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Political Science and East Asian Area Studies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Chalmers Johnson
Chalmers Johnson
Affiliation:
Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley
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Extract

Political science “area studies,” or what the American Political Science Association calls “foreign and comparative government and politics” in order to insure that they not be confused with the biggest area study of them all, United States government and politics, have always posed difficulties for the Emily Posts of the discipline. Not a year goes by without a guardian of die methodological flame writing an article bemoaning the “ameoretical” quality of area studies or issuing a warning mat “The immersion in local materials may cast the researcher adrift far from any theoretical shore.”

Type
Research Notes
Information
World Politics , Volume 26 , Issue 4 , July 1974 , pp. 560 - 575
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1974

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References

1 An earlier version of this paper was delivered to a plenary session of die 1973 annual meeting of die American Political Science Associadon.

2 Rustow, Dankwart A., “Modernization and Comparative Polidcs, Prospects in Research and Theory,” Comparative Politics, 1 (October 1968), 44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 My information on publishing trends is based on eight years of membership, two as co-chairman, of the Editorial Committee of the University of California Press. Regarding dissertations in political science, see Sackman, Peter J., “Some Additional Data on Dissertations in Political Science, 1960 and 1970–72,” PS, IV (Winter 1973), 28Google Scholar, table IV.

4 Gordon, Leonard H. D. and Shulman, Frank J., eds., Doctoral Dissertations on China, A Bibliography of Studies in Western Languages, 1945–1970 (Seattle 1972), 199.Google Scholar

5 Lindbeck, John M. H., Understanding China, An Assessment of American Scholarly Resources (New York 1971), 79Google Scholar, table III.

6 For two excellent articles defending area studies, see Ward, Robert E., “A Case for Asian Studies,” Presidential address delivered at the 25th annual meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, March 31, 1973Google Scholar (Ann Arbor, Mich. 1973); and Hazard, John N., “What Future for Communist Area Studies?” Newsletter on Comparative Studies of Communism, IV (February 1971), 3–10.Google Scholar

7 Dray, William, “'Explaining What' in History,” in Gardiner, Patrick, ed., Theories of History (Glencoe, Ill. 1962), 403, 408.Google Scholar

8 Wilson, Richard W., “Chinese Studies in Crisis,” World Politics, XXIII (January 1971). 313.Google Scholar

9 Rustow, (fn. 2), 44.Google Scholar

10 Lijphart, Arend, “Comparative Politics and the Comparative Method,” American Political Science Review, LXV (September 1971), 688–89.Google Scholar

11 Cf. Johnson, Chalmers, “Reformerische und revolutionäre Durchbruchstrategien, Zur vergleichenden Untersuchung gesellschaftlicher Veränderungen,” in Raina, Peter, ed., Internationale Politik in den siebziger Jahren (Frankfurt 1973), 217–27.Google Scholar

12 See, e.g., Johnson, Chalmers, “Chinese Communist Leadership and Mass Response: The Yenan Period and the Socialist Education Campaign Period,” in Ho, P. T. and Tsou, Tang, eds., China in Crisis (Chicago 1968), 1, 397–437.Google Scholar

13 Meyer, Leonard B., Explaining Music (Berkeley 1973), 5.Google Scholar

14 On intelligence estimating, note Klaus Knorr's comment: “One must assume that there exists some sort of operational theory of intelligence, even though most intelligence officers—who, like most other government officials, tend to associate the term [theory] with [long hair] and ivory towers—are apt to flinch, if not blanch, at the thought. Any problem-solving organization will evolve premises, analytical procedures, rules of thumb, and other intellectual practices that are based implicidy, if not explicitly, on hypotheses about the reality and about the kinds of events and consequences they must cope with. Such theory is informal rather than formal, apt to be fragmentary rather than integrated, the cumulative sediment of experience rather than the product of self-conscious endeavor.” “Failures in National Intelligence Estimates,” World Politics, XVI (April 1964), 465–66.

15 Meyer, (fn. 13), 11–13.Google Scholar

16 See, e.g., Gurr, Ted R., “The Revolution—Social-Change Nexus: Some Old Theories and New Hypotheses,” Comparative Politics, V (April 1973), 359–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Johnson, Chalmers, Autopsy on People's War (Berkeley 1973)Google Scholar; Stone, Lawrence, “Theories of Revolution,” World Politics, XVIII (January 1966), 159–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tilly, Charles, “Revolutions and Collective Violence,” in Greenstein, Fred I. and Polsby, Nelson W., eds., Handbook of Political Science (Reading, Mass., fordicoming)Google Scholar; and Zagorin, Perez, “Theories of Revolution in Contemporary Historiography,” Political Science Quarterly, LXXXVIII (March 1973), 23–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 Lijphart, (fn. 10), 684, 685.Google Scholar

18 Verba, Sidney, “Some Dilemmas in Comparative Research,” World Politics, XX (October 1967), 114.Google Scholar

19 Meyer, (fn. 13), 7.Google Scholar

20 Lijphart, (fn. 10), 683, n. 13.Google Scholar

21 For a recent, succinct statement of the truly theoretical concerns of political science, see Raphael, D. D., Problems of Political Philosophy (New York 1970).Google Scholar

22 A few titles, more representative than comprehensive, will illustrate what I am here calling strategic and policy theory: Bauer, Raymond A. and Gergen, Kenneth J., The Study of Policy Formation (New York 1968)Google Scholar; Brodie, Bernard, Strategy in the Missile Age (Princeton 1959)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Braybrooke, David and Lindblom, Charles E., A Strategy of Decision, Policy Evaluation as a Social Process (New York 1963)Google Scholar; Lindblom, Charles E., The Policy-Making Process (Englewood Cliffs, N. J. 1968)Google Scholar; Pryor, Frederick W., Public Expenditures in Communist and Capitalist Nations (London 1968)Google Scholar; Quade, Edward S., ed., Analysis for Military Decisions (Chicago 1964)Google Scholar; Quester, George, Deterrence Before Hiroshima (New York 1966)Google Scholar; Schelling, Thomas C., The Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge, Mass, 1960)Google Scholar; Schilling, Warner R., Hammond, Paul Y., and Snyder, Glenn H., Strategy, Politics, and Defense Budgets (New York 1962)Google Scholar; Snyder, Glenn H., Deterrence and Defense (Princeton 1961)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Wildavsky, Aaron, The Politics of the Budgetary Process (Boston 1964).Google Scholar

23 On the undetermined nature of strategic choices, see Azrael, Jeremy R., “Varieties of De-Stalinization,” in Johnson, Chalmers, ed., Change in Communist Systems (Stanford 1970), 135–51.Google Scholar

24 See, e.g., Johnson, Chalmers, “The Two Chinese Revolutions,” China Quarterly, No. 39 (July-September 1969), 12–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25 Huntington, Samuel P., “The Change to Change: Modernization, Development, and Politics,” Comparative Politics, III (April 1971), 305.Google Scholar

26 See, e.g., ibid.; Willner, Ann Ruth, “The Underdeveloped Study of Political Development,” World Politics, XVI (April 1964), 468–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Kesselman, Mark, “Order or Movement? The Literature of Political Development as Ideology,” World Politics, XXVI (October 1973), 139–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar