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Date(s)： 2024/10/30
Time： 10:00~12:00
Venue： Archives 2nd Conference Hall
Host： 巫仁恕教授（中研院近史所研究員兼副所長）
Speaker：Prof. R. Bin Wong（Distinguished Research Professor, UCLA）
Organizer： IMH
Abstract, The social sciences program for promoting the formation of modern societies in non-Western world regions presumes that Western societies exhibit important traits that have to be developed in these non-Western world regions. I first discuss the example of the meaning of “good governance” in Western political science and its applications by Western policy makers to their understanding of non-Western countries. I then suggest that history, in particular Chinese history, suggests a far longer period in which the idea of “good governance” was expressed as an ideal and empirically implemented in multiple ways in Chinese history. To the extent that elements of historical “good governance” still matters to some of China’s 21st-century governance priorities, this suggests there is more than one meaning to “good governance” today. I supplement this argument with brief and limited observations on what other scholars have presented as Qur’anic guidance for “good governance.” Identifying the existence of more than the Western formulation of “good governance” means that the concepts of good governance can have different histories and these histories can supply the social sciences with the information that indicate some strategic possibilities for addressing the challenges of explaining good governance specifically and understanding diverse contemporary conditions across the globe more generally.