at the level middle range by focusing on intermediate institutions on the other hand. Through this approach, historical institutionalists resolved the contradiction of political science, and attained the unification of the practice and technicality of political science. Further more, on the standpoint of institutions, historical institutionalism also provides a new standpoint for the political science. The resurging of the institutions is not a reverting to old institut...