Political Culture and the Study of Chinese Politics

It is both a truth and a truism that Chinese politics cannot be understood without reference to Chinese culture (a truth and truism that would apply to any other society as well). But within the academic discipline of political science political culture has lost status over the past generation as not conducive to the development of empirical political theory. The usual candidate for replacement is rational choice theory. But properly understood, political culture is compatible with rational choice, inasmuch as there is no single standard of rationality, but, rather, it will vary from society to society and era to era. Considerations of the cultural background are necessary to provide content to rational choice theory, since without consideration of culture context rational choice threatens to reduce to a set of colorless banalities.

Peter R. Moody Jr.Email:

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Peter Moody   is Professor of Political Science at The University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana. Moody specializes in Chinese politics. His more recent book is Conservative Thought in Contemporary China (2007). He is editor of China Documents Annual and book review editor of Review of Politics. He has written on Chinese politics, Asian international affairs, Chinese political thought, international relations theory, and theory of political parties.