Comparsion Studies On The Methodology Of State-building Theory In The US And China

Comparison is one of the most important source to develop the political theory.The research on the state and state-building by the American political science started with Thomas Woodrow Wilson in the end of 19 century and the beginning of 20 century.But, state and state-buidling is not the hottest topic in the field of American political science until the wave of “bring the state back” comes onto the stage in the 1980 s. Since that, a number of American famous political scientist such as Charles Tilly and Francis Fukuyama have done lots of research on the perspectives of Nation-State, the range and capacity of a state. At the same time, Chinese scholar began to talk about morden nation-state in the beginning of 20 century. But in that period the research on state in China is based on the introduction and the translation of Western theories, and lacks of the localization. Compare to the US, the morden research on State-building in China began with the introduction of the term “state-building” by some Chinese scholars like Wang Shaoguang. After that Chinese scholars have done numerous work on localization.Since then, the research track in China and the US have become different.Methodology is the basic methods for people to know and change the world. To some extent, the history of research in China and the US decided by the methodology.Simply speaking, the history of research in the US switched from the qualitative method to the quantitative method, and today both two methods are existing under the form of state-building theory. However, Chinese research rely too much on the qualitative method which limited the development of this research. In this paper, the author compare the methodology of Chinese research with the US in the perspectives of historism and positivism. And this paper concluded that compare to the US Chinese research should pay attention to the quantitative method. On the one hand, this helps to expand the range of research. On the other hand, this also makes the theory more persuasive. In the end, the research on the methodology could improve the level of state-building theory and the Chinese political science. Also, the research provided aintellectual support to the goal of “the modernization of the systems and capacity of governance”.