國立臺灣大學政治科學論叢

Abstract / Chinese PDF Download

Due to the Qin’s successful agricultural and military institutional reforms,the Warring States Period ended with unification under the Qin. However, the enduring puzzle is that even though all of the seven major powers had adopted reforms that were aimed at enriching their countries and strengthening their armies, why was the Qin the one to ultimately succeed? This study argues that none of the common explanations found in the literature offer a satisfactory answer to this puzzle, and that it is better understood by supplementing the international relations theory of neoclassical realism with the concept of “critical junctures” emphasized in the historical institutionalist approach of the comparative politics field. Because the Qin experienced a different “critical juncture” from the other six great powers at the beginning stages of its nation-building process, and as a relatively newly-established state that was not influenced by the Western Zhou Dynasty’s feudal arrangements as much as the other six great powers, the Qin had an aristocratic system and interest structure that were different from the other great powers. While the nobles of the other great powers had vested feudal interests in land and in the military that emphasized the legitimacy of bloodlines, Qin nobles emphasized farming and military merit more and ascribed less value to the importance of bloodlines. As a consequence, when Shang Yang promoted a new institutional reform which allowed common people to be promoted to the nobility class according to their performance in farming and warfare, Qin nobles did not resist the reform as much as the nobles in the other great powers did. After the reform was instituted and it was successfully demonstrated that the private rate of return matched with the public rate of return, and that it worked in making the Qin a prosperous country with a powerful army, the reform soon became self-enforcing. This “critical juncture” concept explains why the Qin was able to achieve profound institutional reforms while the other six great powers failed in internally balancing against the rising Qin. The findings of this study not only supplement neoclassical realism with a new causal factor that was long neglected in the literature but also provide an preliminary contribution to the interdisciplinarity among the fields of history, comparative politics, and international relations.