The Agenda of Political Science in China in the Age of the Great Transformation

The discipline of political science has the distinctive characteristics of the times. The China-US trade war and the epidemic of COVID-19 indicate that the world order is undergoing a great transformation. During such great transformation, the American-style social sciences need a knowledge revolution. As for comparative politics in China, it should be transformed from comparative institutions to comparative state governance. Comparative state governance is much more difficult than comparative institutions, however, the latter could hardly provide new knowledge for political science. At the same time, scholars should turn their attention from international relations to world politics. As an emerging discipline, world politics is a research tradition that examines how the political thought influence the domestic factors and then shape the origin and transformation of the world order as well as international relations. To achieve these goals, the studies of both comparative states governance and world politics can not be without the tradition historical political science.