Principles of Political Science 21st Century Public Administration Series Textbooks

Author: Jing Yuejin, Zhang Xiaojin
Publisher:
Publication Date: 2006-03-01
Features: The writing of this book took a considerable amount of time from proposal to completion, and even so, we still felt the pressure to revise when delivering it to the publisher. Writing is not like unraveling a cocoon—once you grasp the thread, the rest follows smoothly—but rather an interactive process between thinking and writing. In many cases, it is precisely through the process of selecting and arranging words that one's thoughts become clear. Therefore, for the authors, writing is not just a process of reading, synthesizing, and digesting, but also a process of learning and reflection. Through writing, we have come to understand our own limitations and clarified the direction for further thinking. In this sense, we are on the same journey as the readers. During the writing process, the authors referred to a large number of academic works and similar textbooks, and it is impossible to list them all in the references of this book. Considering the conciseness of a textbook, we have tried to select versions that are more suitable for beginners to read and reduced unnecessary citations, for which we apologize. Nevertheless, the notes in this book may still be more numerous than those in a general textbook. To this end, the authors can only offer a small measure of self-consolation: they may help the readers in further reading and reflection. This book is a product of collective collaboration. The basic framework of the entire book was determined through several rounds of discussion among the editors, while the specific topics and content of each chapter were developed with full autonomy and initiative by the individual contributors. In this enjoyable collaboration, the authors brought in different styles, leaving their own marks in the book in various ways. The final editing did not pursue rigid consistency in language and style, as long as it did not affect the expression of the content, and respected the basic writing style of each chapter's author.