“弱国家”的终结与新史观的兴起:当代美国行政之变的话语塑造

The End of the"Weak State"and the Rise of the New Historical View:Discourse Shaping of the rise of the Contemporary American Executive-centered System of Government

行政主导体制在现代美国的崛起,堪称一场“不流血的宪制革命”。这一历史性巨变,与美国人引以为傲的分权宪制传统及长期流行于世的“弱国家”叙事,形成现实与历史、实践与理论的强烈反差,从而引发一场延宕百年、悬而未决的行政合法性困境。面对困境,几代美国知识精英致力于重建新史观,精心塑造出一整套自圆其说的话语体系,为美国体制转型辩护,力图证成新的行政主导体制的历史合法性。这一新史观的重建过程表现为:他们用“国家建构”的新叙事取代“弱国家”的旧叙事,同时以还原美国早期国家建构和行政治理历史的方式来证明新叙事的可靠性,并且引入“危机与变革”的历史逻辑和“人民出场”的新宪制史论,来论证行政主导体制不是违背美国宪法传统的产物,而是美国人在应对危机的历史实践中自发做出的现实选择。这种融叙事之变、史实还原、逻辑转换和宪制观念更新于一体的新史观,打通了前后两个百年的美国国家建构历史,最终在理论和话语上塑造出一幅具备历史合法性的美国行政体制图景。剖析美国知识精英主动修正意识形态,为重构行政之变的历史合法性而殚精竭虑的话语生产过程,对于我们更加全面地认识美国体制的历史之变、内在矛盾和现实逻辑,深化对政治实践和理论关系的认识,具有重要的“破茧”意义。

The rise of the executive-centered system of government in modern America has been described as a"bloodless constitutional revolution",Unlike the constitutional tradition of separation of powers and the long-popular narrative of"weak state"in American society,this historic change has led to a sharp contrast between reality and history,practice and theory,thus giving rise to an unresolved dilemma of administrative legitimacy that has lasted fora century.In order to solve the dilemma,several generations of American intellectual elites have been devoting themselves to reconstructing a new historical perspective and crafting a set of self-justifying discourses to defend the transformation of U.S.regime,and to prove the historical legitimacy of the new executive-centered system of U.S.government.The reconstruction process is as follows:they replaced the old narrative of"weak state"with the new narrative of"state-building",proved the reliability of the new narative by restoring early history of American state-building and administrative governance,and introduced a historical logic of"from crisis to change"and a new constitutional historical view of"The People's Presence"to argue that the executive-centered system is nota result of violating the U.S.constitutional tradition,but a spontaneous and realistic choice made by Americans during their historical practice of dealing with different crises.This new perspective bridges the two centuries of American state-building history and ultimately shapes the historical legitimacy of the executive-centered system in theory and discourse.It is of great significance for us to understand the historical changes,internal contradictions and realistic logic of U.S.regime more comprehensively and deepen our understanding of the relationship between polical practice and theory by analyzing the process of discourse production in which American intellectualelites tookthe initiative torevise their ideology and made great efforts to reconstruct the historical legitimacy of the executive-centered system.