Plural institutionalism and the emergence of intellectual public spaces in contemporary China: Four relational patterns and four organizational forms

This article discusses the relationship between intellectuals and the party‐state in 1980s China. By drawing insights from the new institutionalism, the author proposes a new theoretical model, which is called ‘plural institutionalism’, as an alternative to the conceptual schema of ‘civil society against the state’ currently prevalent in the related literature. To examine the explanative power of the new model, an empirical study of the activities of four groups, which represented the four organizational forms of Chinese intellectual public spaces in the 1980s, is presented. The shaping influence of historically evolving institutional configuration upon different actors’ political preferences is highlighted to explain the diversity of the relational patterns between intellectuals and the party‐state. In the final part, the analysis centers on the institutional channels that linked intellectuals and students, and reveals the role of the institutional factors in shaping intellectuals’ political preferences, choices, and actions in the Tiananmen Movement of 1989, giving an explanation of why Chinese intellectuals failed to prevent the student's movement from its tragic radicalization.