Structure, History, and Behavior—Reconstructing Political Science through Historical Institutionalism

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Features: This book employs the historical and logical unification method used in Marxist historiography of ideas and draws on relevant research findings from modern Western philosophy of science. It examines the academic value of historical institutionalism as a research paradigm from the perspective of paradigm shifts in the development of political science. The book argues that the traditional paradigm of political science research, old institutionalism, is filled with internal contradictions. The behaviorist and rational choice theories that replaced it did not resolve these internal contradictions either. Historical institutionalism, on the other hand, builds upon certain technical methods of behaviorism and rational choice theory, revives institutional research within political science, alleviates its internal contradictions, and, through the establishment of a institutional perspective, provides a new theoretical analytical framework for contemporary political science research.