Lucian Pye Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Lucian Pye (1921–2008) was a political scientist known for his work on Chinese politics. Pye was born Bai Luxun in Fenzhou, Shanxi Province, China. After receiving a bachelor of arts in 1943 from Carleton College in Minnesota, he entered the U.S. Mar ine Corps and became an intelligence officer posted in China. After being discharged, Pye entered graduate school at Yale University, earning a master of arts in 1949 and a doctorate in philosophy in 1951. His dissertation, “The Politics of Tuchinism in North China, 1920–1927: An Aspect of Political and Social Change in Modern China,” focused on the warlord system of politics in 1920s China.

In 1949, Pye joined the faculty of Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, where he remained until 1952. He became a faculty member at the Center for International Studies of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1956, and he spent the next thirty-five years there, becoming one of the leading scholars of Chinese and Asian politics.

Pye also was active outside academic institutions. He was a consultant to the Department of State and the National Security Council (NSC) on China and advised presidential candidates John F. Kennedy and Henry M. Jackson. In addition, Pye held leadership positions in a number of organizations. He was a trustee of the Asia Foundation (1963–2004) and a member of the board of directors of the Council on Foreign Relations (1966–1982). He cofounded and served as an acting chair of the National Committee on United States–China Relations and helped set the stage for the 1971 “ping pong diplomacy” visit of the U.S. table tennis team to the People’s Republic of China.

Pye was president of the American Political Science Association from 1988 to 1989 and was elected a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. He was a founding member of the Committee on Comparative Politics of the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) and chaired it from 1963 to 1972. In 1978, he also helped found the International Society of Political Psychology and in 1994, he was awarded the society’s Harold D. Lasswell Award.

Pye wrote or edited twenty-five books during his career. During the 1950s and 1960s, he wrote about the political development of less developed countries, focusing on specific political cultures. He believed that political culture had an impact on politics in different nation-states and this helped explain why political systems differed from one another. His approach was significant because, rather than relying on rational models of political behavior, he focused on political culture, personal behavior, and other variables that were not easily quantifiable.

Pye’s biography of Mao, Mao Tse-Tung: The Man in the Leader (1976), was significant because he used a psychohistorical approach in an effort to understand the Chinese leader. He analyzed the psychological impact of Mao’s childhood experiences, including his relationship to his mother. Pye suggested that Mao’s feelings that his mother did not give him the attention he deserved made him narcissistic, which could be useful information in considering the rebellious and charismatic leader Mao later became.

In Asian Power and Politics: The Cultural Dimensions of Authority (1985), Pye sought to find common characteristics among a number of Asian political cultures, explaining that Asian nation-states, despite significant differences, were all pursuing modernization as a means to move away from their past. In Asia, according to Pye, pursuing change was a common political theme.

Bibliography:

Pye, Lucian. Asian Power and Politics: The Cultural Dimensions of Authority. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1985.
Chinese Negotiating Style: Commercial Approaches and Cultural Principles. New York: Quorum Books, 1992.
The Dynamics of Chinese Politics. Cambridge: Oelgeschlager, Gunn and Hain, 1981.
Mao Tse-Tung:The Man in the Leader. New York: Basic Books, 1976.
The Spirit of Chinese Politics. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992.
The Spirit of Chinese Politics: A Psychocultural Study of the Authority Crisis in Political Development. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT. Press, 1968.
Martin, Douglas. “Lucian W. Pye, Bold Thinker on Asia, Is Dead at 86.” The New York Times, September 12, 2008, A21.

This example Lucian Pye Essay is published for educational and informational purposes only. If you need a custom essay or research paper on this topic please use our writing services. EssayEmpire.com offers reliable custom essay writing services that can help you to receive high grades and impress your professors with the quality of each essay or research paper you hand in.