国家何以强大而持久？国家在经济发展、政治变革和社会变迁过程中扮演了何种角色？对于社会科学，尤其是政治学研究来说，“国家”显然具有重要意义：政治学科围绕“国家”主题得以创立，政治学者关注通过国家构建使人类生活走向“善治”。20世纪80年代兴起的回归国家学派给出了关于国家兴衰的一个可能解释：高度的国家自主性是保障国家发展的必要条件。然而，国家享有自主性并等于国家拥有能力。回归国家学派提出的国家能力观，将国家自主性混用于国家能力，认为强国家自主性即强国家能力，弱国家自主性即弱国家能力，背后隐含的是单向度的、国家高踞社会之上的认知；国家-社会二元化对立的理论指导思想更是误导了现实政治的发展。 有鉴于此，本文提出了一个单项国家能力建构的理论框架，也即“国家回应能力”，作为其它具体项国家能力发展的前提，补充到现有的国家能力理论研究框架之中。回应是国家体制对社会成员诉求的遵从，回应能力是国家在全面辨识社会需要的前提下对个人/组织做出常态化反馈的能力。“国家回应能力”的提出依据于国家能力的“时”、“势”流变特性，弥补了国家中心主义者关于国家“强”、“弱”判断的不足之处，纠正回归国家学派偏差的国家-社会关系认知，强调社会主体在国家发展中所发挥的作用。就理论渊源而言，无论是近代自由主义言说还是马克思主义的论述，他们无不指出国家缘起于社会需要，国家的权力来自于社会共同体成员对自身权利的让渡，国家存在的目的在于实现疆域内民众的共同福祉。 国家回应能力的大小受到来自两个维度的影响，一是信息收集的全面程度，二是公共政策的支持程度。前者以真实性、准确性、复合性、整合性作为评价指标，后者以知情度、认可度、反馈度作为评判标准。两个维度分别对应了政策过程中的政策动议、形成和政策执行、反馈环节。在这一基础上，国家的回应分属于“弱信息收集，弱政策支持”、“弱信息收集，强政策支持”、“强信息收集，弱政策支持”、“强信息收集，强政策支持”四种类型。传统中国的回应类型介于Ⅰ、Ⅱ类型之间，当代中国的回应类型介于Ⅲ、Ⅳ类型之间，网络时代信息技术的变革赋予了中国迈向理想类型Ⅳ的可能。一个国家的制度结构、思想文化、公民参与和历史遗产对国家回应能力的影响尤其深远,走向“回应国家”的现实路径也应当从这四个方面着手建立。 文章共分六个部分。第一部分做了文献回顾，梳理了国家能力理论发展的历史脉络和学界关于回应能力的讨论；第二部分在总结回归国家学派理论的逻辑和现实偏差的基础上，根据国家能力的流变特性，提出了“国家回应能力”这一概念；第三部分从理论渊源解释提出“国家回应能力”概念的原因；第四部分搭建了国家回应能力的分析框架，做出了国家回应能力的两个维度和四种类型的区分，并尝试将这一框架应用到对中国历史与现实的讨论；第五部分列举了影响国家回应能力的因素，并指出了加强国家回应能力，通向“回应国家”的具体路径；最后，做一个简短小结。

What makes a country strong and lasting? What roles does the state play in economic development, political revolution and social change? In social science, especially political science, "state" is of great significance: the subject of political science is created based on the issue of the "state", and political scholars pay close attention to the research of leading human life to "good governance" by state building. The statism, which emerged in the 1980s, gave their explanation for the question about how to make a country strong: high state autonomy is a necessary condition for state development. However, state autonomy is not synonymous with state capacity. What hides behind the view that statism advances is that state is above the society. The theory that state and society are opposite to each other mislead the development of political reality. For these reasons, this paper proposed a single state capacity theoretical framework, called "state responsiveness ", which was regarded as the premise of the development of other specific state capacities and added to the existing theoretical research framework of state capacity. Responsiveness is the compliance of one country’s political system to the demands of its citizens, and state responsiveness is a capacity of the state to make regular feedback to individuals/organizations under the condition of obtaining comprehensive social information. The concept of "state responsiveness" is based on the changeable feature of state's capacity. It could make up the shortage of the judgment about whether a state is strong or weak, correct the bias of statism’s view about the state - social relation, and emphasize the influence of the society in the state development. In terms of the theory origin, both modern liberalism and marxism emphasize that state arises from the need of society, the power of the state comes from the social community members for their rights to the assignment, and state’s purpose is to realize the common well-being of its citizens. State responsiveness includes two dimensions. One is the overall level of information collection, and the other is the extent of social support to the public policy. The former is evaluated by authenticity, accuracy, complexity and conformity, and the latter is evaluated by knowledge, recognition and feedback. The two dimensions correspond to policy formulation and policy implementation respectively. On this foundation, state responsiveness could be divided into four types: I, "weak information gathering, weak policy support,"; II, "weak information collection, strong policy support"; III, "strong information collection, weak policy support"; IV, "strong information gathering, strong policy support". The traditional Chinese responsiveness type is between type Ⅰ and Ⅱ, while the contemporary Chinese responsiveness type is between type Ⅲ and Ⅳ. Technology revolution gives China the chance to become the ideal responsiveness type. The institutional structure, ideological culture, civic participation and historic heritage of a country have a profound influence on state responsiveness. The realistic path towards "responsiveness state" should also be established according to the four aspects. This paper contains six parts. The first part is literature review, which discussed the history of the development of state capacity theory and responsiveness theory. The second part, based on the summary of the logic and realistic deviation of the theory of national centralism, puts forward the concept of "state responsiveness" according to the rheological characteristics of state capacity. The third part explains the reason why this paper proposed the concept of "state responsiveness" from the perspective of theoretical origin. The fourth part set up an analytical framework, which discriminates the two dimensions and four types of the country the response ability. This part also applies this framework in discussing Chinese history and reality. The fifth part enumerates the factors that affect the national response ability, and points out the concrete path to "responsiveness state” by strengthening the national response capacity. The final part makes a short summary.