Draft: v1.1
Date: December 15, 2025
Author: Ping Political
Affiliation: Independent Researcher
Email: [email protected]
DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.5921482

Keywords: Governance Paradigms, Movement-Based Governance, Social Organizational Capacity, De-organizationalization, Risk Perception of Political Elites, State-Society Bargaining, Structural Limits of Democratization

Abstract

This paper argues that China’s post-1989 democratic impossibility is best explained not by ideology but by the elimination of social organizational capacity. The mobilization of the 1980s was not the product of an emerging civil society, but a residue of the CCP’s movement-based governance, intensified by the Cultural Revolution. The early reform era (1978–1989) remained institutionally indeterminate; Tiananmen escalated within this space and activated leaders’ Cultural Revolution–shaped fears of organized mass politics and systemic disorder. After 1989, the regime retained democratic language yet redefined society as an object of management and pursued de-organizationalization, dismantling horizontal networks and removing the societal foundations required for democratization.

1. Introduction

Since 1989, China’s political development has exhibited a complex and enduring paradox: on the one hand, official discourse has never systematically rejected the concept of “democracy” at the theoretical level, and reform-oriented voices within the Party continue to surface from time to time; on the other hand, the actual possibility of institutionalized democratic transition has rapidly contracted or even disappeared. Explaining this tension has long been a central challenge in the study of Chinese politics. Existing scholarship typically approaches the issue through moral–democratic narratives, authoritarian stability and state capacity, or elite politics and factional struggles, but these approaches tend to focus on the event itself while paying insufficient attention to longer-term historical structures.[1][2] Most importantly, they largely overlook a key variable—social organizational capacity—as the foundational condition of political possibility.

1.1 Research Questions

This study seeks to situate the 1989 Tiananmen crisis within a much longer trajectory of state-society transformation and evolving governance paradigms, and it raises the following core questions:

Why did China not move toward institutionalized democratic transition after 1989? Traditional explanations emphasize authoritarian strategic choice, elite conflict, or governance efficiency, yet these factors fail to explain why democracy was not rejected at the ideological level but nevertheless became structurally impossible.[1][2]
Why was democracy in China not rejected through ideology, but “structurally excluded”? That is, democracy became unworkable not because its normative claims were suppressed, but because the social-organizational foundations and bargaining space required for its realization were systematically dismantled.
What does the 1989 Tiananmen crisis truly signify in the history of China’s political development? It is often described as a “failed democratic movement” or an episode of “authoritarian consolidation”, but from the perspective of governance paradigms, it may more accurately be understood as the final endpoint at which the CCP terminated its own historical logic of “movement-based governance”. If the Cultural Revolution created the social-organizational capacities and the deep structural antagonism between officials and citizens, then Tiananmen functioned to eliminate horizontal organization entirely, thereby closing the structural possibility for democracy in China.[3][4][5]

This study therefore proposes a new explanatory chain: the legacy of movement-based governance → social organizational capacity → the state-society bargaining structure of the 1980s → Tiananmen as the termination of a governance paradigm → the structural impossibility of democracy. Through this framework, we gain a new understanding of the historical significance of 1989 and a new analytical perspective for explaining the long-term trajectory of Chinese politics thereafter.

1.2 Core Argument

This article argues that the 1989 Tiananmen crisis cannot be understood simply as the failure of a democratization attempt, but should instead be positioned as the final and decisive strategic choice made by the CCP to terminate its long-standing model of “movement-based governance”, a choice shaped by the risk preferences formed through the traumatic experience of the Cultural Revolution.[3][4][5] The Cultural Revolution not only created political experiences in which the masses were empowered and the bureaucracy was attacked, but also left behind within society a high level of organizational capacity. This legacy was reactivated in the early reform era, generating a distinctive structure of state-society contention. The outbreak of the Tiananmen crisis led the top leadership to redefine this structure as a form of systemic danger—one that was no longer controllable—thereby prompting Deng Xiaoping and the bureaucratic coalition he represented to dismantle completely the organizational foundations of movement-based governance.

In this sense, post-1989 political development in China did not stem from an ideological rejection of democracy, but from the structural disappearance of any institutional or societal mechanisms capable of carrying a democratic transition once social organizational capacity had been systematically uprooted. From that point onward, China entered a governance paradigm characterized by management, prevention, and de-organizationalization, and the political stability and institutional trajectory of the following decades are best understood through this structural rupture.[6][7][8][9]

1.3 Theoretical and Empirical Contributions

This study offers a new analytical perspective that differs from existing narratives on the long-term trajectory of Chinese political development.

First, for research on Chinese politics, the paper advances the proposition that the possibility of democracy has been structurally locked. What was eliminated after 1989 was not the idea of democracy, but the social organizational capacity on which democracy depends. This helps explain why China has been unable to move toward institutionalized democratization despite ideological loosening and rapid economic development. [6][7] This perspective goes beyond the classic explanations of “regime intention” and “cultural traits”, highlighting structural conditions as the decisive factor.

Second, for comparative authoritarianism, this study adds a structural explanation for failed authoritarian transitions. Existing literature often focuses on elite splits, economic crises, or ideological decline; this paper, by contrast, emphasizes the role of historical legacies in shaping crisis-response patterns. The Cultural Revolution, as a form of extreme political mobilization, profoundly reshaped the risk preferences of the CCP leadership. When facing the 1989 crisis, this produced a course of action fundamentally different from that of the Soviet bloc. This choice not only blocked democratic possibilities but also established the post-1989 governance path characterized by de-organizationalization and high-pressure management. [4][5][7][8][9] The paper therefore contributes a new comparative dimension to understanding authoritarian path dependence and crisis response.

Third, for Tiananmen studies, this paper offers a framework that is neither moralistic nor event-centered. It does not treat Tiananmen as an isolated episode, nor attribute its dynamics solely to “democratic demands” or “elite struggles”. Instead, it situates the event within the long-term structural continuum of Cultural Revolution legacies, reform-era state-society bargaining, and the transformation of governance paradigms. [1][2][4][5] Tiananmen thus becomes not merely a repressed democratic movement, but the critical rupture marking China’s transition from a system that tolerated limited societal contestation to one defined by managed authoritarianism. This structural framework explains both the outbreak of the 1989 crisis and the long-term trajectory of Chinese politics afterward, providing new analytical tools and theoretical space for the field.

2. Literature Review

2.1 The Three Major Approaches to Tiananmen Studies and Their Limitations

Existing scholarly research on the 1989 political upheaval can be broadly divided into three approaches, each emphasizing different causal mechanisms and different primary actors, thereby constructing the basic landscape of academic interpretations of Tiananmen.[1][2]

The first approach understands Tiananmen as a suppressed democratic movement, emphasizing the demands raised by students, citizens, and intellectuals—anti-corruption, political reform, freedom of speech—and sees the event as rooted in the tension between societal expectations for institutional openness and the state’s inadequate response.[1] This narrative highlights the moral agency of participants and treats Tiananmen as an important node in China’s long-term democratization trajectory. However, such studies often focus on values, ideas, and political claims themselves, while paying insufficient attention to the organizational structures, mobilization resources, and long-term institutional conditions behind social action, making this type of explanation prone to a normative or “ought-based” framing.

The second category of research approaches the event from the perspective of state capacity and authoritarian stability, viewing Tiananmen as a governance crisis faced by the Chinese political system amid reform and opening. These works argue that during economic transition, the state experienced fiscal strain, runaway inflation, rising cadre corruption, and growing social discontent, together producing an “overload of the governance system”.[2][7][8] Scholars in this tradition are more concerned with how authoritarian regimes make strategic choices under pressure, and therefore tend to interpret Tiananmen as an action through which the state “reasserted control” in a moment of crisis, rather than as a potential opportunity for institutional reform. While this explanation helps clarify why the state adopted a hardline posture, it risks reducing society to a governed object rather than treating it as a political actor with autonomous capacity.

A third line of research emphasizes elite politics and intra-Party factional struggle, situating Tiananmen within the long-standing contestation between “reformists” and “conservatives”. From this perspective, Tiananmen resulted from choices made by key figures such as Deng Xiaoping, Zhao Ziyang, and Li Peng among competing policy paths, reflecting deep internal disagreements over the speed of reform, the scope of political opening, and the management of social mobilization.[2] This explanation sheds light on uncertainty within the decision-making elite and reveals the power dynamics driving political shifts. However, it also centers primarily on events and elite conflicts while paying insufficient systematic attention to the structural legacies and institutional inertia shaping society.

Despite substantial differences in viewpoint, value orientation, and explanatory focus, these three major research approaches share a common limitation: all take the event as the core analytical unit, while rarely asking what deeper structural conditions made Tiananmen possible, or why the political structure transformed so rapidly into a more closed form after 1989. In other words, whether from democratization, governance, or elite-politics perspectives, mainstream research has largely overlooked a crucial structural variable—social organizational capacity.

It was precisely this variable that enabled the 1980s to feature sustained public discussion, campus self-governance, cross-unit networking, and broad social mobilization; and it was precisely this variable that was systematically eliminated after 1989, making it impossible for Chinese society thereafter to generate political actions of similar scale, organizational coherence, or persistence. Without incorporating social organizational capacity into the analytical framework, neither the political loosening before Tiananmen nor the structural closure after Tiananmen can be fully explained.

2.2 Cultural Revolution and the Literature on “Movement-Based Governance”

Research on the Cultural Revolution and the CCP’s tradition of movement-based governance has generated several important analytical directions, yet these discussions often remain confined to the political and social structures of the Cultural Revolution itself, without sufficiently extending to the social configuration of the 1980s or the deeper connections between these structures and the 1989 political crisis.

Qin Hui’s analysis of China’s modern political structure offers a highly insightful formulation of the “official–popular dual structure”.[3] He argues that before the Cultural Revolution, Chinese society had long been in a condition of high organizational penetration, with social life embedded in an extensive administrative hierarchy. The Cultural Revolution shattered this preexisting order, enabling ordinary people for the first time to act as political subjects who could directly attack the bureaucratic system, thus generating a dramatic rupture between the bureaucracy and society. After the Cultural Revolution, “opposition to Maoist-style political mobilization” formed a minimal consensus between officials and the public, laying the foundation for the relatively relaxed social atmosphere and limited state-society interaction of the early reform era. Yet although Qin’s analysis illuminates the psychological and structural legacies created by the Cultural Revolution, it does not directly explore how these forces persisted into the late 1980s or how they shaped the emergence and trajectory of the 1989 crisis.

Different from Qin’s focus on political structure, Walder’s classic sociological research highlights how the Cultural Revolution trained and disseminated organizational capacity among ordinary people.[4] He emphasizes that the Cultural Revolution was not a wholly spontaneous mass revolution but a state-led mobilization through which grassroots groups acquired unprecedented abilities for horizontal linkages, resource competition, and peer mobilization. These capacities originally served political struggle, but once the state withdrew from mobilizational governance, they remained in society as “residual skills”. Walder’s work provides a crucial explanation for why the 1980s saw a proliferation of loosely structured yet effectively organized social actions. However, he likewise does not ask the further question: when the state once again came to view society as a source of political risk, why did these organizational residues become the first objects targeted for repression?

Perry’s research further contends that collective action in China does not derive solely from modern civil society, but continues older revolutionary traditions and modes of mobilization.[5] In her framework, Chinese collective action is often the outcome of long-term interaction between state mobilization and societal response, rather than the product of autonomous political self-organization. This helps explain why the organizational capacities that persisted after the Cultural Revolution could reassert themselves in the 1980s—not because a mature civil society had emerged, but because the mobilizational logics deeply implanted by the CCP during the revolutionary and mass-movement periods continued to exist within society. Yet Perry’s work, while illuminating the longue durée of political action in China, does not directly link these traditions to the Cultural Revolution’s organizational legacies as a turning point in the governance paradigm that culminated in 1989.

Taken together, existing scholarship on the Cultural Revolution and movement-based governance offers rich insights into how Chinese society was shaped, how organizational capacities were produced, and how a form of “quasi-political subjectivity” persisted after the Cultural Revolution. But this literature generally treats the Cultural Revolution as a terminal historical moment, rather than investigating how its mobilizational residues entered the social structure of the 1980s and ultimately played a decisive role in the 1989 political crisis. It is precisely here that existing research tends to overlook how the “movement-based governance legacy” constituted the structural background of the 1989 movement—providing, on the one hand, the organizational foundations that made large-scale protest possible, and on the other hand, the deeper logic behind the CCP’s post-1989 determination to eliminate society’s organizational capacity.[3][4][5]

2.3 State-Society Relations and De-organizationalization

Existing studies on state-society relations tend to describe an already-crystallized structural outcome, but seldom ask how this structure was historically produced. Analyses by Vivienne Shue, Minxin Pei, Andrew Nathan, and others broadly share one core observation: Chinese society does not exist as an institutionalized bargaining actor vis-à-vis the state, but is instead positioned as something to be managed or regulated.[6][7][8] Through administrative, legal, and selectively opened channels, the state incorporates society into a structure that is monitorable, decomposable, and replaceable—where feedback may be absorbed, but social subjectivity is weakened. Nathan’s notion of “authoritarian resilience”, as well as Pei’s discussion of “trapped authoritarianism”, both assume a long-term, stable configuration in which the state dominates and society remains passive. Their focus is on explaining how this configuration persists, rather than why this configuration replaced the earlier, mobilization-oriented, state-society dynamic.

Sebastian Heilmann’s concept of “adaptive authoritarianism” partially supplements this picture.[9] He emphasizes that the CCP is not rigid; rather, it excels at policy experimentation, local pilots, and selective institutional innovation to adjust its mode of rule. This line of research demonstrates how the regime maintains its legitimacy through technical reform without opening the source of political authority. Yet it typically treats “society” as a passive environment—something to be perceived and responded to—rather than as an actor jointly shaping political rules. In other words, these studies vividly portray a post-1989 configuration in which “society is managed rather than negotiated”, but largely take this configuration as a given, rather than as something requiring historical explanation.

The present article intervenes precisely at this point. Instead of treating a “managed society” or a “de-organizationalized society” as a natural or self-evident background condition, we must ask: when and through what mechanisms did this state-society structure emerge? If Shue, Pei, Nathan, and Heilmann describe a society whose de-organizationalization is already complete, then this paper seeks to push the analysis further back in time and reconstruct the causal chain that links together the dismantling of the legacies of movement-based governance, the extraction of social organizational capacity, and the subsequent reconfiguration of state-society relations.[4][5][6][7][8][9] That is, we must explain not only why contemporary China has become a society that is managed rather than one that bargains, but also how a society once highly organized—even capable of bargaining with the state in the 1980s—was transformed into one that is now almost fully de-organizationalized.

3. Theoretical Framework: Movement-Based Governance, Organizational Capacity, and Democratic Possibility

3.1 Defining “Movement-Based Governance”

In examining China’s political structure prior to 1989, movement-based governance offers a foundational explanatory lens. It does not merely refer to the frequent launch of political mobilization, but to an entire operational logic of state-society relations. Its core characteristic lies in the state’s deliberate and temporary empowerment of the masses, enabling them to act as direct participants—or even shapers—of political processes. Such empowerment is typically justified in the name of “revolution” or “class struggle”, granting ordinary social actors a form of legitimacy to pressure, challenge, or even overturn the bureaucratic system under specific political circumstances.

Another key dimension of this mode is its requirement for certain forms of horizontal organization. Although such organizations are often temporary or semi-legal, in practice they allow extensive cross-unit and cross-regional linkages to emerge. These linkages form short-lived yet genuinely effective networks of collective action. While these networks do not constitute a modern civil society, they possess a high degree of mobilizational capacity and density, and they form the social foundation upon which movement-based governance can be repeatedly activated.

More importantly, movement-based governance incorporates mass attacks on the bureaucracy as part of the governance toolkit itself. In this model, the bureaucratic system is not always stable or legitimate; at specific historical moments it may be portrayed as rigid, corrupt, or having “betrayed” the correct political line, thus becoming a legitimate target of mass movements. Through this mechanism of “pressure from below—strikes from above”, the state periodically restructures and disciplines the bureaucracy in order to maintain political authority and reshape the ruling order.

Thus, the essence of movement-based governance does not lie in the frequency of movements, but in the embedding of mass action within the governance structure—turning the sequence of mobilization → attack → reorganization into a built-in mechanism of system operation. This mechanism not only shaped the political logic of the Cultural Revolution but also deeply influenced the psychological structure and organizational foundations of both state and society in the post-Mao era. It is therefore an indispensable historical precondition for understanding the political space of the 1980s.

The self-organizing capacity displayed by Chinese society in the 1980s cannot be simply understood as a “natural emergence of civil society”. On the contrary, it resembles a set of governance byproducts that were intentionally created by the state in earlier periods and then unintentionally left behind amid political withdrawal. Since the founding of the PRC, the CCP had long relied on movement-based governance, using mass mobilization as a key mechanism of policy implementation and political control. In this process, grassroots society was systematically incorporated into various political campaigns, through which they learned and even became accustomed to expressing opinions collectively, forming alliances, coordinating actions, and engaging in horizontal linkages. Movement-based governance was not only a mode of rule but also a “mechanism for producing social capacity”. Organizational capacity did not arise from institutional conditions of free association; rather, it was trained through repeated mobilization practices.

The Cultural Revolution pushed this capacity to an extreme. As a rare political experiment in which “the masses were legitimately empowered to counterattack the bureaucratic apparatus”, the Cultural Revolution not only destroyed administrative order but also profoundly altered the psychological structure of social action. Large numbers of ordinary youths gained, for the first time, experience in forming horizontal alliances, sustaining congregations, establishing organizations, and striving for a place in the public discourse. Although the goals and direction of the Cultural Revolution were filled with absurdity and violence, it objectively left society with a highly politicized repertoire of action: the masses were not merely passive recipients of orders, but could become actors capable of gathering, negotiating, confronting, and even challenging power.

This capacity did not disappear immediately after the Cultural Revolution ended. Instead, due to political contraction and the retreat of ideology, it “flowed” from the state’s mobilizational apparatus into society, spontaneously transforming into a low-intensity resource for grassroots organization. It provided a practical foundation for the public debates, student associations, intellectual salons, and various episodes of social contention in the 1980s. This explains a paradox widely observed yet difficult to interpret by researchers of the 1980s: after the state relaxed its control, society quickly entered a state of public expression and horizontal linkage not because of newly emerging institutions, but because of the movement skills left behind from the Mao era.

In other words, the social organizational capacity of the early reform period was a historical sediment rather than an institutional innovation; a liminal condition in which politics had not fully withdrawn, yet the state was not actively remobilizing society. It was precisely this “legacy of movement-based governance” that supported the brief and fragile structure of state-society contestation in the 1980s, and became an indispensable background for understanding the political ecology prior to the 1989 Tiananmen crisis.

3.3 Structural Consequences of the Cultural Revolution

The Cultural Revolution was not only a climax of political struggle and violent mobilization, but also a historical project that profoundly transformed the structure of state-society relations. Its most important structural effect did not lie in the intensity of the conflict itself, but in the fact that it placed the masses for the first time in direct opposition to the bureaucratic system, and did so in a legalized and institutionalized manner that granted this antagonism the right to act. In prior CCP political practice, mass mobilization had always been an extension of Party organizational operations—a top-down mobilizing mechanism rather than a sphere of autonomous political agency. The Cultural Revolution broke this logic, enabling the masses, in the name of “revolution”, to directly criticize, supervise, and even overthrow bureaucratic organs at all levels. The kind of “organized social mobilization” analyzed by Andrew Walder reached its most extreme form during the Cultural Revolution: [4] the masses were not only mobilized, but authorized—and even required—to undermine the stability of the bureaucratic system.

In this process, the legitimacy of bureaucratic ranks was continuously and systematically undermined. Bureaucrats were no longer reliable intermediaries executing the Party line, but became the primary targets of mass attack. Walder’s research shows that the Cultural Revolution structurally produced a rupture in which “mass politics prevailed over bureaucratic politics”. Meanwhile, the revolutionary and protest traditions emphasized by Elizabeth Perry gained new institutional carriers during the Cultural Revolution, making mass action no longer merely an instrument of the state apparatus, but a force capable of challenging the state apparatus itself. [5]

The deep structural consequence of this transformation was that mutual distrust between officials and the populace became permanently embedded in the state structure. Bureaucrats no longer believed in the controllability of mass politics, and the masses no longer trusted the legitimacy of the bureaucratic system. The theory advanced by Vivienne Shue regarding how the state “shapes society” manifested a reversed effect after the Cultural Revolution: [6] it was not the state shaping society, but the state—through extreme mobilization—unintentionally creating a social force endowed with autonomous political capacity and profound distrust of the state.

In this sense, the Cultural Revolution not only left traumatic memories, but also inadvertently generated the structural preconditions for the state-society contestation of the 1980s. The reason the masses were able to rapidly form autonomous organizations, campus associations, public discussion spaces, and even national-level networks of mobilization in the early reform era was not because a modern civil society naturally emerged, but because the Cultural Revolution—this massive, state-directed mobilization project—left behind an institutionalized aftershock of “political skills” and “organizational capacity”. The society of the 1980s was not newly born; it was the re-emergence, under a new political environment, of “Cultural-Revolution-era organizational capacities that had not been fully eliminated”.

4. 1978–1989: The Retreat of Movement-Based Governance and the Unfinished Transition of Institutional Reform

4.1 The “Minimum state-society Consensus” in the Early Reform Era

The end of the Cultural Revolution unexpectedly generated a short-lived yet stable consensus structure within Chinese society. This consensus was not a political alliance in the usual sense, but rather a form of “minimal historical agreement”: a shared determination not to return to an era of Mao-style personality cult and unlimited political mobilization. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, both the bureaucratic system—just recovering from cadre purges and factional struggles—and the social groups that had undergone organization and repeated confrontation during the Cultural Revolution instinctively rejected any re-entry into the vortex of movement politics.

For the bureaucratic group, the primary experience of the Cultural Revolution had been systemic disorder and extreme power instability. Cadres could no longer rely on organizational rules to secure their positions; the criteria of political loyalty were constantly redefined by superiors, and no matter how cautiously they executed policies, they could still become “targets of attack” in the next political campaign. Thus, at the beginning of the reform period, the bureaucracy exhibited a highly unified desire for “order”—a desire that included the hope of restoring organizational procedures and the deeper fear of renewed mass politics.

On the societal side, although the masses had temporarily gained political legitimacy during the Cultural Revolution, this “organizational freedom” lacked institutional guarantees and was often accompanied by violence, purges, and feelings of manipulation. Ordinary urban youth, intellectuals, and workers at the end of the 1970s did not seek to reenact Cultural Revolution-style mass politics; they too hoped for a stable environment in which to rebuild their livelihoods, employment conditions, and education systems. Society’s rapid turn toward development resulted largely from the Cultural Revolution’s depletion of time, economic resources, and organizational capacity, making the desire to “return to normal life” and “improve material conditions” a cross-class shared goal.

On the basis of these reciprocal historical memories, a socially deep “minimum state-society consensus” emerged in the early reform era: Maoist mobilizational politics must be rejected; institutionalized rules must be restored; economic development must be prioritized. This consensus did not reflect mutual trust between state and society, but rather a negative form of identification produced by shared trauma. It was neither the ideological foundation of democratization nor of renewed authoritarian consolidation; it was, instead, a widespread social psychology of “no more political upheaval”.

This minimum consensus provided an important backdrop for the relative political relaxation and ideological liberation of the 1980s, and allowed state and society to converge temporarily on issues of reform. Yet the consensus itself was fragile: it did not resolve the deep state-society distrust left by the Cultural Revolution, nor did it create a stable framework for institutionalized bargaining. It functioned only as a transitional historical condition—one that enabled political openness and social vibrancy in the 1980s but did not determine their ultimate direction.

4.2 Why Two Political Pathways Coexisted

The reason the early reform era could accommodate two seemingly contradictory political directions is that the CCP leadership had not yet formed a coherent plan for “how to end movement-based governance and how to rebuild political order”. Deng Xiaoping and his cohort—deeply scarred by the Cultural Revolution—clearly understood the need to end mass politics, yet had not devised an institutionalized new order to replace the old mobilizational system. Their primary goals were stability and the restoration of state functionality, not a pre-designed political transformation. As a result, the possibility of political reform in this period did not grow from top-down architectural blueprints but from a condition of looseness and uncertainty.

In this context, the party tolerated—if not tacitly encouraged—the coexistence of two distinct political pathways. One was the “technocratic governance” line represented by Deng Xiaoping, emphasizing economic development, stability, and the restoration of bureaucratic operations, while remaining cautious or ambivalent toward political reform. The other was represented by Zhao Ziyang, who attempted to incorporate societal forces into institutional channels, advocating more open political participation to support economic transformation and mitigate social tensions emerging from reform. From Zhao’s perspective, the social organizational capacity of the 1980s—though not yet institutionalized—contained the potential for public deliberation; from Deng’s perspective, the same capacity represented the uncertain residue of the Cultural Revolution, functioning as both a possible feedback mechanism and a potential risk.

It was precisely this unresolved and not-yet-crystallized political space that allowed the two pathways to coexist throughout the decade. The top leadership lacked a unified answer; society was rapidly changing; and the legacy of movement-based governance exposed the state to unprecedented levels of horizontal organizational vitality. Thus, political reform was neither a predetermined objective nor a clearly forbidden territory—it was an “open yet tense” condition, dependent upon continuously shifting power balances. Zhao Ziyang’s experiments emerged from this structural ambiguity, granting them real possibility before 1989 while simultaneously leaving them perpetually vulnerable.

The political climate of the early reform years did not adopt an explicitly negative stance toward societal self-organization, because all actors were still navigating within accumulated historical inertia. As a remnant of Cultural Revolution–era “mass mobilization skills”, social organizational capacity was not yet seen as something requiring immediate dismantling during 1978–1989. Instead, it served—within limits—as a channel for public discussion and policy feedback, allowing bureaucratic actors to observe social sentiment and test the boundaries of reform.

At the same time, intra-party line competition had not been resolved. Particularly under Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang, visions of political reform included incorporating a degree of societal participation. Therefore, no systematic effort emerged to eliminate social organizational capacity. Zhao’s approach tended to view limited social mobilization as a supplement to reform legitimacy rather than a threat. This contributed to the brief flourishing of public spheres in the 1980s, giving many the impression that reform could naturally evolve into institutionalized political participation.

A deeper reason was that the bureaucracy systematically underestimated the political potential of societal mobilization. After the Cultural Revolution, bureaucrats’ fear of mass movements was real; however, in a context of growing stability and economic improvement, many assumed that social energy had already been “de-politicized” and would no longer produce horizontal networks or challenge power structures. It was precisely this miscalculation that allowed social self-organization in the 1980s to survive long enough to expand dramatically in 1989—ultimately producing political consequences far beyond what the leadership expected.

5. Tiananmen: The Collapse of the Transitional Period and the Consolidation of a Governance Paradigm

5.1 The “Uncontrollability” of Tiananmen and Deng Xiaoping’s Risk Perception

The 1989 crisis was neither a premeditated political transition nor a predetermined clash of political lines. Rather, it resembled a moment of multiple breakdowns, produced by the cumulative contradictions of a decade of reform, the lingering momentum of social organizational capacity, internal indeterminacy within the political system, and a chain reaction of symbolic events. This breakdown was not the result of the will of any single actor; it emerged abruptly within a loosening political space, undefined reform boundaries, and an increasingly symbolically charged political environment.

At the societal level, the horizontal organizational capacities inherited from the 1980s enabled rapid feedback loops between student self-governance, intellectual discourse, and urban public sentiment. Within the CCP itself, reformist and conservative factions disagreed sharply on crisis management, preventing the leadership from forming a unified understanding in the early stages. Symbolically, the Qingming commemorations, media openness, the student hunger strikes, and growing international attention pushed the protests beyond their initial issue framing and transformed them into a public political event with heightened symbolic force—one that could not be easily de-escalated. Together, these factors created the experiential landscape of “uncontrollability”. [1][2]

What truly determined the historical trajectory, however, was Deng Xiaoping’s perception of this uncontrollability. For the generation of leaders who lived through the Cultural Revolution, eruptions of “mass politics” did not merely signal social pressure or policy crisis; they activated deep memories of power disorder, institutional breakdown, and the potential collapse of the bureaucratic system. During the Cultural Revolution, the masses had been legally positioned against the bureaucracy, making “horizontal mass organization” intrinsically associated with uncontrollability—even catastrophe—in Deng’s mind. Thus, when the protests spread from campuses and intra-system discussions to the streets, workplaces, and national symbolic spaces, Deng did not interpret them as “a negotiable opportunity for political reform”, but rather as “the opening to a potentially nationwide Cultural Revolution–style breakdown”.

In other words, within Deng Xiaoping’s risk-preference structure, the most unacceptable factor was not the democratic demands themselves, but the potential chain reaction triggered when social organizational capacity slipped beyond institutional control. Tiananmen was therefore not fundamentally a rejection of democratic claims, but a rejection of the logic of mass organization; not an ideological opposition to political openness, but a deep fear—rooted in lived experience—of returning to Cultural Revolution–style institutional collapse. It was under this risk logic that Deng chose the most extreme method to end the crisis, thereby defining the boundaries of what would be politically permissible thereafter.

5.2 The Cultural Revolution Memory and the Activation of Risk Preferences

At the critical juncture of 1989, the generation of CCP leaders who shaped the political response had their risk judgments profoundly shaped by experiences in the Cultural Revolution. That decade was not merely political chaos—it was a comprehensive breakdown of governance. For these leaders, it formed the archetypal trauma of “mass political uncontrollability”. Deng Xiaoping, Bo Yibo, Wan Li, and many other officials who had been demoted, imprisoned, or persecuted during the Cultural Revolution had all personally experienced the collapse of organizational chains and the reversal of pressure from mass mobilization onto decision-makers. This experience solidified into a stable psychological structure, predisposing them to interpret any surge of social mobilization as a potential return to Cultural Revolution–style conditions.

Consequently, the social mobilization, cross-unit linkages, and rapid opinion cascades that emerged in the mid to late 1980s were not viewed as “pressures for institutional reform”, but rather as a dangerous revival of a familiar political scene. What they saw was not potential democratization, but the resurgence of Cultural Revolution logic: the reactivation of mass political subjectivity, the breaking of organizational boundaries, and the potential loss of bureaucratic control. Thus, the elements of “uncontrollability” in 1989—whether student self-organization, accumulating social emotions, or internal disagreements within the Party—were quickly reconstructed as a fundamental crisis of governability.

If Eastern European communist regimes facing similar social pressures gravitated toward openness, negotiation, and institutional concessions, it was partly because they lacked a Cultural Revolution–style political memory. In China, by contrast, risk preferences had been deeply conditioned by that traumatic history. The Cultural Revolution destroyed not only the leadership’s trust in mass politics, but also their patience and tolerance for uncertain institutional adjustments. When confronted with uncertainty, they were far more likely to suppress first and adjust later. The decision-making in 1989 was therefore not simply a reaction to a protest, but the reenactment of a historically embedded trauma.

In this sense, the Cultural Revolution did not fade with the advance of reform. Instead, as a deep political-psychological structure, it was reactivated in 1989 and decisively overshadowed all other possible political pathways. It shaped Deng Xiaoping’s risk preferences, and thus defined the institutional boundaries of reform—and ultimately deprived China of a crucial opportunity to move toward a more open and institutionalized political order.

5.3 The Substantive Nature of the Post-Tiananmen Policy Choice

The post-Tiananmen decision cannot be simplistically categorized as an ideological rejection of “democracy”, nor can it be understood through moral judgments. A more accurate interpretation is this: once risk perception had been fully activated, the leadership chose to systematically negate all sources of political uncertainty originating from society. This negation did not target any specific demand—it targeted the very presence of “autonomous variables” from the societal side within the political structure.

Mass politics was therefore terminated not because mass demands were inherently unacceptable, but because mass organization itself was deemed uncontrollable. Social organizational capacity was not merely suppressed—it was redefined as a governance risk that had to be eradicated. Any mechanism that could introduce uncertainty into the sources of political authority was removed from future institutional possibilities.

Thus, the historical significance of Tiananmen lies not only in how a political confrontation was handled, but in how it marked China’s transition from an era where limited state-society bargaining was still conceivable to an era of governance centered on the prevention of uncertainty. From the perspective of movement-based governance, this decision marked the end of a long political tradition: mass mobilization—once a governance resource—was reclassified as a systemic threat; residual organizational capacity—once a historical inheritance—was recast as intolerable.

In other words, the true watershed of Tiananmen was not the end of an attempted democratic transition, but the end of the possibility of mass politics itself. The organizational foundations of movement-based governance were removed entirely from the realm of political possibilities in China.

6. After the 1989 Tiananmen Crisis: Democracy as a Structurally Excluded Possibility

6.1 Not an Ideological Rejection of Democracy

After the 1989 Tiananmen Crisis, the CCP did not systematically repudiate the concept of “democracy” at the level of ideology. On the contrary, terms such as “democracy”, “supervision”, and “political reform” continue to appear from time to time in official discourse, both as part of the regime’s legitimation narrative and as rhetorical resources for responding to social expectations. Whether in Party documents or in public speeches by top leaders, no coherent “anti-democratic theoretical system” has been constructed. Within the Party, reformist discourse has not entirely disappeared either. Even under an overarching framework of tightened control, one can still see intermittent calls from within the system—for example, Wen Jiabao’s repeated emphasis on the necessity of political reform—indicating that there is no unified ideological front that is, in principle, opposed to democracy.

In other words, what the 1989 Tiananmen crisis established was not an “anti-democratic ideology” but a structural negation of the preconditions for democratization. The regime does not reject the symbol of “democracy” itself; it rejects the organizational foundations and power uncertainty on which democracy, in practice, would have to rest. For this reason, the political changes after the 1989 Tiananmen crisis cannot be simply understood as an “ideological rollback”, but rather as a fundamental reconstruction of the governance model: the authorities retain the language of democracy while systematically excluding the structural conditions under which democracy could actually occur.

After the 1989 Tiananmen crisis, the CCP fundamentally restructured the governance of social forces through a systematic process of de-organizationalization. Social participation was not primarily curtailed through ideological denunciation, but through a series of concrete administrative, legal, and organizational interventions designed to eliminate the material foundations of horizontal coordination and collective action.

In the immediate aftermath of Tiananmen, non-official associations were dissolved or brought under strict registration and sponsorship requirements; student autonomy organizations were abolished or absorbed into Party-controlled structures; and universities were reorganized to prevent independent student representation. The danwei (work-unit) system was reinforced as a mechanism of vertical control, re-linking individuals’ employment, welfare, housing, and political evaluation to administratively bounded units. Through these measures, the state systematically disrupted the infrastructural conditions necessary for sustained horizontal linkage across campuses, professions, and social groups.

Crucially, this logic of suppression was content-neutral. Organizations were not targeted because of what they advocated, but because of what they were capable of doing. Whether political (democracy movements), religious (such as Falun Gong), professional (lawyers’ networks), rights-based (petitioners and activists), or charitable and philanthropic organizations, any social formation that demonstrated the capacity for autonomous horizontal connection, collective identity formation, and coordinated action outside Party supervision was treated as an unacceptable governance risk. The defining criterion was not ideology, but organizational independence.

The significance of this shift lies not merely in the prohibition of specific activities, but in the redefinition of society’s position within the political structure. Society ceased to be recognized as a participant, interlocutor, or potential bargaining actor. Instead, it was recast as an object requiring continuous monitoring, regulation, fragmentation, and risk prevention. As a result, the state–society relationship moved decisively from conditional responsiveness to preemptive management, from selective consultation to systematic prevention.

In this way, post-1989 China did not negate democracy by rejecting particular democratic ideas, programs, or demands. Rather, it rendered democracy structurally impossible by removing the organizational conditions under which democratic practices could operate. Without stable horizontal networks, autonomous associations, or sustained collective actors, democratic participation lost its material carriers. Democracy survived in discourse, but not in social reality.

This comprehensive process of de-organizationalization constitutes the core mechanism of the post-1989 governance model and provides a crucial explanation for the long-term resilience of authoritarian rule in China. What was eliminated was not dissent as such, but the very possibility of society acting collectively and autonomously—thereby foreclosing democracy not through ideological closure, but through structural eradication.

6.3 Why Intra-Party Reformers No Longer Constitute a Breakthrough

The post-1989 political configuration exhibits an apparent paradox: many cadres implicated in the events later returned to office, which suggests that Deng Xiaoping did not intend to eliminate the reformist camp as a whole. Yet this personal-level “leniency” did not translate into an institutional revival of the reformist line. The reason is not that reformers were too few in number or too weak in power, but that the social structure needed to carry a reformist line had already been fundamentally transformed.

The repeated rise and fall of cadres since the Cultural Revolution has produced a stable logic within the CCP system: individuals may be repudiated and later rehabilitated, but once an organizational form is defined as a threat, it cannot be tolerated. What was thoroughly suppressed and banned after the 1989 Tiananmen crisis was not certain political figures, but horizontal organizational capacity in society itself. From that point on, Chinese society no longer possessed autonomous forces capable of supporting reformist policy agendas, nor could it form a stable, institutionalized public sphere of opinion. Even if reformers continued to exist within the Party, they had lost any external foothold that might interact productively with the Party-state structure.

Thus, the predicament of intra-party reformers does not lie in the absence of people who share their political ideals, but in the absence of social agents who can actually carry reform forward. Without autonomous organizations and without sustainable mechanisms for public mobilization, institutional reform can only remain intra-elite discourse and cannot become political practice. Wen Jiabao’s speeches on political reform reflect precisely this structural predicament: the rhetoric exists, but the pathway does not.

This logic ultimately points to a clear conclusion: post-1989 China does not lack a will to reform so much as it lacks the structural conditions for reform. Democratic transition can no longer be seriously placed on the agenda, not because ideology has fundamentally repudiated democracy, but because the organizational preconditions for democracy have been dismantled. In other words, intra-party reformers no longer constitute a real breakthrough because the “social side” of any potential breakthrough has already been sealed off.

7. Conclusion

7.1 Restating the Core Argument

Looking back at the overall trajectory, we can see ever more clearly a complete causal chain: the Cultural Revolution not only reshaped state-society relations in a destructive way, but also unintentionally produced a highly condensed form of social organizational capacity and, for the first time, placed the masses in a structurally antagonistic position vis-à-vis the bureaucratic apparatus. This legacy of “movement-based governance” contained both destructive trauma and the key conditions that later underpinned state-society contention in the 1980s. The relatively open political and social climate of the early reform era existed precisely because the aftershocks of the Cultural Revolution had not fully dissipated, organizational capacities had not been completely eradicated, and the bureaucratic elite themselves had not yet reached a unified, institutionalized solution to the question of how to bring movement-based governance to an end.

The significance of the 1989 Tiananmen crisis lies in the way it structurally terminated this special historical phase. For Deng Xiaoping and his generational peers, the deep psychological memories and risk preferences left by the Cultural Revolution were fully reactivated in the midst of crisis, leading them ultimately to view “social organizational capacity” itself as an intolerable risk, rather than merely one component of the protests. In this sense, the 1989 Tiananmen crisis was not only the closure of a political confrontation; it marked the historical endpoint of the era of movement-based governance. Thereafter, China’s political development no longer relied on mass mobilization, horizontal organization, or state-society bargaining as governance resources, but moved toward a governance model centered on management, discipline, and risk prevention.

The consequences are far-reaching. Democracy has since been excluded not because of a straightforward ideological negation—indeed, reformist rhetoric within the Party continued to appear intermittently into the 1990s—but because the structural foundations on which democracy depends have been removed. Once social organizational capacity is uprooted and society loses stable channels for articulating its preferences, intra-party reformers are left without any possible institutional carriers. Under such conditions, a democratic path to institutionalization is no longer a viable option within the existing structure; it survives only as an abstract idea and a discursive possibility.

The 1989 Tiananmen crisis is therefore neither simply the endpoint of some democratic aspiration nor a one-dimensional “anti-democratic” decision. It is a key watershed in China’s political structure. It brought the organizational legacy of the Cultural Revolution to an end and closed the limited bargaining space that had emerged in the 1980s, transforming democracy from a practical possibility into a structural impossibility. In other words, democracy has not been negated so much as rendered “nowhere to be placed”.

7.2 Theoretical Contribution

This article seeks to offer a different explanatory route from existing studies by placing “social organizational capacity” at the center of the analysis of state-society relations and institutional transformation. Most existing research on the 1989 Tiananmen crisis has focused on moral meanings, regime type, or elite splits. By contrast, this article emphasizes that the decisive variable is not ideas or events as such, but the structural conditions under which society can become a political actor. By tracing the organizational capacities produced by movement-based governance, the structural rupture between officials and ordinary citizens created by the Cultural Revolution, and the brief maintenance of a minimal state-society consensus in the early reform period, the article seeks to show that the 1989 Tiananmen crisis was not only the outbreak point of a political conflict, but the key watershed in China’s shift from a governance model that “allowed bargaining” toward one of “comprehensive de-organizationalization”. It was the extreme mobilizational experience of the Cultural Revolution that shaped Deng Xiaoping and the bureaucratic elite he represented, instilling a deep fear of social organizational capacity. This risk preference ultimately led, in the post-1989 era, to a structural negation of democracy and the loss of a potential opportunity for institutional transformation.

From this perspective, the meaning of the 1989 Tiananmen crisis is redefined as a structural decision rather than merely a political event or a setback for democracy. What it closed off was not only the space for reformist policy lines, but also the conditions for society to exist as a potential political actor. By reconstructing this long structural chain, the article provides a new explanatory framework for understanding the resilience of China’s authoritarian regime: it is not ideology that determines the possibility of democracy, but the presence or absence of social organizational capacity that sets the upper bound for institutional transformation. Thus, the 1989 Tiananmen crisis became the pivotal node for understanding “why China did not enter a track of institutionalized reform”. Its importance lies not only in the event itself, but also in the fact that it marks the end of an era: the residual warmth of movement-based governance is extinguished, and spontaneous democratic pathways are structurally compressed.

7.3 Limitations and Directions for Future Research

The main limitations of this study stem, first of all, from the long-term inaccessibility of relevant materials and archives. Crucial information about intra-party debates in the 1980s, the actual operation of social organizations, and internal decision-making mechanisms still relies heavily on memoirs, interviews, and indirect evidence rather than primary archival sources. This makes any portrayal of elite risk perceptions and concrete decision processes unavoidably inferential to some degree. At the same time, this study explains the remaking of state-society relations primarily through a single structural line running from the Cultural Revolution through the reform era to the 1989 Tiananmen crisis. The validity of this explanation depends heavily on generational characteristics: how political elites who personally experienced the Cultural Revolution understood “the masses”, “organization”, and “loss of control”, and how these risk preferences shaped their understanding of institutional boundaries. With generational turnover, the applicability and extensibility of this framework remain to be tested in future research.

Another important limitation arises from the temporal transformation of “organizational capacity” itself. The internet, platform society, digital surveillance, and algorithmic governance have created entirely new forms of organization and counter-organization. Their logic may weaken traditional horizontal organization, but may also generate new mobilizational structures different from those of the 1980s under novel technological conditions. The organizational capacity addressed in this article is primarily a historical legacy of movement-based governance. Whether new forms of organization will emerge in Chinese society in the future, and whether they will once again delineate the boundaries of political possibility, remains an open question calling for further observation and theorization.

This article treats the 1989 Tiananmen crisis as the initiating structural rupture rather than the completion of the de-organizationalization process itself. From the early 1990s onward, this logic was implemented through a series of administrative, legal, and security measures that unfolded over time, progressively dismantling independent horizontal coordination across political, religious, professional, and charitable domains. This constitutes a distinct research agenda that merits independent and detailed investigation.

In addition, future research can also proceed in the following two directions. First, more fine-grained comparative studies of different authoritarian regimes could examine similarities and differences in how they eliminate organizational capacity and remold social structures, thereby testing the generalizability or specificity of the “structural exclusion of democracy” mechanism proposed here. Second, from the perspective of generational sociology, we can analyze the political action logics of younger cohorts and explore how new socio-technical environments reshape political participation and forms of organization. Overall, this study provides a historical explanatory framework rather than a deterministic model of the future. How to rethink China’s political possibilities at the intersection of technological change, generational shifts, and institutional evolution remains an unfinished research agenda.

References

[1] Zhao, Dingxin. The Power of Tiananmen: State-Society Relations and the 1989 Beijing Student Movement. University of Chicago Press, 2001.

[2] Fewsmith, Joseph. China Since Tiananmen: From Deng Xiaoping to Hu Jintao. Cambridge University Press, 2001.

[3] Qin, Hui. Chuántǒng Shílùn (传统十论) [Ten Discourses on Tradition]. Shanxi People’s Publishing House, 2019. (in Chinese)

[4] Walder, Andrew G. Fractured Rebellion: The Beijing Red Guard Movement. Harvard University Press, 2009.

[5] Perry, Elizabeth J. Challenging the Mandate of Heaven: Social Protest and State Power in China. M.E. Sharpe, 1992.

[6] Shue, Vivienne. The Reach of the State: Sketches of the Chinese Body Politic. Stanford University Press, 1988.

[7] Pei, Minxin. China’s Trapped Transition: The Limits of Developmental Autocracy. Harvard University Press, 2006.

[8] Nathan, Andrew J. Authoritarian Resilience. Journal of Democracy, 14(1), 2003.

[9] Heilmann, Sebastian. From Local Experiments to National Policy: The Origins of China’s Distinctive Policy Process. The China Journal, no. 59, 2008.

版本: v1.1
日期: 2025年12月15日
作者: 平行政界
机构: 独立研究者
Email: [email protected]
DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.5921482

关键词: 治理范式、运动治国、社会组织能力、去组织化、政治精英的风险认知、国家与社会博弈、民主化的结构性限制

摘要

本文认为，中国1989年之后民主化进程受阻的最佳解释并非意识形态，而是社会组织能力的消除。1980年代的社会动员并非新兴公民社会的产物，而是中国共产党运动式治理的遗留，并因文化大革命而加剧。改革开放早期（1978-1989）的制度仍然不确定；天安门事件正是在这种背景下爆发，并激发了领导人对有组织的群众政治和系统性混乱的恐惧，这种恐惧源于他们在文化大革命中的经历。1989年之后，政权虽然保留了民主的措辞，但将社会重新定义为管理对象，并推行去组织化，瓦解横向网络，从而消除了民主化所需的社会基础。

1. 引言

1989年之后的中国政治发展呈现一种复杂而持久的悖论：一方面，官方话语并未在理论层面系统否定“民主”概念，党内改革声音亦此起彼伏；另一方面，制度化民主转型的可能性却在实践中迅速收缩甚至消失。如何解释这一张力，一直是中国政治研究中的核心难题。既有研究往往从道德‐民主叙事、威权稳定与国家能力，以及精英路线斗争等角度切入，但这些路径大多集中在事件本身，对更长期的历史结构关注不足。[1][2] 尤其重要的是，它们普遍忽略了一个关键变量——社会组织能力作为政治可能性的基础条件。

1.1 研究问题

本研究试图把六四置于更长时段的国家—社会关系变迁与治理模式演化之中，并提出以下核心问题：

为什么1989年之后，中国没有走向制度化民主转型？传统解释强调威权的战略选择、精英斗争或治理效率，但这些因素难以解释为何民主在理论上未被否定，却在结构上不再可能。[1][2]
为什么中国的民主并非被意识形态直接排除，而是被“结构性地排除”？换言之，民主之所以不可行，不是因为其理念被压制，而是因为其实现所依赖的社会组织基础与博弈空间被系统性消解。
六四在中国政治发展史中究竟意味着什么？它常被描述为“民主失败”或“威权巩固”，然而从治理范式的角度看，它更可能是中共结束自身“运动治国”历史逻辑的最终节点。如果文革制造了社会组织能力与官民对立经验，那么六四则通过彻底清除横向组织，使中国的民主可能性在结构上被封闭。[3][4][5]

本研究旨在提出一种新的解释链条：运动治国遗产 → 社会组织能力 → 80年代官民博弈结构 → 六四作为治理范式的终结 → 民主在结构上的不可实现性。透过这一框架，我们得以重新理解六四的历史意义，并为解释中国此后长期的政治轨迹提供新的分析视角。

1.2 核心论断

本文主张，1989年的六四事件不能被简单地理解为一次民主化尝试的挫败，而应被定位为中共在文革创伤塑造的风险偏好之下，对其长期“运动治国”模式所作出的最后一次、也是决定性的路线选择。[3][4][5] 文革不仅塑造了群众被赋权、官僚被冲击的政治经验，也在社会内部残留出高度的组织能力；这一遗产在改革初期被重新激活，形成了独特的官民博弈结构。而六四的爆发，使得这一结构在最高层的风险感知中被重新定义为“不可控”的系统性危险，从而促使邓小平及其所代表的官僚集团彻底终结运动治国的组织基础。

在此意义上，六四之后的政治发展并非源于意识形态上的反民主立场，而是源于社会组织能力被系统性拔除后，民主转型在结构层面失去了任何可能的承接机制。中国自此进入一种以管理、防范与去组织化为特征的治理范式，其后续几十年的政治稳定与制度路径，均在这一结构性断裂中获得解释。[6][7][8][9]

1.3 理论与经验意义

本研究的意义在于，它为中国政治发展的长期轨迹提供了一个区别于既有叙事的新解释视角。第一，对中国政治研究而言，本文提出“民主可能性被结构性锁定”这一命题，强调六四之后被清除的不是民主理念，而是民主赖以存在的社会组织能力，从而解释了为何在意识形态不断松动、经济高度发展的背景下，中国却长期难以迈向制度化民主。[6][7] 这一视角突破了“政权意志”与“文化特质”两种经典解释，揭示了结构性条件才是决定性因素。

第二，对比较政治学而言，本文补充了威权转型失败的结构性解释。既有文献多聚焦于精英分裂、经济危机或意识形态衰退，而本文强调历史遗产在塑造危机响应模式中的作用。文革作为一种极端政治动员，深刻改变了中国共产党领导层的风险偏好，使其在面对1989年危机时采取与苏东不同的路线选择；而这一选择不仅阻断了民主可能，也确立了此后“去组织化—高压管理”的治理路径。[4][5][7][8][9] 本文因此为威权体制的路径依赖与危机响应提供了新的比较维度。

第三，对六四研究而言，本文提供了一个非道德化、非事件化的分析框架。本文不再将六四视为孤立事件，也不将解释建立在单一的“民主诉求”或“权力斗争”之上，而是将其置于文革遗产、改革博弈与治理范式演变的长时段结构之中。[1][2][4][5] 六四因此不再只是一次被压制的民主抗争，而是中国从“运动治国”向“管理型威权”转型的关键断裂点。这一结构性框架既能解释六四的爆发，也能解释其后中国政治的长期走向，从而为学界提供新的分析工具与理论想象空间。

2. 文献回顾

2.1 六四研究的三类主要路径及其局限

关于1989年政治风波的学术研究，大体可以分为三种路径，它们分别强调不同的因果机制、不同的主体逻辑，也构成了学界解读六四的基本图景。[1][2]

第一种路径将六四理解为一场被压制的民主运动，强调学生、市民与知识界提出的反腐、政治改革、言论自由等诉求，认为事件的发生源于社会对制度开放的期待与国家回应不足之间的张力。[1] 这一叙事突出参与者的道德能动性，把六四视为中国民主化长期进程中的重要节点。然而，此类研究往往聚焦于价值、理念与政治诉求本身，对社会行动背后的组织结构、动员资源与长期制度条件关注较少，因此容易流于一种“应然”式的解释框架。

第二类研究则从国家能力与威权稳定的角度出发，将六四视为中国政治体系在改革开放背景下面临的治理危机，认为国家在经济转型过程中遭遇财政紧张、通胀失控、干部腐败加剧与社会不满累积，从而引发了一场“治理体系的过载”。[2][7][8] 这一路径的研究者更关心威权政体如何在压力下做出战略性选择，往往将六四视为国家在危机中“重新确立控制”的一次行动，而非制度转型的契机。虽然这种解释有助于理解国家为何采取强硬姿态，但它容易将社会简化为治理对象，而非具有自主行动能力的政治主体。

第三类研究强调中共内部的精英政治与路线斗争，将六四放在“改革派—保守派”长期博弈的轨道中理解。根据这一视角，六四是邓小平、赵紫阳、李鹏等关键人物在不同政策路径之间的选择结果，是党内关于改革节奏、政治开放与社会动员方式的分歧在特定历史时刻的集中爆发。[2] 这一解释强调决策层内部的不确定性，能揭示政治转向背后的权力逻辑。然而，它同样以事件为中心，把目光主要集中在高层博弈，对社会层面的结构遗产与制度惯性缺乏系统性考察。

尽管上述三种研究路径在视角、价值立场与解释重点上差异颇大，但它们有一个共同的局限：皆以“事件”为核心单位进行分析，而较少追问六四得以发生的深层结构条件是什么，又为何六四之后社会政治结构会迅速固化为另一种形态。换言之，无论是从民主叙事、治理叙事还是精英叙事出发，主流研究都普遍忽视了一个关键的结构性变量——社会组织能力。

正是这一变量，使得80年代能够出现持续的公共讨论、校园自治、跨单位串联与广泛的社会动员；而正是这一变量在六四后被系统性清除，使得此后中国社会再也无法形成类似规模、组织性与持久性的政治行动。换言之，如果没有将社会组织能力纳入分析框架，六四之前的政治松动与六四之后的结构封闭都难以得到完整的解释。

2.2 文革与运动治国研究

关于文革与运动治国传统的研究，学界已经形成了若干重要的分析方向，但这些讨论往往停留在文革自身的政治与社会结构之内，尚未充分延伸至1980年代社会形态和1989年政治危机之间的深层联系。

秦晖在对中国近现代政治结构的讨论中，提出了极具洞察力的“官-民二元结构”分析。[3] 他指出，在文革之前，中国社会已经长期处于高度组织化的状态，社会生活被纳入严密的行政体系之中；而文革则打破原有秩序，让群众第一次以“政治主体”的身份直接冲击官僚系统，造成官僚集团与社会之间的剧烈断裂。文革结束后，“反对毛式运动政治”成为官民之间的最低共识，为改革初期相对宽松的社会氛围和一定程度的官民互动奠定了基础。然而秦晖的分析虽揭示了文革塑造的社会心理与结构背景，却并未直接讨论这些因素如何延续至1980年代末并对六四事件的爆发和走向产生深刻影响。

与秦晖聚焦政治结构不同，Walder的经典研究从社会学角度揭示了文革如何在实践中训练并扩散群众的组织能力。[4] 他强调，文革并非完全自发的群众革命，而是在国家动员之下，基层群体获得了前所未有的横向串联、争取资源、动员同伴的能力。这些能力原本服务于政治斗争，但一旦国家退出运动式治理，便以“技能残留”的方式滞留在社会之中。Walder的研究为理解“1980年代为何出现大量松散但有组织的社会行动”提供了关键解释，但他同样没有继续追问：当国家重新把社会视为潜在风险时，这些组织残余为何会成为政治系统首先要压制的对象。

Perry的研究则指出，中国的抗争并不完全源于现代公民社会，而延续了更早的革命传统与动员方式。[5] 在她的框架中，中国社会的集体行动往往是国家动员与社会回应之间长期互动的结果，而非天然自发的政治自治行为。这种分析帮助我们理解，文革之后社会中残留的组织能力之所以能在1980年代重新运作，并非因为中国出现了一个成熟的公民社会，而是因为国家曾经在革命与运动时期向社会深度灌输的组织逻辑仍然存在。然而Perry的研究更多关注历史长期性，尚未将这种传统与六四作为一个治理模式转折点紧密结合。

总体而言，现有关于文革与运动治国的研究，为理解中国社会如何被塑造、如何获得组织能力、如何在文革后保持“准政治主体性”提供了丰富的材料，但它们往往将文革视为一个“历史终点”，而较少追问这套动员体系的残余如何进入1980年代社会结构，并最终如何在1989年的政治危机中发挥至关重要的作用。也正是在这一点上，既有研究普遍忽略了“运动治国遗产”如何成为六四的结构背景——既是社会有能力形成广泛抗议的前提，也是国家在六四之后选择彻底清除社会组织能力的深层逻辑来源。[3][4][5]

2.3 国家-社会关系与去组织化

现有关于国家—社会关系的研究，更多是从“结果形态”出发描绘一个已经成型的格局，而较少追问这个格局是如何在历史中被造出来的。Vivienne Shue、裴敏欣、Andrew Nathan等人的分析，大体都共享一个核心观察：中国社会并非作为一个可以与国家进行制度化博弈的主体存在，而是被纳入一种“被管理”“被调控”的对象位置。[6][7][8] 国家通过行政、法律和选择性开放，将社会纳入一种可监测、可分解、可替换的结构之中，反馈被吸收，但主体性被削弱。Nathan提出的“威权韧性”，以及裴敏欣关于“困境型威权主义”的讨论，都假定了一种以国家主导、社会被动的长期稳定状态，重点在于解释这一状态如何得以延续，而不是这一状态何以取代此前那种充满动员与博弈的政治形态。

Sebastian Heilmann所说的“适应性威权主义”，在一定程度上补充了这一图景。[9] 他强调中共并非一味僵化，而是擅长通过政策试验、地方试点和选择性制度创新来调整自身统治方式。这条研究路线很好地揭示了体制在不开放权力来源的前提下，如何通过“技术性改革”维持统治合法性，却往往把“社会”处理为一个被动环境：社会是需要被感知、被应对的变量，而不是与国家共同塑造规则的行动者。换句话说，这些研究生动刻画了一个“社会被管理而非博弈”的后六四格局，却基本把这一格局当作既定起点，而不是解释对象本身。

本论文的切入点正在于此。与其把“被管理的社会”“去组织化的社会”视为一个自然而然、仿佛与生俱来的背景，不如追问：这种国家—社会结构究竟是从何时、又通过何种历史机制形成的？如果说Shue、裴敏欣、Nathan和Heilmann描写的是一个已经完成去组织化的社会图景，那么我希望在他们的基础上向前追溯，把“运动治国遗产的清算”“社会组织能力的拔除”和“国家—社会关系的再编排”连成一条连续因果链。[4][5][6][7][8][9] 也就是说，不仅解释“今日中国为什么是一个被管理而非博弈的社会”，还要解释“为什么会从一个曾经高度被组织化、甚至具备官民博弈能力的社会，走到今天这种近乎完全去组织化的状态”。

3. 理论框架：运动治国、组织能力与民主可能性

3.1 运动治国的定义

在考察六四之前的中国政治结构时，“运动治国”这一治理模式具有基础性的解释力。它并不仅意味着频繁的政治运动，而是一整套关于国家—社会关系的运作逻辑。其核心特征在于，国家有意暂时赋权群众，使之成为可以直接参与、甚至是塑造政治进程的行动主体。这种赋权往往以“革命”或“阶级斗争”的名义展开，使得普通社会成员在特定情境中获得了对官僚体系施压乃至颠覆的合法性。

这种模式的另一关键面向在于，它必须允许一定形式的横向组织。尽管组织往往是临时的或半合法的，但在实际操作中，大量跨单位、跨地域的串联得以发生，使社会内部形成了短期却真实有效的集体行动网络。这些网络不是现代意义的公民社会，却具有高度的行动能力与动员密度，它们构成运动治国能够反复启动的社会基础。

更重要的是，运动治国把群众对官僚体系的冲击纳入治理工具本身。官僚系统在这种模型中并非始终稳固，它在特定时期可能被呈现为僵化、腐败甚至“叛变”的群体，从而成为群众运动的合法目标。国家通过这种“群众上压—领袖下击”的机制，对官僚体系进行周期性的整肃与再塑造，以维持政治权威并重构统治秩序。

因此，运动治国的本质不在于运动的频度，而在于它把群众行动内嵌进治理结构，使“动员—冲击—重组”成为体制运行的内置机制。这套机制不仅塑造了文革的政治逻辑，也深刻影响了文革之后国家与社会的心理结构与组织基础，是理解1980年代政治空间的不可或缺的历史前提。

3.2 社会组织能力的来源

1980年代中国社会表现出的自组织能力，并不能简单理解为一种“公民社会的自然萌芽”。相反，它更像是一套在更早时期由国家主动塑造、又在政治退潮中意外遗留的治理副产品。自建政以来，中共长期依赖运动式治理，以群众动员作为政治执行的关键机制。在这一过程中，基层社会被系统性地卷入到各类政治运动之中，学习乃至习惯于以集体形式表达意见、形成阵线、进行协调和串联。运动治国不仅是一种治理方式，也是一种“社会能力制造机制”。组织能力并非出自自由结社的制度条件，而是在反复动员中通过实践被训练出来的。

文革则将这一能力推向极端。作为一次罕见的“群众被合法赋权反冲官僚体系”的政治实验，文革不仅摧毁了行政秩序，也深刻改变了社会行动的心理结构。大量普通青年在运动中第一次获得横向联合、持续集结、设立组织、争取公共话语的经验。尽管文革的目标与方向充满荒诞与暴力，但它客观上为整个社会留下了一种高度政治化的行动记忆：群众不仅是被动听命的对象，也可以成为可以聚集、协商、对抗乃至挑战权力的主体。

这种能力在文革结束后并未立即消失。相反，由于政治收缩和意识形态退潮，它从国家动员体系中“流入”社会，自发转化成一种低烈度的民间组织资源，为1980年代公共讨论、学生社团、思想沙龙以及若干社会抗争提供了实践基础。这正是1980年代许多研究者观察到但难以解释的悖论：国家放松控制后，社会之所以能够迅速进入公共表达与横向联动的状态，并非源自制度新生，而是源自毛时代遗留下来的那套运动技能。

换言之，改革初期的社会组织能力是一种历史沉积，而非制度创新；是一种政治未完全退出但国家暂未主动再动员的缝隙状态。正是这套“运动治国遗产”支撑了1980年代社会与国家之间短暂而脆弱的博弈结构，也构成理解六四前政治生态的关键背景。

3.3 文革的关键结构性后果

文革不仅是一次政治斗争与暴力动员的高潮，更是一场深刻改变国家—社会结构的历史工程。它最重要的结构性效果，并不在于冲突本身的激烈程度，而在于它首次将群众置于官僚体系的对立面，并以制度化、合法化的方式赋予这种对立以行动权。在此前的中共政治实践中，群众动员始终是党组织运作的延伸，是一种自上而下的动员机制，而不是具有独立政治意志的主体；文革则打破了这一逻辑，使群众以“革命”的名义可以直接批判、监督乃至推翻各级官僚机关。Andrew Walder所分析的那种“组织化的社会动员”，在文革中达到了最极端的形式：[4] 群众不仅被动员，而且被授权，甚至被要求去打破官僚体系的稳定性。

在这一进程中，官僚层级的合法性遭到了持续而系统性的否定。官僚不再是执行党的路线的可靠中介，而成为群众攻击的首要对象。Walder的研究显示，文革在结构上制造了一种“群众政治优先于官僚政治”的破裂格局；而Elizabeth Perry所强调的革命与抗争传统，也在文革中获得了新的载体，使群众行动不再只是国家机器的工具，而成为可以挑战国家机器本身的力量。[5]

由此形成的深层后果，是官与民两者之间的互不信任被永久镶嵌在国家结构之中。官僚不再相信群众政治的可控性，群众也不再相信官僚体系的正当性。Vivienne Shue所讨论的国家如何“塑形社会”的理论，在文革之后出现了反向效果：[6] 不是国家塑造了社会，而是国家在极端动员中意外创造了一个具有独立政治行动能力、并且对国家深度不信任的社会力量。

正是在这一意义上，文革不仅留下了创伤记忆，也无意间制造了1980年代引发官民博弈的结构性前提。群众之所以能够在改革开放初期迅速形成自治组织、校园社团、公共讨论空间乃至全国性串联，都不是现代公民社会自然萌芽的结果，而是文革这一场国家主导的巨型动员工程所遗留下来的“政治技能”与“组织能力”的制度化余震。1980年代的社会不是新生的，而是“未被完全消除的文革式组织能力”在新的政治环境下的再次呈现。

4. 1978–1989：运动治国的退场与制度转型的未完成过渡

4.1 改革初期的“官民最低共识”

文革的终结在中国社会内部意外地生成了一种短暂而稳固的共识结构。这个共识并非通常意义上的政治联盟，而是一种更接近“最低限度的历史认同”：不再回到毛式个人崇拜与无限政治动员的时代。在1978—1980年代初期，无论是刚从干部审查与派性清洗中恢复元气的官僚体系，还是在文革中经历组织化与反复对抗的社会群体，都本能地拒斥再度陷入运动政治的漩涡。

对官僚集团而言，文革的主要经验是制度性失序与权力极端不稳定。干部无法依靠组织程序确定自身位置，政治忠诚的标准随时由上级重新定义，无论执行政策多么谨慎，都可能在下一轮运动中沦为“被打倒者”。因此，在改革初期，官僚集团对“秩序”有着高度一致的渴望，这种渴望既包含维持组织规则的希望，也包含摆脱群众政治的深层恐惧。

社会方面，群众虽然在文革中短暂获得政治行动的正当性，但这种“组织自由”既无制度保障，也常伴随暴力、清洗与被利用的感受。1970年代末的普通城市青年、知识分子与工人，并不追求重演文革式的群众政治。他们同样期待稳定环境，以重建生活、就业与教育体系。社会对“发展”的诉求之所以迅速形成，也是因为文革耗尽了人们的时间、经济与组织资源，让“回归正常生活”与“改善物质条件”成为跨阶层共享的目标。

正是在这种双向的历史记忆之上，改革初期出现了一个颇具社会深度的“官民最低共识”：必须否定毛式动员政治，必须恢复制度化规则，必须优先追求经济发展。这种共识并不意味着官民之间的信任，而是一种由共同创伤促成的负向认同。它既不是民主化的理念基础，也不是威权再巩固的意识形态，而是一种“不要再被政治折腾”的社会心理。

这种最低共识为1980年代的政治宽松与思想解放提供了重要背景，也使得官民在一段时期内能够在改革问题上相向而行。然而，这种共识本身是脆弱的，它并没有解决文革留下的官民不信任结构，也没有为制度性博弈提供稳定框架。它只是一种历史过渡条件，使得80年代的政治开放与社会活跃成为可能，但并未决定其最终走向。

4.2 两种路线并存的原因

改革初期之所以能够容纳看似矛盾的两种政治方向，一方面是因为中共高层并未真正形成关于“如何结束运动治国、如何重建政治秩序”的完整方案。邓小平及其同代领导人深受文革创伤，他们清楚要终结群众政治，却并未构思出一个制度化的新秩序来取代旧的动员体系；他们的首要目标是稳定，是恢复国家功能，而不是在政治形态上进行预先设计好的制度创新。因此，政治改革的可能性在这一时期往往不是源于顶层方案，而是源于一种“边走边看”的松动状态。

正因如此，党内允许乃至默许了两条方向迥异但尚未冲突的政治路径共同存在。一条是以邓为代表的“技术治理路线”，强调发展经济、稳定秩序、恢复官僚体系的运转，但对政治改革态度谨慎甚至暧昧；另一条则以赵紫阳为代表，试图将社会力量纳入制度轨道，主张以更开放的政治参与来支撑经济转型，并缓和因改革而不断积累的社会紧张。从赵的视角看，80年代社会组织能力虽然未被制度化，却蕴含着公共协商的潜能；而从邓的视角看，这些能力是文革遗留的不确定性源泉，既可能成为反馈机制，也可能演化为风险。

正是这种未决的、尚未定型的政治空间，使得两条路线在整个十年中得以并存。高层自身没有统一答案，社会也在急速变化，而运动治国的遗产又使国家暴露在前所未有的横向组织活力之下。于是，政治改革既不是既定目标，也不是明确禁区，而是一种“开放但紧张”的条件，依赖于不断调整的力量平衡。赵紫阳及其政策实验正是诞生于这种结构性模糊之中，也因此在六四之前始终具有现实可能性，却又始终处在脆弱的边缘。

4.3 为什么社会组织能力仍被容忍

改革初期的政治气候并未对社会自组织采取明确的否定态度，因为各方都仍在既有历史惯性中摸索前行。社会组织能力作为文革遗留的“群众动员技能”，并未在1978—1989年间被视为必须立即拆解的对象。相反，它在一定程度上成为改革时期公共讨论与政策反馈的渠道，使官僚集团能够观测社会情绪、测试改革边界。

与此同时，党内路线竞争尚未收束，尤其在胡—赵时期，对政治改革的设想本身包含吸纳社会参与的意图，因此并没有出现彻底削弱社会组织能力的制度性工程。赵紫阳所代表的改革思路，更倾向于将有限的社会动员视为改革合法性的补充，而不是威胁。这也使得1980年代的公共领域出现了短暂的开放状态，让人误以为改革可以自然过渡到制度化的政治参与。

更深层的原因在于，官僚集团普遍低估了社会动员能力的政治潜能。经历文革后，官僚对群众运动的恐惧是真实存在的，但在稳定与经济增长初见成效的背景下，他们倾向于认为社会动能已经被“去政治化”，不会再形成横向组织或挑战权力结构。正是在这种误判之下，1980年代的社会自组织得以维持一定限度的生长空间，并最终在1989年急剧释放，导致超出预期的政治后果。

5. 六四：过渡期的崩塌与治理范式的定型

5.1 六四的“失控性”与邓小平的风险感知

1989年的危机并非一场预谋中的政治转型，也并不是一场预先设计好的路线冲突，而更像是在改革十年累积的矛盾、社会组织能力的继承性动力、体制内部的不确定性以及象征性事件的连锁反应共同作用下形成的一次“多重失控”。这类失控并非源于单一主体的意志，而是在松动的政治空间、未被界定的改革边界和高度象征化的政治符号不断叠加中突然显性化。

从社会层面看，1980年代延续下来的横向组织能力，使得学生自治、知识界舆论和城市公共情绪能够迅速形成反馈回路；从党内来看，改革派与保守派对危机处理方式存在明显分歧，使得权力中心无法在早期形成一致的危机认知；从象征层面看，清明祭奠、媒体开放、学生绝食及不断扩大的国际关注，使抗议逐渐脱离了原本的议题框定，转化为一种具有高度象征力量、无法轻易降温的公共政治事件。这些因素共同构成了“失控性”的经验背景。[1][2]

而真正决定历史走向的，是邓小平对这一失控局面的风险感知方式。对经历过文革的那一代领导人而言，“群众政治”的爆发并不仅仅意味着社会压力或政策危机，而是唤起了关于权力失序、组织瓦解与官僚体系整体坍塌的深层记忆。文革时期群众被合法化地置于官僚体系的对立面，使得“群众横向组织化”在邓小平心中天然地带有不可控甚至灾难性的含义。因此，当抗议从校园与体制内讨论扩散到街道、单位与国家象征空间时，邓的判断并不是“这是一次可以谈判的政治改革契机”，而是“这是一次可能引发文革式全面失序的端口”。

换言之，在邓小平的风险偏好结构中，最不可接受的并非民主诉求本身，而是社会组织能力一旦脱离体制控制所可能引发的连锁性崩塌。因此，六四从根本上并不是对民主要求的拒绝，而是对“群众组织化”逻辑的拒绝；不是对政治开放的理论反对，而是对再度陷入文革式失控的深层恐惧。正是在这种风险感知逻辑下，邓选择了以最极端的方式终结危机，并以此确立了此后中国政治的可行边界。

5.2 文革记忆与风险偏好的激活

在1989年的关键节点，主导政治决断的那一代中共领导人，其风险判断深受文革经历塑造。文革不仅是一场政治混乱，更是一场治理体系的全面失灵，在他们的生命经验中构成了“群众政治失控”的原型创伤。邓小平、薄一波、万里等文革中被贬谪、囚禁、批斗的官僚，都在文革中切身体验过组织链条断裂、群众压力反向淹没决策者的局面。这种经历在后来成为一种高度稳固的心理结构，使他们在面对社会动员时天然倾向于将风险外推到“文革再现”的可能性上。

正因如此，1980年代中后期出现的社会动员、跨单位串联、舆论加速效果，并未被他们视为“制度化改革的压力”，而被归类为一种熟悉而危险的政治场景复燃。他们看到的并不是民主化的潜在可能性，而是文革逻辑的重新回潮：群众可能再度获得政治主体性，组织边界可能再次被冲破，官僚体系可能再次丧失控制权。因此，六四事件中的失控因素——无论来自学生组织的自治能力、社会情绪的累积效应，还是党内路线的不统一——都被迅速重构为一场关于“权力秩序能否维持”的根本性危机。

如果说东欧共产党在面对类似的社会压力时选择了开放、协商与制度性让渡，部分原因在于他们缺乏文革式的政治记忆；但在中国，政治精英的风险偏好早已被这种历史经验定型。文革不仅摧毁了他们对群众政治的信任，也摧毁了他们对制度调整过程的耐心与容忍度，使他们在面对不确定性时更可能选择先行压制，再图修补。六四的决策因此不只是对一场抗议的回应，而是对一段历史创伤的重复执行。

从这个意义上说，文革经验并没有随着改革开放的推进而消散，相反，它作为一种深层政治心理结构，在1989年被再次唤醒，并在关键时刻压倒了所有其他路线可能性。它决定了邓小平及其同代人的风险偏好，进而决定了改革开放的制度边界，并最终使中国失去了向更开放、更制度化方向演进的关键机会。

5.3 路线选择的实质

六四之后的决断，并不能简单归纳为意识形态上的“反民主”，也无法以单纯的价值判断来理解其逻辑基础。更贴切的解释是：决策者在风险感知被全面激活的情况下，选择系统性否定一切来自群众端的政治不确定性。这种否定并非针对某一项诉求，而是针对整个政治结构中“来自社会的自主变量”。群众政治因此被终结，不是因为群众的诉求本身不可接受，而是因为群众在组织形态上被视为无法控制的力量；社会组织能力也不仅是被压制，而是被重新定义为必须彻底消除的治理风险；任何可能引入权力来源不确定性的机制，都在这次选择中被排除在未来的选项之外。

因此，六四的历史意义并不止于一次政治冲突的处理方式，而在于通过这次事件，中国的政治发展正式从“可以容忍一定程度社会博弈的改革时代”，跨入了“以预防不确定性为核心的治理时代”。从运动治国的角度看，这一决断标志着一个漫长政治传统的终点：曾经作为治理资源的群众动员，被改写为必须严防的制度风险；曾经被视为历史惯性遗存的社会组织能力，被列入不可容忍的结构变量。换句话说，六四的真正分水岭意义不在于它终结了某种民主尝试，而在于它终结了群众政治可能性本身——运动治国的全部组织基础，由此被彻底撤出中国政治的可能集合。

6. 六四之后：民主被结构性排除

6.1 并非意识形态上的反民主

六四之后，中共并未在意识形态层面上系统地否定“民主”概念。相反，“民主”“监督”“政治体制改革”等词汇在官方话语中仍不时出现，既作为政权合法化叙述的一部分，也作为回应社会期望的修辞资源。无论是党的历次文件，还是领导层的公开讲话，都未构建一个“反民主的理论体系”。在党内层面，改革派话语并未完全消失，即便在权力高压的总体框架下，仍能看到来自体制内部的间歇性呼吁，如温家宝关于政治体制改革必要性的反复表达，这些声音说明党内并不存在一个统一的、原则性反对民主的意识形态阵线。

换言之，六四所确立的并非一种“反民主的思想”，而是一种对民主化前提条件的结构性否定。政权并不拒绝“民主”这一符号本身，而是拒绝其在实践层面赖以成立的组织基础与权力不确定性。正因如此，六四之后的政治变化不能简单理解为“意识形态回摆”，而是治理模式的根本重构：官方保留了民主语言，却系统性地排除了民主得以发生的结构条件。

6.2 但社会组织能力被彻底清除

六四之后，中共通过系统性的去组织化进程，从根本上重塑了社会力量的治理方式。社会参与的限制并非主要通过意识形态批判来实现，而是通过一系列具体的行政、法律和组织干预措施，旨在消除横向协调和集体行动的物质基础。

天安门事件发生后，非官方协会被解散或被置于严格的注册和赞助要求之下；学生自治组织被取缔或并入党控制的机构；大学被重组，以防止学生独立代表权的出现。单位制度作为一种垂直控制机制得到加强，将个人的就业、福利、住房和政治评价重新与行政管辖的单位联系起来。通过这些措施，国家系统性地破坏了维持跨校园、跨行业和跨社会群体持续横向联系所需的基础设施条件。

至关重要的是，这种压制逻辑是内容中立的。组织受到打击并非因为它们倡导什么，而是因为它们有能力做什么。无论是政治组织（民运）、宗教组织（如法轮功）、专业组织（律师网络）、人权组织（请愿者和活动人士），还是慈善和公益组织，任何表现出在党监督之外进行自主横向联系、形成集体认同和协调行动能力的社会组织，都被视为不可接受的治理风险。决定性标准不是意识形态，而是组织独立性。

这种转变的意义不仅在于禁止特定活动，更在于重新定义了社会在政治结构中的地位。社会不再被视为参与者、对话者或潜在的谈判主体。相反，它被重新定义为一个需要持续监控、监管、分化和风险防范的对象。因此，国家与社会的关系从有条件的响应转变为先发制人的管理，从选择性协商转变为系统性预防。

通过这种方式，1989年后的中国并非通过拒绝特定的民主思想、纲领或诉求来否定民主。相反，它通过消除民主实践运作所需的组织条件，使民主在结构上变得不可能。没有稳定的横向网络、自主结社或持续的集体行动者，民主参与就失去了其物质载体。民主存在于话语中，但不存在于社会现实中。这种全面的去组织化过程构成了1989年后治理模式的核心机制，并为中国威权统治的长期韧性提供了关键解释。被消除的并非异议本身，而是社会集体自主行动的可能性——从而并非通过意识形态上的封闭，而是通过结构性的根除来阻止民主的出现。

6.3 党内改革派为何不再构成突破口

六四之后的政治格局呈现出一个表面悖论：许多在事件中受到牵连的干部后来陆续复出，说明邓小平并未决意将改革派作为一个整体彻底清除。然而，这种个人层面的“宽容”并未转化为改革路线的制度性复兴。原因并不在于改革派数量太少或力量太弱，而在于承载改革路线的社会结构已被根本性改变。

文革以来反复出现的干部起落，使中共体系形成了一个稳定的逻辑：个人可被否定，又可被恢复；但组织形态一旦被界定为威胁，则不能被容忍。六四后被彻底压制和取缔的，并非某些政治人物，而是民间横向组织能力本身。此后，中国社会不再具备支撑改革派政策诉求的自主力量，也不能形成制度化的公共意见场域。改革派即使在党内存在，也失去了可与党国结构进行互动的外部支点。

因此，党内改革派的困境并不是“政治理想无人认同”，而是没有社会承接者可让改革过程真正发生。没有自主组织，也没有可持续的公共动员机制，制度改革就只能是内部话语，而无法成为政治实践。温家宝关于政治体制改革的讲话便反映了这一结构性困境：言说存在，但路径不存在。

这一逻辑最终指向一个清晰结论：六四之后的中国并非缺乏改革意愿，而是缺乏改革的结构条件。民主转型之所以无法再被提起，并非因为意识形态从根本上否定了民主，而是因为在组织层面消解了民主得以发生的前置条件。换言之，党内改革派不再构成突破口，是因为突破的“社会面”已被封闭。

7. 结论

7.1 核心结论重申

从整体脉络回望，可以愈发清晰地看到一条完整的因果链：文化大革命不仅以破坏性的方式重塑了国家与社会的关系，更在无意之中制造了高度浓缩的社会组织能力，并首次将群众置于与官僚集团对立的结构位置。这种来自运动治国的遗产既包含破坏性的创伤，也蕴含着构成1980年代官民博弈基础的关键条件。改革初期之所以出现相对开放的政治与社会空气，正是因为文革余波尚未退尽、组织能力尚未被全面清除，而官僚集团本身也尚未就“如何结束运动治国”达成统一的制度化方案。

六四事件的重要性，正在于它从结构上终结了这一特殊历史阶段。对于邓小平与其同代领导人而言，文革留下的深层心理记忆与风险偏好在危机中被彻底激活，使他们最终将“社会组织能力”本身视为不可承受之风险，而不仅仅是抗议的一部分。正是在这一意义上，六四不只是一次政治冲突的收束，更标志着运动治国时代的历史闭合点。此后，中国的政治发展不再以群众动员、横向组织或官民博弈为治理资源，而走向以管理、纪律与风险预防为核心的治理模式。

由此造成的后果是深远的：民主之所以从此被排除，不是因为意识形态层面的否定——事实上，党内的改革话语在1990年代仍断续出现——而是因为民主赖以存在的结构性基础已被整体移除。当社会组织能力被连根拔除，民间失去形成稳定表达的渠道，党内改革派也就失去了可能的制度承接者；在这种条件下，民主的制度化路径不再是一个可以在现实结构中展开的选项，而只存在于抽象理念与话语空间之中。

六四因此既不是某种民主愿望的终点，也不是一次单纯的反民主决断，而是中国政治结构的关键分水岭。它结束了文革遗留的组织结构，关闭了1980年代形成的有限博弈空间，使得民主从实践可能性转为结构性不可能。换言之，民主不是被否定，而是被“无处安放”。

7.2 理论贡献

本文试图提供一条不同于以往研究的解释路径，将“社会组织能力”置于国家—社会关系与制度转型逻辑的中心位置。既有的六四研究往往将焦点放在道德意义、政体属性或精英分裂上，而本文则强调，决定性变量并非理念或事件本身，而是社会在何种结构条件下能够成为政治行动的主体。通过追溯运动治国所遗留的组织能力、文革所造成的官民结构断裂，以及改革初期官民最低共识的短暂维持，本文试图展示：六四不仅是政治冲突的爆发点，更是中国治理模式从“允许博弈”迈向“全面去组织化”的关键分水岭。正是文化大革命的极端动员经验，塑造了邓小平及其所代表的官僚集团对社会组织能力的深度恐惧；这种风险偏好最终导致在六四之后通过结构性方式否定民主，从而使中国失去了一次可能的制度转型机会。

在这一视角下，六四的意义被重新定位为一次结构性决断，而非单纯的政治事件或民主挫折。它终结的不仅是改革派的路线空间，更是社会作为潜在政治行为体的存在条件。通过恢复这一长期结构链条，本文为理解中国威权体制的韧性提供新的解释框架，即：不是意识形态决定民主可能性，而是社会组织能力的存废决定制度转型的上限。因而，六四成为理解“中国为何未能进入制度化改革轨道”的枢纽节点，其重要性不仅在事件本身，也在它标志了一个时代的终结——运动治国的余温被彻底清除，而自发民主路径也随之被结构性压缩。

7.3 限制与未来研究

本研究的主要限制首先来自材料与档案的长期不足。关于1980年代党内路线讨论、社会组织实际运作方式、内部决策机制等关键信息，多依赖回忆、访谈和旁证，而难以进入原始档案层面，这使得对精英风险感知与具体决策过程的刻画不可避免地带有一定推断性。同时，本研究以文革—改革—六四这一条结构主线解释国家—社会关系的重塑，其有效性在很大程度上依赖代际特征：亲历文革的政治精英如何理解“群众”“组织”“失控”，以及这一风险偏好如何影响他们对制度边界的把握。随着代际更替，这一解释框架的适用性及可延展性值得在未来继续检验。

另一个重要限制来自“组织能力”这一变量本身所面临的时代转换。互联网、平台社会、数字监控与算法化治理正在提出全新的组织方式与反组织方式，其逻辑既可能弱化传统意义上的横向组织，也可能在新的技术条件下生成不同于1980年代的动员结构。本研究所讨论的组织能力主要来自运动治国的历史遗产，而未来中国社会是否会出现新的组织形态、这些形态是否会重新构成政治可能性的边界，仍需进一步观察与理论化。

本文将1989年天安门事件视为结构性断裂的起点，而非去组织化过程本身的终结。从20世纪90年代初开始，这种逻辑通过一系列行政、法律和安全措施逐步实施，这些措施随着时间的推移不断展开，逐步瓦解了政治、宗教、专业和慈善等领域独立的横向协调机制。这构成了一个独特的研究课题，值得进行独立而深入的探讨。

此外，未来研究还可以从下面两个方向展开：其一，更细致地比较不同威权体制在组织能力清除、社会结构再塑造方面的异同，以验证本研究提出的“结构性排除民主”机制的普遍性或特殊性；其二，从代际社会学角度分析年轻一代的政治行动逻辑，考察新的社会技术环境如何重塑政治参与与组织性。总体而言，本研究提供的是一个历史性解释框架，而非确定性的未来模型，如何在技术、代际与制度变迁的交叉点重新思考中国的政治可能性，仍是尚未完成的研究议程。

参考文献

[1] 赵鼎新. The Power of Tiananmen: State-Society Relations and the 1989 Beijing Student Movement. University of Chicago Press, 2001.