一九九一年結束動員戡亂、國民大會開始全面改選，不但是臺灣內部民主化關鍵的「元年」，而且是臺灣海峽兩邊政權在憲法法理上「一分為二」的開端，其實也是民進黨從原來擁抱臺獨、然後準備走向轉型的開始。由於一九九一年對臺灣政治而言是如此具有分水嶺的作用，那麼在二十一年後的今天，回顧這一年的改變如何發生，本身就很有意義；尤其，當年最主要的決策者李登輝總統的改革事蹟被稱作「寧靜革命」，他在任內屢次公開使用「中華民國在臺灣」――也就是把一句話（a sentence）變成一個專有名詞（a term）――的概念，企圖解決國號與領土不相符合的矛盾，其結果到底是「化解了」臺獨或是「實踐了」臺獨？也許有不同角度的解讀空間，但是先確實理解一九九一年最主要的政治勢力國民黨、民進黨內部發生了甚麼事，以及美中臺三角關係如何重新界定，應是解答此一臺灣政治史之重大課題的先決條件。

The ending of the mobilization to repel rebellions and the beginning of full-scale re-election of the National Assembly members in 1991 was not only the crucial “first year” for internal democratization in Taiwan, but also the initiation of “one divided into two” constitutionally legitimate regimes on the two sides of the Taiwan Strait, as well as the first preparation in the transformation of the Democratic Progressive Party (the DPP) from its originally embraced position of Taiwan Independence. President Lee Tenghui he himself during his term of presidency had already publicly used the phrase “The Republic of China on Taiwan”, and in so doing he had managed to change a proposition into a specific terminology-namely, a concept, in an attempt to solve the incompatibility between the name of the nation and its territory, with the resulting effect that has raised the two-pronged query whether this has either “dissolved” or “realized” the issue of Taiwan Independence.
The first thing that has to be ascertained here concerns the following: (1) what happened inside the most important political forces in Taiwan including the KMT and the DDP? (2) how to redefine the triangular relationships among the U.S.A., mainland China and Taiwan (the ROC)? The answers to these questions are indeed the pre-conditions for responding to the major issue raised here in Taiwan’s political history.