Overview of European politics studies by Chinese researchers

---Translated by Zhao Chen

Summary: Under the joint efforts, Chinese researchers have made remarkable progress in European politics study since the new century. This article is to introduce the domestic researches during this period from three aspects: European Union politics, politics of member states, and party politics. On EU politics, it will tide up the main focus of the domestic researches from both the empirical studies and theoretical introduction, including the selection of the research topics and the background, research direction and the development, and the methodology. On politics of member states, the authors attempt to demonstrate the overall studies of the EU member states from four aspects: political thoughts, political systems, history of political development and political leaders. On European party politics, it expounds on the current domestic studies from three perspectives: ideology, nation states and European integration. In addition, the three parts also discuss the shortages of the current studies and make suggestions. Building theoretical structure and academic innovation is the direction that we should make long-term efforts to.

Key words: European politics, European Union politics, member state politics, party politics

Because of historical and realistic reasons, Chinese researchers have always been paying great attention to European politics studies, with significant achievements. Since the 21st century, there has been remarkable progress in the breadth and depth in this field. We will introduce the Chinese studies during this period from European Union politics, member state politics and European party politics.

I. European Union Politics

As European integration evolves, European Union politics has been increasingly important in Chinese European studies. Especially since the new century, the academic productions in terms of both quality and quantity have a new leapfrog, showing the Chinese scholars progress in their attention and their recognition to the issue[1].

We will briefly introduce the main focus of the Chinese researches from both the empirical and theoretical studies, including the selection of the research topics and the background, research direction and the development, and the methodology.

    (I)The empirical research of EU politics

The empirical research mainly focuses on the EU’s actual development progress and status quo, and it is a description and interpretation of the actual status of European integration. Because it is related to the facts and experience, it has irreplaceable significance as the realistic basis for us to recognize and judge EU development and even make according policies. On general, there are two types of main focuses of the Chinese scholars.

    (1)The studies of important realistic issues. It mainly covers five aspects. Firstly, the tracking of EU development. It mainly refers to the overview and evaluation of the EU developments including the major events and the situation periodically or in specific time, and the forecasting of the future trend. Secondly, the studies of major integration progress. The EU constitutional progress, the signing and coming into effect of Lisbon Treaty, and EU’s expanding have received great attention of the Chinese scholars[2].  Thirdly, some hot issues, eg, Nice Convention, 9.11 and European security, Iran nuclear issues, etc[3]. Fourthly, EU’s position and roles, especially the exemplary effects under the background of global strengthened multilateralism[4]. Fifthly, China Europe relationship. In view of the benefits of the cooperation under bilateral or multilateral framework, the discussions of the realistic foundation and mechanism of strengthening cooperation, especially the reason for the freezing of the bilateral ties is another study focus of the Chinese scholars[5].

    (2)EU’s system, policy and nature. This focuses on institutional innovation and nature studies, constituting the major part of the domestic research. It mainly covers:

    Firstly, the supranational institutions’ establishment, operation and evolution. There are quite a few researches on European Commission, EU Ministers Council, European Parliament and European Court of Justice. The focuses are on their roles, decision-making process, the evolution of their interaction, and the trend[6]. 

    Secondly, the policy research. From the perspective of function, the policy research relates to European integration’s fields and the measures, thus it is very valuable. The range and the path of research topics are very board, as shown in: A. starting from the EU’s uniqueness, the researches discuss the general feature of the complexity of the policies. Some researcher identified five fields and summarized three features[7]. B. the researches cover both the economic policies such as agriculture, competition and trade union, and also high-level politics, i.e. the two pillars of “Common Foreign and Security Policy” and “Justice and Home Affairs Cooperation ”; the researches cover both domestic policies and also foreign policies. C. from different angles and phases, the researches discuss some significant policies which have great impact on the whole situation such as the Common Foreign and Security Policy. As a result, we now have a systematic and comprehensive understanding of the policies, including its background, reasons, goals, content, legal basis and the practice, the involvement of supranational institutions, implementation and the problems, future trend and the impact both at home and abroad, and etc[8]. The researches can immediately reflect the latest development of policies, for example, in the Common Defence Policy[9].

    (3)EU’s political nature. This is about the judgement of EU’s fundamental nature. The EU mechanism has been evolving with constant innovations, and thus it triggers many discussions. In the final analysis, it has two layers of the issue. One is whether sovereignty can be separated. The answer to this question constitutes the precondition and basis of judging EU’s nature. On the one hand, some researchers think sovereignty cannot be “separated”, not to mention “yielded”. EU’s integration is relatively high, but it is just member states “authorize” supranational institutions some functions, so EU is simply a union of the sovereignty countries. On the other hand, most scholars think sovereignty can be separated, arguing the “transfer and sharing of sovereignty” is EU’s essential feature. EU’s integration is far beyond the ordinary international organizations, but not to the extent of a sovereignty state. This is the consensus of the majority researchers, but different people have different opinions on how to define such a model.

    (II)Theoretical research and reference

    Strengthening the studies of western European integration theory is one of the most prominent research angels of the Chinese scholars in the ten years, as in the following aspects:

    (1) The focus on the introduction and evaluation of the theories, as represented in at least three parts: firstly, to comprehensively and systematically introduce all typical theoretical schools, such as Federalism and Confederalism, Functionalism and Neo-functionalism, Inter-govermentalism and Liberal inter-governmentalism, Governance theory (including governance structure and governance network analysis) and Neo-institutionalism (including Rational choice institutionalism, Historical institutionalism and Social institutionalism), Social constructionalism and European identity[10]. Secondly, the comparative studies of the various theoretical schools[11]. Thirdly, on the basis of translating the latest theories, the researchers summarize and generalize three approaches and three paradigms. The three approaches are the ones of international relations, comparative politics and paradigm analysis. And the three corresponding paradigms are: explanatory (to explain what is the incentive for the integration), analytical (to analyze EU’s political system and governance) and constructive (to refer to EU’s political system and its future). Thus, the framework of the theoretical schools is clearer and more generalized[12].

    (2) To interpret the integration theory along with the EU development practice. For example, regarding to EU’s cooperation in high politics after the cold war, some scholars elaborated various schools of thoughts and utilized the European integration practice to further test contributions and limitations of the theories[13].

    (3) To take the advantage of the related theories to analyze the practical issues. Different from the above two focuses, this emphasizes on case studies with theories as the tool. In recent years, the theories of governance[14] and democracy legitimacy and Constructionalism become the focus of domestic studies[15].

    In general, with both the realistic and academic drive, the Chinese studies of EU politics has made remarkable progress in both the empirical studies and theoretical tracking. From the empirical studies, the domestic researches cover widely no matter the practical issues or the essence of EU. It is worth noting the focus of paying attention to theoretical reference and pursuing the research depth. It is also beneficial that the talent pool is enlarging and their research is diversified as well as stabilized. However, there are also shortages and drawbacks. For instance, on empirical studies, due to unavailability of the research materials, there are few products on EU’s decision-making process and the bargaining, and the individual cases of Europeanization. On the theoretical studies, the Chinese scholars mainly focus on introduction and learning from the western theoretical paradigms. It is the future direction that Chinese scholars should work to realize innovation by bringing Chinese perspectives and thinking features into play.

II Politics of Member States

In this chapter, the author will present the research products on the politics of member states from the four aspects: political thoughts, political system, history of political development and political leadership.

    (I)Political thoughts

In the recent decade, there have been two waves that Chinese scholars pay attention to European political philosophy. One is in 2001 when German philosopher Jurgen Habermas and French philosopher Jacques Derrida paid a visit to China. Another is in 2003 after Iraq War broke out, Habermas and Derrida, along with several other European leading scholars on philosophy and politics wrote a series of papers on European mainstream journals to raise the differences between Europe and US.

At present, most works by European philosophers such as Habermas and Derrida have been translated into Chinese.  The Chinese scholars on political philosophy have had the in-depth interpretations of German Frankfurt School and French post-Constructionalism. There have been some excellent middle-aged and young researchers[16]. In addition, the main works of some famous political socialists and political economists, such as Ulrich Beck and Anthony Giddens have been translated to Chinese[17]. And there are quite a few introduction articles. 

On political thoughts, Chinese researchers have showed unprecedented enthusiasm towards European social democracy model within the ten years. In 2007, Yin Xuyi published a book On Democratic Socialism[18], expounding the changes in theory and organizational structures of the European socialistic democratic parties in different historical terms, and discussing the reasons of the transformation and development of European socialistic democracy. Zhao Yongqing’s book Model Research of German Democratic Socialism gave an in-depth analysis of the world view, values, concept of state and opinions of German socialistic democracy. It particularly expounded the root of thoughts and historical development of German’s unique system---public voting (i.e. workers have the right to participate in the decision-making of enterprises). This book fills the void of other European countries socialistic democracy model research besides Sweden.

    (II)Political system

The study of the political systems of European countries is China’s traditional academic field, and the achievement in the recent ten years is significant. The textbook West Europe Politics[19] edited by Gu Junli is a pioneering work of politics in European countries with the approaches of comparative politics. It generalized the features of the political systems of west European countries and contrasted the difference between different countries. Regarding to the introduction and analysis of government and politics of each country, there are Hu Kangda’s book UK Government and Politics[20] and Gu Junli’s Germany Government and Politics[21].

On particular political system, the number of works on congress system is the biggest. For example, the National People’s Congress organized the compilation of a series of books of foreign countries congress system, including Gan Chaoying’s German Parliament[22], Xu Zhenzhou’s French Parliament[23], and Liu Jianfei, Liu Qiyun and Zhu Yansheng’s UK Parliament[24]. This is the first set of books on the study of foreign congress systems, and it is very valuable.

Since 1980’s, under the guidance of Neo-Liberalism, the governments of west European countries have begun to decentralize. For example, France was reflecting its centralization model, UK and Holland began the “new public management campaign” and “regional governance”, and Germany was taking steps to “loose weights of the state”, in order to increase government efficiency and improve the service quality by loosening controls, decentralization and privatization. The Chinese administration management scholars wrote a great amount of papers and books to introduce and evaluate the west European countries measures, for instance Chen Guoshen’s book From Being Traditional to Modern: the Change of UK’s Regional Governance[25] and Cao Xianqiang’s book Contemporary UK’s Public Service Reform[26].

    (III)History of political development

Among the works of the political history of contemporary European countries, Wu Guoqing’s Political History of Post-War France: 1945-2002[27]is an outstanding one, giving a detailed account of French political history. Lian Yuru’s New World Politics and German Diplomatic Policy: on New Germany[28] explored the relationship between Germany’s political system, political culture and party changes and Germany’s foreign policy from the perspective of international relations, connecting both the domestic affairs and foreign affairs. Xin Qiang’s Integrated to Europe: the Change of German Society after the WWII[29]is a valuable systematic work on German political society and national awareness changes from the perspectives of history and culture.  

    (IV)Political leadership

Political leaders’ personality and experiences will usually have an impact on a country’s political decision-making. The study of political leaders is an indispensible part of political studies. For the leaders of US and Russia, there will be systemic introduction or even biographies for them once they come into power. But for European leaders, the Chinese researchers could not produce the research products so immediately. And usually there were only translation works, but not original works. In recent years, the situation has improved. For example, Cao Songhao in 2010 published  a book Rebel and Romance: Sarkozy, soon after Sarkozy was elected president.

In general, in the recent decade, there has been great progress as shown in followings: first, the academic introduction of political thoughts, political reforms and major events of European countries, and new academic views and metrology have updated very quickly, or even simultaneously. Second, the range of the political systems and political development history of the European countries has been wide, even including some small countries. Thirdly, there have been some special studies and comparative studies of the countries political systems and administration systems. Fourthly, some Chinese scholars and diplomats have written the biographies of some European leaders, and evaluated them through their personal experience and direct contacts from Chinese perspective. Besides the above areas, some political researches with European characteristics such as environmental politics[30] have made great progress too.

However, there is room for improvement for the European politics studies in methodology and innovation. For example, there is a lack of macro structure of comparative studies of the nations, and the research methods of European party systems and administration systems are not systematic. There are no comprehensive comparative studies of European Communist party and Socialism. In addition, some important thinkers are not covered yet in China, such as Ralf G. Dahrendorf, whose works have not been introduced or translated enough. In administration management and reform research, the Chinese scholars have begun to discuss about “governance”, but there is a void of theoretical interpretation of governance.

III. Party Politics

Party politics study is also a major field in China. According to the preliminary statistics of the country’s main four libraries, the number of the works with the key words of “party”, “party system”, “party politics”, “ruling mode” etc. is 6,029[31]. The number of articles is much bigger. The study of party politics mainly refers to the study of theories and practices of party politics, covering the concept and general theories of party politics, party’s ideology and guidelines, party’s structure, system and functions, party’s involvement into politics, and party’s reforms.

Chinese researchers have studied the European parties from different perspectives. From the ideology aspect, there are studies of the left wing to the right wing; from the regional aspect, there are studies of the parities in different European countries; from European integration aspect, there are studies of the relationship between European integration and European party politics.

    (I)Party politics and ideology

Ideology is the theoretical foundation for forming the party, and also the important source of party’s legitimacy. Some scholars conducted the party politics research from ideology perspective, for example the studies of the left-wings (Communist party, Social party, Social Democratic party, and Labour party, etc.), the study of the right-wings (for instance the Conservatives), and the study of Green party and other extremist parties.

    (1)Traditional left-wing parties

Firstly, there are many works focusing on British Labour party’s modernization and the development of “the third way”. For example, Xie Feng’s A Study on the Third Way of British Labour Party analyzed the forming, theory and practice of the third way[32]. 

Secondly, some works focus on European countries mid-left-wing parties. For example, Cao Changsheng’s German Social Democratic Party between the Two World Wars[33] gave an account of the development of German Social party between 1914 and 1945. Zhang Xiaojin’s compilation From Functional Socialism to Fund Socialism[34] studied the Socialism theory and practice of Sweden Social Democratic Party.

In addition, some researchers conducted comparative studies of the European Social Democratic parties, paying special attention to the election victory of the west European left-wing parties in late 1990’s and the declining situation today.

At last, some works focus on the history, present situation and future development of European Communist party. For instance, Jiang Hui’s “The Present Situation and Future Development of Communist Party in Advanced European Countries”[35] delved into three relations that would impact the Communist parties in European countries: the relations between tradition and reform, relations between activities inside and outside parliament, and relations between domestic policy and foreign policy.

    (2)Right-wing parties

In general, the studies of right-wing parties are less than the left-wings. For example, He Jun’s “A Study on the rise and decline of British Conservative Party since the WWII” [36]explored the reason of the party’s ups and downs from its thought, policy, organization, leadership and etc.  

    (3)New Green party

The Green Party has grown rapidly in recent years, as an insignificant political force. Huan Qingzhi’s A Study on European Green Party[37] comprehensively analyzed the European Green Party’s history development, political platform and theoretical foundation from the perspective of the party’s political theory significance.

    (4)Extremist parties

With the impact of European extreme right-wing parties growing on traditional party structure, the Chinese researchers who study extreme right-wing parties are increasing accordingly. For example, Gao Qiqi’s “Europe new left-wing and extreme right-wing party politics”[38] pointed out the similarities between the two in that they are both anti party system, short of formal organizational construction and extreme in ideology.

    (5)New parties

Some scholars think due to the profound change of economical and social structure, the traditional party politics which were divided by ideology are challenged. Some new parties which go beyond the ideological boundary are gradually emerging in European political arena. As Ren Junfeng said in his article “Post-Industrialism, Post-Material, and Party”[39], since 1960’s, people’s basic values have changed since the arrival of post-industrialism society, and this had an impact on north European parties: firstly, the basis of discrepancy of parties shifted from class to agenda; secondly, the party’s political spectrum has become more and more diverse and complex; thirdly, the party royalty of voters has weakened. 

    (II)Party politics in EU member states

Some Chinese scholars study European party politics from the regional perspective, producing the country-oriented party politics works. For example, Sun Jie’s British Party Politics and Welfare System[40] studied the welfare platforms of British two main parties---Conservative Party and Labour Party, and examined the impact of the parties changes on the welfare policy’s consistence and efficacy.

There are also some works focusing on the parties election performance and the election impact on party politics. For example, Gu Junli’s “The Policy Tendency of German Coalition Government”[41] studied the parties platforms during German election and the impact of election.

Some Chinese researchers pay attention to the party’s organizational structure, focusing on the parties themselves organizational charts, activities pattern and internal structural relations. For instance, in the article of “Comparative Studies of Foreign Parties Grassroots Organization” by Xu Feng and Zhu Xiqun, they stress on the system background, party membership enrolment, rights and function, grassroots organization establishment  and organizational structure, function and activities, and challenges and transformation of foreign parties grassroots organizations[42].

Many Chinese scholars also pay attention to the European parties tackling the new challenges, such as globalization, financial crisis and post-industrialization. Zhang Shipeng’s “The Study of Crisis and Reform Prospect of European Parties Politics System---Starting from Germany”[43] argued that the main problem of German parties is that they are lack of a clear leadership core, and their political crisis is firstly reflected in thoughts and theories. Luo Yunli’s “West European Party Politics Crisis and its Interpretation”[44] said the west European party politics crisis is due to the huge changes of social structure and nation states, the challenges from the new agents such as mass media and NGOs, as well as the mainstream parties self-initiated reforms. Shi Zhiqin’s Globalization and World Parties Changes[45] studied the development and changes of the world party politics under the globalization background.

    (III)European integration and party politics

European integration process has greatly changed the basic structure of European politics, and profoundly impacted on the domestic political operation of the European countries, therefore, it has significant influence on both the political environment of European parties, and the European party organizations. From the member states perspective, European integration’s impact on party politics is demonstrated by the parties’ European policy and the influence on the parties themselves. For example, some works studied the party’s historical background, ideology and platforms, and examined the relationship between these factors and specific European integration policy. Some scholars study the parties’ difference on the issue of integration. For instance, Tao Tao’s West European Social Party and European Integration[46] delved into the relations between west European social parties and European integration, i.e. the west European social party’s attitudes towards European integration, the party’s policy of and evaluation on European integration, and the party’s changes during the integration process.  

From the perspective of EU, party politics is mainly reflected on European parliamentary groups and parties alliance operation. Since the party politics on the phase of EU is still exploratory, some scholars carried out conducive attempts in the field. Wang Mingjin’s Transnational Parties under European Coalition Background[47], starting from European transnational parties emerging and development, organization and structure, mechanism and functions, studied the significance of European transnational parties in the area of governance.

In general, Chinese studies on party politics can be summarized as follows: firstly, party politics research has achieved overall fruitful results. Secondly, there are unbalanced research products of party politics: there are much more works on parties and party politics practice than theoretical studies, especially, the dominant theoretical paradigms were raised and built by foreign scholars. Chinese studies on party politics are left behind in theoretical building and innovation. Therefore, Chinese scholars should enhance theoretical studies of party politics, including party ideology, party’s ruling theories, party organization changes, party functions, etc. Thirdly, Chinese scholars pay more attention to European left-wing parties, including social party, social democratic party and labour party, etc, but too less to the mid-right-wing parties. There is a gap between the two in terms of both research quality and quantity. Fourthly, there is shortage in comparative studies of parties and party politics. Chinese scholars should strengthen the comparative studies of European party politics theories and practice, producing more academic works with theoretical value and of practical reference. Fifthly, with the deepening of European integration, European parties are bound to seek the solutions in the whole Europe. There is a need to study from the perspective of European integration and party politics.

Conclusion

In conclusion, since the new century, Chinese European politics studies, including EU politics, member states politics and party politics have made significant progress in research width and depth, theoretical exploration and methodology, and talent pool, as proved by the quality and quantity of the research products within the ten years. Of course, due to various reasons, there are shortages in the above three main research fields. The most prominent and fundamental shortage of all is that there is big room for theoretical building and academic innovation. And this requests all the Chinese researchers long-time efforts.

Author: Wu Xian, Professor, Chief of European Politics Department, Institute of European Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Zhao Chen, Associate Professor, Sub-Chief of European Politics Department, Institute of European Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Zhang Lei, Lecturer, European Politics Department, Institute of European Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences