自马克斯·韦伯提出官僚制的理想类型以来，官僚化便为学界视作现代化国家建设的重要方面，构成公共行政学和社会学的重要议题。然而，韦伯式官僚制在非西方国家的既有制度环境中屡遭挫败——各国尽管形式上可能建立了齐全的官僚机构，但其内里却缺乏与之适配的精神伦理，饱受公私不分、效率低下、腐败滋生等问题困扰。官僚化受阻的背后不止关乎当下的社会结构，也有着更为深远的历史文化根源。因此，本文将从韦伯的理论视野出发，迈向一种历史文化视角的公共行政理论，从而在理解官僚化过程中行动者“世界图景”和行为逻辑的基础上，回答以下核心问题：效率导向的官僚化进程何以展开，但为何又最终受阻发展成为家产官僚制？为回答这一问题，拥有两千余年家产官僚制历史的古代中国是合适的研究对象。不同于既有文献行政技术视角下的制度主义静态解释，本文返回到东周时期家产官僚制形成时的历史现场，追寻其思想源头和政治后果。通过思想史的梳理，本文以作为政权合法性基础的“天命观”为分析起点，指出“天命观”不仅使得处于频繁外部战争的统治者感受到强烈的内部统治危机，而且影响了他们在应对危机时的目标设定和途径选择，最终激发了以维护自身政治生存而非效率为导向的工具理性。因此，官僚化并不像传统的战争中心论所认为的，主要围绕财政和军事需求展开，而是同时构成对国内精英的结构调整，使得新涌现的专业官僚取代旧有的、直接导致国内宗法制危机的世袭贵族。本文由此构建理论框架：一方面，诸侯国君受国内贵族的威胁越大，其为了维护自身统治，越有动力推动集权的官僚化改革，而战争构成了重要的手段和契机；而另一方面，随着官僚机构的发展壮大，其本身也会倚仗自身的不可或缺性成为限制国君权力的因素，从而同样的政治生存逻辑也会引发国君对官僚化的阻断。本文进而基于东周史料，首次构建了关于战国时期各诸侯国国内政治和国际战争情况的面板和配对数据集，并通过历史案例和定量分析，实证检验了一系列相关假说，为上述理论框架提供了经验证据。本研究“通过国家形成来研究国家”，有助于发掘公共行政研究的历史文化维度。其所揭示的官僚化背后的传统主义精神和政治生存逻辑，区别于现代理性官僚制赖以成立的法理型权威，一定程度上解释了韦伯式官僚制在非西方国家的发展困境，也对当代中国国家治理体系现代化有深刻启示。
Ever since Max Weber formulated the ideal type of “bureaucracy”, bureaucratization has been considered an integral aspect of state-building and a central concern of public administration and sociology. However, efforts to build Weberian bureaucracy are prone to failure in most non-Western institutional contexts – they result in a Janus-faced bureaucracy composed of formal administrative organizations permeated by inefficiency, nepotism, and corruption. The impediment of bureaucratization not only lies in the current social structure but also roots in the local history and culture. Therefore, this thesis starts with Weber’s theoretical scope and goes towards a public administration theory with a historical and cultural perspective. Through understanding the historical actors’ “world pictures” and action logic, this theory aims to answer how the efficiency-oriented impulse towards bureaucratization is initiated and why it typically gets arrested and ends up with patrimonial bureaucracy.Dominated by patrimonial bureaucracy for more than two thousand years, China makes a suitable case. In contrast to the static institutional explanations from the perspective of administrative techniques, this thesis returns to the critical period in Eastern Zhou when patrimonial bureaucracy took place and traces its ideological origins and political consequences. This thesis argues that the regime legitimacy – the Mandate of Heaven –not only made the rulers facing frequent external wars perceive a strong sense of internal political crisis caused by the patrimonial aristocracy but also influenced their agenda-setting and path-taking. This ultimately stimulated rulers’ instrumental rationality oriented towards political survival rather than efficiency. Hence, bureaucratization, which extended political access to commoners, was beyond mere preparation for military mobilization as expected by the bellicist theory. Instead, it was also rulers’ strategy stimulated by political crises to replace the recalcitrant patrimonial aristocracy and restructure their ruling coalition. This paper then constructs a theoretical framework. On the one hand, internal political crisis influenced bureaucratization not just directly but also indirectly through warfare; on the other hand, when the centralization of rulers’ power facilitated by the bureaucratization reached a certain degree, the political crisis no longer worried rulers in the same way, and patrimonial practices would revive. By hand-collecting historical materials on the Warring States period and constructing original panel and dyadic datasets on major states’ domestic politics and international affairs, the thesis empirically tests a series of hypotheses generated by the framework.This thesis “studies the state through state formation”, contributing to exploring the historical and cultural perspective of public administration theory. It reveals behind the bureaucratization process the spirits of traditionalism and the logic of political survival, which are different from the legal authority on which modern rational bureaucracy was founded. They can account for the predicament of Weberian bureaucracy in non-Western contexts and has profound implications for the modernization of national governance.
