政治制度会不会趋同：制度学习、去弊与文明治理演化

中文摘要

政治制度是否会随着现代化、全球化与跨国学习而逐渐趋同，是比较政治学、制度主义与政治经济学长期讨论的问题。一种观点强调现代社会面对相似治理任务，可能逐渐采用相近制度安排；另一类研究则指出，历史路径、文化结构、利益分配与制度互补性会持续产生不同制度组合。由此，“制度最终是否统一”并不能通过一个简单的趋同或不趋同命题回答。

Abstract

Whether political institutions will converge under modernization, globalization, and cross-border learning remains a central question in comparative politics, institutional theory, and political economy. Existing accounts pull in opposite directions. One tradition expects similar governance problems to generate similar institutional arrangements; another emphasizes path dependence, cultural meaning, distributional conflict, and institutional complementarities, all of which sustain durable diversity. This article argues that the question cannot be answered adequately by asking whether political systems will ultimately become identical. It proposes the Institutional Learning and Adaptive Evolution Model (ILAEM), which treats political institutions not as indivisible regime types but as configurations of mechanisms performing governance functions: information acquisition, interest expression, coordination, constraint, implementation, public-service provision, feedback, error correction, and cross-level cooperation. On this basis, the article distinguishes formal convergence, functional convergence, and mechanism convergence. It argues that the most plausible long-run pattern is functional convergence with structural diversity: societies may retain different constitutional and organizational forms while selectively learning, translating, adapting, testing, evaluating, and institutionalizing mechanisms that improve information quality, reduce avoidable harm, and strengthen self-correction. The article further develops a nine-stage model of institutional learning, advances nine testable propositions, specifies a multi-level and polycentric approach to governance scale, and sets normative limits on any happiness-oriented theory of governance. Institutional integration, on this account, is neither the victory of one system nor a predetermined world state. It is an open-ended process through which societies may expand a shared repertoire of governance knowledge while preserving legitimate diversity.

关键词：制度学习；制度趋同；政策转移；制度适配；制度互补；渐进制度变迁；多中心治理；人类幸福共同体

Keywords: institutional learning; institutional convergence; policy transfer; institutional complementarity; adaptive governance; polycentric governance; Human Happiness Community