The formation and development of academic disciplines is the product of the Enlightenment (a massive ideological and cultural movement toward liberation from feudalism and church in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) and modernization. As a key social science discipline science, the rise and evolution of political science has involved different processes and patterns in different countries all over the world. The word “discipline” originates from the Latin discere, which originally meant “learning.” In the Middle Ages (from the late fifth century to the mid-fifteenth century), “disciplina” was often used to describe the classification of knowledge for the purpose of “teaching” and “learning.” (In the Middle Ages, although the words “disciplina” and “doctrina” both meant the classification of knowledge, the word “disciplina” was widely used in the process of God’s exhortation and punishment of believers, so Michel Foucault used “discipline” to mean both “knowledge” and “disciplinary power” in his works. Therefore, the discipline itself has a “normative” function.) With the rise of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, “discipline” was increasingly used to describe the human knowledge system, especially knowledge dissemination, due to developments in printing and the compilation of encyclopedias, which made knowledge classification more important and increasingly enhanced discipline consciousness. However, before modern times, disciplines mainly played the functions of knowledge sorting, classification, and storage, and they were seldom involved in the creation and production of knowledge (Stichweh 2001). The development of contemporary disciplines is driven by the systematization of the educational system and the specialization of scholars’ research. The meaning of disciplines also shifted to large systems of knowledge production, exchange, and inheritance (Krishnan 2009). First, in terms of knowledge production, scholars produce ideas and work independently or cooperatively according to their professional division of labor, research interests, and academic expertise, thus accumulating academic research and knowledge. Second, in terms of knowledge exchange, researchers learn from each other by arguing, communicating, and cooperating with each other, thus forming an academic community; they enhance the sharing and dissemination of knowledge with the help of associations, journals, conferences, work exchanges, media activities, and international exchanges. Third, in terms of knowledge inheritance, the survival and development of disciplines depend on there being multiple generations of scholars in the discipline. To select and train qualified graduates and practitioners, those in the discipline need to determine and develop the discipline’s knowledge system, norms, and principles in distinction from other disciplines; this includes the access standards and evaluation standards of students and practitioners, training plan and curriculum system, and degree granting and career promotion rules. In short, a discipline includes a set of knowledge systems and methods for understanding the world.