政治学总是为既定政体提供地域性政治知识。伴随着近代中国的民族国家建设, 政治学也经历了四个发展时期。第一, 政治学作为域外政治思想之一种援入中国; 第二, 中国传统知识资源的“政治学化”, 并建立相应的本土政治学谱系; 第三, 作为政治思想阐释——尤其是民主共和思想的传播与阐释——政治学获得其思想形态; 第四, 留学欧美之政治学博士归国设立政治学系所并著书立说, 使政治学从思想之维走向学科学术之维。

Political science can provide a given national political system with regional political knowledge.With the nation-state building in modern China, Chinese political science has gone through four stages.First, it came into China as an outer political theory.Second, politics emerged and stemmed from traditional Chinese knowledge with the building of local political science genealogy.Thirdly, as an approach to interpret political thought, especially with the spread and interpretations of the democratic republic thought, political science acquired its ideological formation.And finally, in China political science developed from a kind of thought to an academic discipline when those who obtained political Ph.D.in USA or Europe came back to China, founding departments of political science in universities, writing their political works and establishing their theories.