主题:

民主是20世纪最成功的政治理念。为什么它陷入了麻烦，怎样做能拯救它？

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原文地址：http://www.economist.com/news/essays/21596796-democracy-was-most-successful-political-idea-20th-century-why-has-it-run-trouble-and-what-can-be-do

翻译：storm111 
论坛地址：http://www.ltaaa.com/bbs/thread-270445-1-1.html【发表日期】2014年2月27日

What's gone wrong with democracy

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Between 1980 and 2000 democracy experienced a few setbacks, but since 2000 there have been many

1980年至2000年，民主小受挫折。但自2000年至今，挫折已经很多了。

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Democracy is going through a difficult time. Where autocrats have been driven out of office, their opponents have mostly failed to create viable democratic regimes. Even in established democracies, flaws in the system have become worryingly visible and disillusion with politics is rife. Yet just a few years ago democracy looked as though it would dominate the world.

民主正经历艰难时刻。凡是独裁者被赶下台的地方，他的反对者也大多没能建立可行的民主政权。即便建立了民主，系统的罅隙也让人见之心忧，然后民主就随政治失序而幻灭。可就在几年前，民主看起来就要主宰世界了呀。

In the second half of the 20th century, democracies had taken root in the most difficult circumstances possible—in Germany, which had been traumatised by Nazism, in India, which had the world’s largest population of poor people, and, in the 1990s, in South Africa, which had been disfigured by apartheid. Decolonialisation created a host of new democracies in Africa and Asia, and autocratic regimes gave way to democracy in Greece (1974), Spain (1975), Argentina (1983), Brazil (1985) and Chile (1989). The collapse of the Soviet Union created many fledgling democracies in central Europe. By 2000 Freedom House, an American think-tank, classified 120 countries, or 63% of the world total, as democracies.
在中欧，苏联的解体孵化出民主的幼鸟。到了2000年，美国智库“自由之家”把120个——全世界63%的国家，归于民主麾下。

Representatives of more than 100 countries gathered at the World Forum on Democracy in Warsaw that year to proclaim that “the will of the people” was “the basis of the authority of government”. A report issued by America’s State Department declared that having seen off “failed experiments” with authoritarian and totalitarian forms of government, “it seems that now, at long last, democracy is triumphant.”

那一年，超过100个国家的代表汇聚在华沙的世界民主论坛，宣告：“人民的意志是政府权力之基。”美国国务院发布的报告宣称，向威权和集权政府这种“失败试验”道别。“就是现在，皿煮终获胜利。”

Such hubris was surely understandable after such a run of successes. But stand farther back and the triumph of democracy looks rather less inevitable. After the fall of Athens, where it was first developed, the political model had lain dormant until the Enlightenment more than 2,000 years later. In the 18th century only the American revolution produced a sustainable democracy. During the 19th century monarchists fought a prolonged rearguard action against democratic forces. In the first half of the 20th century nascent democracies collapsed in Germany, Spain and Italy. By 1941 there were only 11 democracies left, and Franklin Roosevelt worried that it might not be possible to shield “the great flame of democracy from the blackout of barbarism”.

Meanwhile, the Chinese Communist Party has broken the democratic world’s monopoly on economic progress. Larry Summers, of Harvard University, observes that when America was growing fastest, it doubled living standards roughly every 30 years. China has been doubling living standards roughly every decade for the past 30 years. The Chinese elite argue that their model—tight control by the Communist Party, coupled with a relentless effort to recruit talented people into its upper ranks—is more efficient than democracy and less susceptible to gridlock. The political leadership changes every decade or so, and there is a constant supply of fresh talent as party cadres are promoted based on their ability to hit targets.

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China says its model is more efficient than democracy and less susceptible to gridlock

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China’s critics rightly condemn the government for controlling public opinion in all sorts of ways, from imprisoning dissidents to censoring internet discussions. Yet the regime’s obsession with control paradoxically means it pays close attention to public opinion. At the same time China’s leaders have been able to tackle some of the big problems of state-building that can take decades to deal with in a democracy. In just two years China has extended pension coverage to an extra 240m rural dwellers, for example—far more than the total number of people covered by America’s public-pension system.

中国的批评者们恰到好处地谴责政府 以一切方法控制公共意见，包括关押异见人士，到审查互联网上的讨论。然而醉心于控制的政权却又矛盾地意味着他们更关注公众意见。同时，中国的领导人能够处理民主国家用几十年才能解决的关乎国家建设的大问题。就在两年前，中国领导人扩大了养老保险，让它额外覆盖了2.4亿的农村居民。举个例子——这远超美国公共年金制度涵盖的总人数。

Many Chinese are prepared to put up with their system if it delivers growth. The 2013 Pew Survey of Global Attitudes showed that 85% of Chinese were “very satisfied” with their country’s direction, compared with 31% of Americans. Some Chinese intellectuals have become positively boastful. Zhang Weiwei of Fudan University argues that democracy is destroying the West, and particularly America, because it institutionalises gridlock, trivialises decision-making and throws up second-rate presidents like George Bush junior. Yu Keping of Beijing University argues that democracy makes simple things “overly complicated and frivolous” and allows “certain sweet-talking politicians to mislead the people”. Wang Jisi, also of Beijing University, has observed that “many developing countries that have introduced Western values and political systems are experiencing disorder and chaos” and that China offers an alternative model. Countries from Africa (Rwanda) to the Middle East (Dubai) to South-East Asia (Vietnam) are taking this advice seriously.

China’s advance is all the more potent in the context of a series of disappointments for democrats since 2000. The first great setback was in Russia. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 the democratisation of the old Soviet Union seemed inevitable. In the 1990s Russia took a few drunken steps in that direction under Boris Yeltsin. But at the end of 1999 he resigned and handed power to Vladimir Putin, a former KGB operative who has since been both prime minister and president twice. This postmodern tsar has destroyed the substance of democracy in Russia, muzzling the press and imprisoning his opponents, while preserving the show—everyone can vote, so long as Mr Putin wins. Autocratic leaders in Venezuela, Ukraine, Argentina and elsewhere have followed suit, perpetuating a perverted simulacrum of democracy rather than doing away with it altogether, and thus discrediting it further.

The next big setback was the Iraq war. When Saddam Hussein’s fabled weapons of mass destruction failed to materialise after the American-led invasion of 2003, Mr Bush switched instead to justifying the war as a fight for freedom and democracy. “The concerted effort of free nations to promote democracy is a prelude to our enemies’ defeat,” he argued in his second inaugural address. This was more than mere opportunism: Mr Bush sincerely believed that the Middle East would remain a breeding ground for terrorism so long as it was dominated by dictators. But it did the democratic cause great harm. Left-wingers regarded it as proof that democracy was just a figleaf for American imperialism. Foreign-policy realists took Iraq’s growing chaos as proof that American-led promotion of democratisation was a recipe for instability. And disillusioned neoconservatives such as Francis Fukuyama, an American political scientist, saw it as proof that democracy cannot put down roots in stony ground.


Meanwhile some recent recruits to the democratic camp have lost their lustre. Since the introduction of democracy in 1994 South Africa has been ruled by the same party, the African National Congress, which has become progressively more self-serving. Turkey, which once seemed to combine moderate Islam with prosperity and democracy, is descending into corruption and autocracy. In Bangladesh, Thailand and Cambodia, opposition parties have boycotted recent elections or refused to accept their results.

与此同时，最近加入民主阵营的新兵也黯然失色。自从1994年民主引入南非以来，就被同一个政党——非洲人国民大会统治。非国大已经日趋于自谋私利了。土耳其，这个一度被视作把伊斯兰教同繁荣、民主恰当融合的国家，正朝着腐败和独裁坠落。在孟加拉国、泰国和柬埔寨。反对党抵制近期的选举或拒绝接受选举结果。

All this has demonstrated that building the institutions needed to sustain democracy is very slow work indeed, and has dispelled the once-popular notion that democracy will blossom rapidly and spontaneously once the seed is planted. Although democracy may be a “universal aspiration”, as Mr Bush and Tony Blair insisted, it is a culturally rooted practice. Western countries almost all extended the right to vote long after the establishment of sophisticated political systems, with powerful civil services and entrenched constitutional rights, in societies that cherished the notions of individual rights and independent judiciaries.





“Nothing is more wonderful than the art of being free, but nothing is harder to learn how to use than freedom.”

ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE, “DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA”

 阿里克西·德·托克维尔《论美国民主》

Yet in recent years the very institutions that are meant to provide models for new democracies have come to seem outdated and dysfunctional in established ones. The United States has become a byword for gridlock, so obsessed with partisan point-scoring that it has come to the verge of defaulting on its debts twice in the past two years. Its democracy is also corrupted by gerrymandering, the practice of drawing constituency boundaries to entrench the power of incumbents. This encourages extremism, because politicians have to appeal only to the party faithful, and in effect disenfranchises large numbers of voters. And money talks louder than ever in American politics. Thousands of lobbyists (more than 20 for every member of Congress) add to the length and complexity of legislation, the better to smuggle in special privileges. All this creates the impression that American democracy is for sale and that the rich have more power than the poor, even as lobbyists and donors insist that political expenditure is an exercise in free speech. The result is that America’s image—and by extension that of democracy itself—has taken a terrible battering.

然而，近些年有恰好有个机构说，这意味着现有的民主制度已经过时而且功能失调，需要提供新的民主模式。美国已经成为这种因“意见分歧而无法采取行动”的政治僵局的代名词，因为在最近的两年中，由于党派纷争让美国来到债务违约边缘的事情，已经出现两次了。美国民主的腐坏现象还有，选区划分不公，导致两党试图划定选区边界以巩固现有政治力量。这也鼓励了极端主义，因为政治家不得不呼吁选民只能对党派忠诚，而实际上这剥夺了广大选民的权利。而且金钱在美国政治中的声音比以往任何时候更大。数以千计的政治掮客（超过20个人对付一个国会议员）夹杂到立法的长度和复杂性中来，以便更好地利用特权钻空子。这一切都造就了对美国政治的印象，美国的民主待价而沽，富人比穷人有更多权力，甚至就如掮客和金主说的那样，他们的政治开销只是对言论自由的一次练习。

Nor is the EU a paragon of democracy. The decision to introduce the euro in 1999 was taken largely by technocrats; only two countries, Denmark and Sweden, held referendums on the matter (both said no). Efforts to win popular approval for the Lisbon Treaty, which consolidated power in Brussels, were abandoned when people started voting the wrong way. During the darkest days of the euro crisis the euro-elite forced Italy and Greece to replace democratically elected leaders with technocrats. The European Parliament, an unsuccessful attempt to fix Europe’s democratic deficit, is both ignored and despised. The EU has become a breeding ground for populist parties, such as Geert Wilders’s Party for Freedom in the Netherlands and Marine Le Pen’s National Front in France, which claim to defend ordinary people against an arrogant and incompetent elite. Greece’s Golden Dawn is testing how far democracies can tolerate Nazi-style parties. A project designed to tame the beast of European populism is instead poking it back into life.



The democratic distemper

民主的瘟热病

EVEN in its heartland, democracy is clearly suffering from serious structural problems, rather than a few isolated ailments. Since the dawn of the modern democratic era in the late 19th century, democracy has expressed itself through nation-states and national parliaments. People elect representatives who pull the levers of national power for a fixed period. But this arrangement is now under assault from both above and below.

即使在心脏地带，民主也显然正面临着严重的结构性问题，而不只是几个孤立的病症。自19世纪现代民主的黎明时代，民主就通过民族国家和国会表现了自己。人民选出在一个固定时期内，代表他们拉动国家权力杠杆的代表。但这一安排正遭受着上层和下层的围攻。

From above, globalisation has changed national politics profoundly. National politicians have surrendered ever more power, for example over trade and financial flows, to global markets and supranational bodies, and may thus find that they are unable to keep promises they have made to voters. International organisations such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organisation and the European Union have extended their influence. There is a compelling logic to much of this: how can a single country deal with problems like climate change or tax evasion? National politicians have also responded to globalisation by limiting their discretion and handing power to unelected technocrats in some areas. The number of countries with independent central banks, for example, has increased from about 20 in 1980 to more than 160 today.

From below come equally powerful challenges: from would-be breakaway nations, such as the Catalans and the Scots, from Indian states, from American city mayors. All are trying to reclaim power from national governments. There are also a host of what Moisés Naim, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, calls “micro-powers”, such as NGOs and lobbyists, which are disrupting traditional politics and making life harder for democratic and autocratic leaders alike. The internet makes it easier to organise and agitate; in a world where people can participate in reality-TV votes every week, or support a petition with the click of a mouse, the machinery and institutions of parliamentary democracy, where elections happen only every few years, look increasingly anachronistic. Douglas Carswell, a British member of parliament, likens traditional politics to HMV, a chain of British record shops that went bust, in a world where people are used to calling up whatever music they want whenever they want via Spotify, a popular digital music-streaming service.


The biggest challenge to democracy, however, comes neither from above nor below but from within—from the voters themselves. Plato’s great worry about democracy, that citizens would “live from day to day, indulging the pleasure of the moment”, has proved prescient. Democratic governments got into the habit of running big structural deficits as a matter of course, borrowing to give voters what they wanted in the short term, while neglecting long-term investment. France and Italy have not balanced their budgets for more than 30 years. The financial crisis starkly exposed the unsustainability of such debt-financed democracy.


With the post-crisis stimulus winding down, politicians must now confront the difficult trade-offs they avoided during years of steady growth and easy credit. But persuading voters to adapt to a new age of austerity will not prove popular at the ballot box. Slow growth and tight budgets will provoke conflict as interest groups compete for limited resources. To make matters worse, this competition is taking place as Western populations are ageing. Older people have always been better at getting their voices heard than younger ones, voting in greater numbers and organising pressure groups like America’s mighty AARP. They will increasingly have absolute numbers on their side. Many democracies now face a fight between past and future, between inherited entitlements and future investment.

随着后危机刺激计划的逐渐平息，政治家们现在面临一个艰难的抉择，他们必须要避免连年的宽松信贷及稳定增长。但是劝说选民们适应一个节衣缩食的新时期，是不会受到投票箱的欢迎的。低增速和从紧的预算，会挑起利益集团对有限资源的争夺。还有更糟的事情，这一竞争正发生在西方人口老龄化的时段上。年长者总是比年轻人更有话语权，握有更多选票，还有来自像美国退休人员协会等团体的压力——他们会逐步选择有绝对多数的那边站队。许多民主国家现在都面临着一场过去和未来之间，继承权益和未来投资之间的战斗。

Adjusting to hard times will be made even more difficult by a growing cynicism towards politics. Party membership is declining across the developed world: only 1% of Britons are now members of political parties compared with 20% in 1950. Voter turnout is falling, too: a study of 49 democracies found that it had declined by 10 percentage points between 1980-84 and 2007-13. A survey of seven European countries in 2012 found that more than half of voters “had no trust in government” whatsoever. A YouGov opinion poll of British voters in the same year found that 62% of those polled agreed that “politicians tell lies all the time”.

为艰难时局做出的调整，在越来越多的对政治的冷嘲热讽中将更加困难。发达世界中党派成员的数量正在下降：只有1%的英国人加入政治党派而1950年是20%。选民的投票率也在下降。对49个民主国家的研究发现，和1980-1984年相比2007-2013年的投票率下降了10%.2012年，一份针对欧洲七国的调查报告显示，超过半数的选民无论如何都“不相信政府”。同年，尤格夫公司对英国选民做的调查报告发现，62%的选民认为“政治家时刻在撒谎”。

Meanwhile the border between poking fun and launching protest campaigns is fast eroding. In 2010 Iceland’s Best Party, promising to be openly corrupt, won enough votes to co-run Reykjavik’s city council. And in 2013 a quarter of Italians voted for a party founded by Beppe Grillo, a comedian. All this popular cynicism about politics might be healthy if people demanded little from their governments, but they continue to want a great deal. The result can be a toxic and unstable mixture: dependency on government on the one hand, and disdain for it on the other. The dependency forces government to overexpand and overburden itself, while the disdain robs it of its legitimacy. Democratic dysfunction goes hand in hand with democratic distemper.

Democracy’s problems in its heartland help explain its setbacks elsewhere. Democracy did well in the 20th century in part because of American hegemony: other countries naturally wanted to emulate the world’s leading power. But as China’s influence has grown, America and Europe have lost their appeal as role models and their appetite for spreading democracy. The Obama administration now seems paralysed by the fear that democracy will produce rogue regimes or empower jihadists. And why should developing countries regard democracy as the ideal form of government when the American government cannot even pass a budget, let alone plan for the future? Why should autocrats listen to lectures on democracy from Europe, when the euro-elite sacks elected leaders who get in the way of fiscal orthodoxy?

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The financial crisis has starkly exposed the unsustainability of debt-financed democracy

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At the same time, democracies in the emerging world have encountered the same problems as those in the rich world. They too have overindulged in short-term spending rather than long-term investment. Brazil allows public-sector workers to retire at 53 but has done little to create a modern airport system. India pays off vast numbers of client groups but invests too little in infrastructure. Political systems have been captured by interest groups and undermined by anti-democratic habits. Patrick French, a British historian, notes that every member of India’s lower house under the age of 30 is a member of a political dynasty. Even within the capitalist elite, support for democracy is fraying: Indian business moguls constantly complain that India’s chaotic democracy produces rotten infrastructure while China’s authoritarian system produces highways, gleaming airports and high-speed trains.

另一方面，民主在新兴世界也遭遇了和富饶世界同样的问题。他们过分关注短期支出而非长期投资。巴西允许公务员在53岁退休，但是在建立现代化机场系统上做得很少。印度回馈了广大的客户群体，但是对基础设施的投资太少。政治体制被利益集团把持，又被反民主的习惯所冲蚀。英国历史学家帕特里克·弗伦奇指出，印度每一个低于30岁的下议院成员，都是政治王朝的一员。即使算上资产阶级的精英，支持民主的力量也在瓦解：印度的商业大亨常常抱怨，印度乱糟糟的民主导致了腐烂的基础设施，而中国的威权体制带来了高速公路，亮闪闪的机场和高铁。

Democracy has been on the back foot before. In the 1920s and 1930s communism and fascism looked like the coming things: when Spain temporarily restored its parliamentary government in 1931, Benito Mussolini likened it to returning to oil lamps in the age of electricity. In the mid-1970s Willy Brandt, a former German chancellor, pronounced that “western Europe has only 20 or 30 more years of democracy left in it; after that it will slide, engineless and rudderless, under the surrounding sea of dictatorship”. Things are not that bad these days, but China poses a far more credible threat than communism ever did to the idea that democracy is inherently superior and will eventually prevail.

以前，民主也曾处于守势。在1920年代到1930年代：当西班牙暂时性地恢复了他的议会内阁制政府，墨索里尼把这比作，从电气时代倒退回了油灯时代。在1970年代中期，西德总理威里·勃兰特，宣布“西欧只剩20-30年的民主了，那之后，在周边海域的独裁统治下，就会滑坡，没有动力，没有方向。”现在这些日子还没有那么糟糕，但是，中国亮出了一个远比任何共产主义政权曾经说过的理由，更为可信的，挑战民主天生优越性的和终将战上风的信念的威胁。

Yet China’s stunning advances conceal deeper problems. The elite is becoming a self-perpetuating and self-serving clique. The 50 richest members of the China’s National People’s Congress are collectively worth $94.7 billion—60 times as much as the 50 richest members of America’s Congress. China’s growth rate has slowed from 10% to below 8% and is expected to fall further—an enormous challenge for a regime whose legitimacy depends on its ability to deliver consistent growth.

At the same time, as Alexis de Tocqueville pointed out in the 19th century, democracies always look weaker than they really are: they are all confusion on the surface but have lots of hidden strengths. Being able to install alternative leaders offering alternative policies makes democracies better than autocracies at finding creative solutions to problems and rising to existential challenges, though they often take a while to zigzag to the right policies. But to succeed, both fledgling and established democracies must ensure they are built on firm foundations.

同时，正如托克维尔在19世纪指出的那样，民主国家看起来总是比他真实的情况更差：他们所有的问题都摆在表面，但是有很多隐藏起来的力量。能够选择不同领导人，提供不同的政策，让民主政体比独裁政体更能找到创造性的方法解决问题，也更游刃有余地应对生存挑战，尽管他们常常需要一段时间探索出正确的政策。但是，想要成功，不论是民主的菜鸟，还是业已存在的民主国家，必须要保证 他们建立在一个坚实的基础上。



Getting democracy right

获得民主权利

THE most striking thing about the founders of modern democracy such as James Madison and John Stuart Mill is how hard-headed they were. They regarded democracy as a powerful but imperfect mechanism: something that needed to be designed carefully, in order to harness human creativity but also to check human perversity, and then kept in good working order, constantly oiled, adjusted and worked upon.

现代民主创始人如詹姆斯·麦迪逊和约翰·斯图亚特·穆勒，关于他们冷静头脑的事，最为引人注目。他们把民主比作一个有力但不完美的机械，需要仔细设计的东西：要利用人们的创造力，也要检查人类的邪恶，还要保持良好的工作状态，经常上油，调试并使用它。

The need for hard-headedness is particularly pressing when establishing a nascent democracy. One reason why so many democratic experiments have failed recently is that they put too much emphasis on elections and too little on the other essential features of democracy. The power of the state needs to be checked, for instance, and individual rights such as freedom of speech and freedom to organise must be guaranteed. The most successful new democracies have all worked in large part because they avoided the temptation of majoritarianism—the notion that winning an election entitles the majority to do whatever it pleases. India has survived as a democracy since 1947 (apart from a couple of years of emergency rule) and Brazil since the mid-1980s for much the same reason: both put limits on the power of the government and provided guarantees for individual rights.

建立一个新生的民主体制时，头脑冷静是尤为要紧的。最近有如此多的民主试验失败的一个原因就是，他们过分强调选举，而对民主其他的本质特征关注太少。政府的权力要受到制约，例如，个人权力如言论自由，结社自由必须被保证。民主在最成功的新兴民主国家都奏效了，很大程度上是因为，他们避免了多数主义的诱惑。——赢得选举的多数派有权利做任何事。自1947年起，印度作为一个民主国家存在（除了中间很多年的紧急统治），巴西自1980年中期就是，这也是出于同样的原因：他们都限制了政府的权力，保障了个人权力。

Robust constitutions not only promote long-term stability, reducing the likelihood that disgruntled minorities will take against the regime. They also bolster the struggle against corruption, the bane of developing countries. Conversely, the first sign that a fledgling democracy is heading for the rocks often comes when elected rulers try to erode constraints on their power—often in the name of majority rule. Mr Morsi tried to pack Egypt’s upper house with supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood. Mr Yanukovych reduced the power of Ukraine’s parliament. Mr Putin has ridden roughshod over Russia’s independent institutions in the name of the people. Several African leaders are engaging in crude majoritarianism—removing term limits on the presidency or expanding penalties against homosexual behaviour, as Uganda’s president Yoweri Museveni did on February 24th.

一个稳健的宪法不仅能够提供长期的稳定，减少 愤怒的少数派反对政权的可能性。他们会转而加强反腐斗争，腐败是发展中国家的祸根。反过来，新生民主国家前进方向上常遇到的第一块绊脚石：当被选举出来的规则制定者试图用权力腐蚀对他的约束的时候——常常以少数服从多数的名义出现。穆尔西先生试图与他的穆兄会支持者们瓜分埃及上议院。亚努科维奇先生削减乌克兰议会的权力。普京先生以人民的名义，无情践踏俄罗斯独立机构。几个非洲领导人忙于运用粗糙的多数主义——除去总统任期限制，或者扩大对同性行为的惩罚，就像乌克兰总统亚努科维奇在2月24日做的那样。

Foreign leaders should be more willing to speak out when rulers engage in such illiberal behaviour, even if a majority supports it. But the people who most need to learn this lesson are the architects of new democracies: they must recognise that robust checks and balances are just as vital to the establishment of a healthy democracy as the right to vote. Paradoxically even potential dictators have a lot to learn from events in Egypt and Ukraine: Mr Morsi would not be spending his life shuttling between prison and a glass box in an Egyptian court, and Mr Yanukovych would not be fleeing for his life, if they had not enraged their compatriots by accumulating so much power.
有些吊诡的，即使潜在的独裁者也有很多东西能从埃及和乌克兰身上学：穆尔西先生本不会让他的余生在监狱和埃及法院的玻璃箱中穿梭的，而亚努科维奇先生，也不会把余生用于逃亡的——如果他们没有因集中了太多权力而激怒他们的同胞的话。



Even those lucky enough to live in mature democracies need to pay close attention to the architecture of their political systems. The combination of globalisation and the digital revolution has made some of democracy’s most cherished institutions look outdated. Established democracies need to update their own political systems both to address the problems they face at home, and to revitalise democracy’s image abroad. Some countries have already embarked upon this process. America’s Senate has made it harder for senators to filibuster appointments. A few states have introduced open primaries and handed redistricting to independent boundary commissions. Other obvious changes would improve matters. Reform of party financing, so that the names of all donors are made public, might reduce the influence of special interests. The European Parliament could require its MPs to present receipts with their expenses. Italy’s parliament has far too many members who are paid too much, and two equally powerful chambers, which makes it difficult to get anything done.

即使是那些足够幸运而生在成熟的民主国家的人也要密切关注他们的政治体系的建筑结构。全球化和数字革命让一些民主国家最珍贵的体制看起来过时了。已经建立民主制度的国家需要升级他们的政治体制，既要解决他们在国内面临的问题，也要重振民主在国外的形象。一些国家已经开始这个进程了。美国参议院让参议员更难阻挠任命。一些州已经引入开放式的初选，选出了重划选区的独立的选区重划委员会。其他明显的变化将改变问题。政党财政改革，以便将所有金主的名字都公开，可能会减少特殊利益集团的影响。欧洲议会，要求他的议员公开他们的收支情况。意大利的议会有了太多的议员，，和两个同样强大的两院，这让他们更难决定任何事。

But reformers need to be much more ambitious. The best way to constrain the power of special interests is to limit the number of goodies that the state can hand out. And the best way to address popular disillusion towards politicians is to reduce the number of promises they can make. The key to a healthier democracy, in short, is a narrower state—an idea that dates back to the American revolution. “In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men”, Madison argued, “the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” The notion of limited government was also integral to the relaunch of democracy after the second world war. The United Nations Charter (1945) and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) established rights and norms that countries could not breach, even if majorities wanted to do so.

---

The most successful new democracies managed to avoid the temptation of majoritarianism

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These checks and balances were motivated by fear of tyranny. But today, particularly in the West, the big dangers to democracy are harder to spot. One is the growing size of the state. The relentless expansion of government is reducing liberty and handing ever more power to special interests. The other comes from government’s habit of making promises that it cannot fulfil, either by creating entitlements it cannot pay for or by waging wars that it cannot win, such as that on drugs. Both voters and governments must be persuaded of the merits of accepting restraints on the state’s natural tendency to overreach. Giving control of monetary policy to independent central banks tamed the rampant inflation of the 1980s, for example. It is time to apply the same principle of limited government to a broader range of policies. Mature democracies, just like nascent ones, require appropriate checks and balances on the power of elected government.
Governments can exercise self-restraint in several different ways. They can put on a golden straitjacket by adopting tight fiscal rules—as the Swedes have done by pledging to balance their budget over the economic cycle. They can introduce “sunset clauses” that force politicians to renew laws every ten years, say. They can ask non-partisan commissions to propose long-term reforms. The Swedes rescued their pension system from collapse when an independent commission suggested pragmatic reforms including greater use of private pensions, and linking the retirement age to life-expectancy. Chile has been particularly successful at managing the combination of the volatility of the copper market and populist pressure to spend the surplus in good times. It has introduced strict rules to ensure that it runs a surplus over the economic cycle, and appointed a commission of experts to determine how to cope with economic volatility.

政府可以用不同方式练习自我约束能力。他们可以通过接受严格的财政规则来穿一身黄金紧身衣——就像瑞典人曾经做过的那样——承诺在经济周期里保持预算平衡。他们可以制定一个“日落条款”，逼迫政治家每十年更新一次法律之类的。他们可以向无党派的委员会咨询长期改革意见。当无党派委员会建议了一个务实改革方案之后，包括更好利用私人养老金，退休年龄和预期寿命挂钩，瑞典人的养老金体系就免于崩溃。智利就曾特别成功的管理了铜交易市场复合的波动性，并在民粹主义的压力下，创造了财政盈余。他引入了严厉的规则确保在经济周期结束后还有盈余，然后指派专家委员会去决定如何应付经济波动。

Isn’t this a recipe for weakening democracy by handing more power to the great and the good? Not necessarily. Self-denying rules can strengthen democracy by preventing people from voting for spending policies that produce bankruptcy and social breakdown and by protecting minorities from persecution. But technocracy can certainly be taken too far. Power must be delegated sparingly, in a few big areas such as monetary policy and entitlement reform, and the process must be open and transparent.

这难道不是一个虚弱的民主政府 掌握更多权力 能变得更好的处方吗？未见得。自我克制的规则可以通过阻止人民 向导致生产破产和社会崩溃的支出政策 投赞成票；通过保护少数派免受迫害，来增强民主国家。但治国的技术官僚们一定会走得太远。在几个重大领域诸如货币政策，或者权益改革，权力一定要被保守地授予，而且过程必须公开透明。

And delegation upwards towards grandees and technocrats must be balanced by delegation downwards, handing some decisions to ordinary people. The trick is to harness the twin forces of globalism and localism, rather than trying to ignore or resist them. With the right balance of these two approaches, the same forces that threaten established democracies from above, through globalisation, and below, through the rise of micro-powers, can reinforce rather than undermine democracy.

向上授权——向达官显贵和技术官僚们 必须和 向下授权相平衡——交给一些普通人做决定。用这个小把戏来驾驭全球化和地方化这两股力量，比忽略或者抵制他们更好。通过这两种途径的权力平衡，威胁建立民主政权的来自上层的压力——全球化，和来自下层的压力——微权力的崛起，就能够形成合力增强民主而不是破坏它。

Tocqueville argued that local democracy frequently represented democracy at its best: “Town-meetings are to liberty what primary schools are to science; they bring it within the people’s reach, they teach men how to use and enjoy it.” City mayors regularly get twice the approval ratings of national politicians. Modern technology can implement a modern version of Tocqueville’s town-hall meetings to promote civic involvement and innovation. An online hyperdemocracy where everything is put to an endless series of public votes would play to the hand of special-interest groups. But technocracy and direct democracy can keep each other in check: independent budget commissions can assess the cost and feasibility of local ballot initiatives, for example.

托克维尔认为频繁的地区民主，代表民主处于最好的状态：“乡镇市民大会之于自由，就像小学之于科学，他们把自由带到人们触手可及的地方，并教会人怎样运用和享受它。”市长常常获得政治家两倍的支持率。现代技术可以实现现代版的托克维尔市民大会以提高市民的参与率和革新。一个在线的超级民主——任何事都可以用一连串公投决定，将摆脱特殊利益集团的掌握。此外，专家统治和直接民主可以相互监督：比如说，独立预算委员会可以来评估 当地选民公投的花销和可行性。





“You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”

首先你必须确保政府被统治着，然后强迫他自我克制。

JAMES MADISON, AMERICA'S FOURTH PRESIDENT

詹姆斯·麦迪逊，第四任美国总统

Several places are making progress towards getting this mixture right. The most encouraging example is California. Its system of direct democracy allowed its citizens to vote for contradictory policies, such as higher spending and lower taxes, while closed primaries and gerrymandered districts institutionalised extremism. But over the past five years California has introduced a series of reforms, thanks in part to the efforts of Nicolas Berggruen, a philanthropist and investor. The state has introduced a “Think Long” committee to counteract the short-term tendencies of ballot initiatives. It has introduced open primaries and handed power to redraw boundaries to an independent commission. And it has succeeded in balancing its budget—an achievement which Darrell Steinberg, the leader of the California Senate, described as “almost surreal”.

几个地方在正确运用这种结合体上取得了进展。最鼓舞人心的例子就是加利福尼亚。它的直接民主体系允许市民为争议性政策投票，像高开支和低税收，还有停止初选和被不公正划分的选区这种已成惯例的过激论。但是在过去5年里，加利福尼亚还引入了一系列改革，感谢慈善家、投资人伯格鲁恩的部分努力。该州还引入了“思考长远”委员会来抵销选民公投时的短视倾向。它引入了开放式初选并吧重绘边界的权力移交给了一个独立委员会。并且它成功地平衡了预算——这一成就被加州参议院领袖斯滕伯格形容为“近乎梦幻”。

Similarly, the Finnish government has set up a non-partisan commission to produce proposals for the future of its pension system. At the same time it is trying to harness e-democracy: parliament is obliged to consider any citizens’ initiative that gains 50,000 signatures. But many more such experiments are needed—combining technocracy with direct democracy, and upward and downward delegation—if democracy is to zigzag its way back to health.

John Adams, America’s second president, once pronounced that “democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” He was clearly wrong. Democracy was the great victor of the ideological clashes of the 20th century. But if democracy is to remain as successful in the 21st century as it was in the 20th, it must be both assiduously nurtured when it is young—and carefully maintained when it is mature.

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Good article, stufflike this is why I read TE in the first place.
One thing I would addthough that should be stated explicitly; Democracy doesn't function on its own,it works because people make it function through hard work and a commitment tostay informed and involved.
I take a slight issue with the uncritical view of theCommunist Party's representation of their government as being a meritocracy.The author should likely have at least mentioned the fact that nepotism andcorruption often plays a role in appointment of public officials.

我对把GCD的政府视作精英统治，这种和事佬的观点稍有异议。作者最起码要对任命官员时裙带关系和收受贿赂的扮演的角色稍有提及。

Then we come to the oily rhetoric of “freedom”.

让我们来到油腻腻的“自由”吧。

Like elitists throughout history, The Economist tries toweave a mantle of virtue for its self-interest. In ancient time this would havebeen couched in terms of “divine will”. In this secular age, it is couched interms of that vacuous concept, “freedom”.
When applied to human relations, “freedom” is devoid ofagreed meaning. Imposing one person’s freedom necessarily requires denyingsomeone else’s. The question is always which “freedom” is to prevail and – moreimportantly – who is decide which freedom is to prevail. Talking about“freedom” in the abstract is inane rhetoric.
And precisely because it is inane, it is putty in the handsof the elitist propagandist. 
There is no doubt elitists are concerned about “freedom”.In fact they’re SO concerned about“freedom” they reserve unto themselves the right to decide precisely which“freedoms” will prevail and which will not. 
Chief among the “freedoms” which will not prevail under the corrupt system of shamdemocracy are the freedom of The People to choose the form of government theywould like for their state, the freedom of The People to choose what they wouldlike their Democracy to be.
When the privileged elite reserve to themselves the rightto define “freedom”, you can be sure that at the top of their list will be thefreedom to go on being privileged, the freedom to go on being the Elite!
And that is precisely what this fascist little magazine -this “Mouthpiece of Privilege” - does. 
Its remedy for the defects of corrupt sham democracy is . .. to limit the role of the state. 
The Economist’s solution to the problems of corruptgovernment by a privileged elite is to constitutionally limit the role of thestate so that it can do no more than protect the privileges of those who arecurrently privileged!
If it weren’t so serious it would be funny.
And then there are the inevitable references to California.
One wonders what this fascist magazine would do withoutCalifornia. The only time it ever editorializes about Democracy (what it callsperilous “extreme democracy”) is to announce some new holocaust in California.There is never any mention of other states which use it successfully, let aloneother countries. If California were not a disaster what would they hang theirnasty elitist propaganda on?
But lo! There is good news from California! Even TheEconomist can’t deny it. It has open primaries and an independent commission todraw electoral boundaries.
In reality these reforms were the result of California’ssystem of initiative and referendum (i.e. Democracy), which allowed The Peopleof California to impose them against the savage opposition of entrenchedpoliticians. (Similar reforms occurred in Florida where the system ofinitiative also allowed The People to impose reforms against the wishes of entrenchedpoliticians.) 
But you would never guess that from reading this essay.Reading this essay, you would go away believing that those reforms were due tothe noblesse oblige of Nicolas Berggruen, “philanthropist and investor”.
This goes beyond mere misrepresentation.This is the outright dishonesty of a propagandist.
And finally – like afailing dictator who senses that he is on the wrong side of history but stillcan’t bring himself to face up to what is happening – The Economist tries tooffer the token concession of non-bindingreferendums. Such referendums require only that the politicians consider a matter which has just beenapproved by a majority of voters!!
If it weren’t soserious it would be funny.
Experience elsewhere– such as New Zealand - suggests that such concessions are worse than useless .. . . which is precisely why “The Mouthpiece of Privilege” is willing offerthem. After a few referendums have been passed successfuly - and then ignoredby the corrupt politicians because they do not coincide with their own wishes -people give up even trying to call them. They soon learn that it is a waste oftime and effort.
Readers who know thehistory of The Economist will know that it has not always been the nastyfascist magazine it is today. Long time readers will know that The Economisthas a proud history of supporting genuine Democracy . . . rather than waging anendless propaganda campaign to subvert it.There are those of uswho earnestly look forward to a brighter future for this once-great newspaperunder a new editor.

就像纵观了历史的精英人士一样，经济学人试图给他们的自私自利编织一个道德的地幔。在古代我们用另一个词形容它“天命所钟（神的意志）”。在这个世俗的年代，他们用这个空洞的概念称呼它“自由”。

只要存在了人事关系，“自由”就是个彻底空洞的概念。——某个人的自由必定会建立在其他人的不自由上。问题始终是，谁的“自由”更盛行，更重要——又由谁来决定那种自由更盛行呢。抽象的探讨“自由”是空洞的花言巧语。
也恰好因为它是空洞的，它成了权贵的宣传者手中的腻子【就是哪破了都能用自由补补的意思。译者】

毫无疑问，权贵们很在意“自由”。事实上，正是因为他们 如~此 地在意自由，以至于他们不去做出精确的断言：那种“自由”盛行，哪种不行。
其中最重要的“自由”，是不能在腐败的假民主制度中流行的。它是人民选择他们认为适合其国家的政府形式的自由，是人民选择他们的民主是什么样子的自由。

当特权阶层对“自由”的定义含糊不清的时候，你可以肯定，在他们的清单上，排在第一位的会是 继续拥有特权——继续作为权贵的特权。
而这正是这本法西斯的小杂志——“特权的喉舌”——在做的事。

它对于 腐败的假民主的缺陷的对策是···限制政府的权力
经济学人给出的，针对被特权精英控制的腐败政府的解决方案是 制度性地限制政府的角色，以便 它不能再保护 现在就拥有特权的特权人士。
要是它不这么认真的话，就好了。

然后，加州是必然被提及的。

一个好奇就是，如果没有加利福尼亚的话这个法西斯杂志会怎么办。只要一发表关于民主的社论，就会提到在加州的大屠杀（这里很危险的称为了“超级民主”）的新消息。从不提还有哪个州成功运用了它，就别说其他国家了。如果加州不是一个灾难的话，他们下流的上层人士又会宣传些什么？【本文就是传誉天下的TE的社论】
看啊！这有来自加州的好消息！ 即使是 《经济学人》 也承认了它！“加州有开放式的初选并用独立委员会重划了选区。”

在现实中，这些改革的结果是加利福尼亚的动议-复决系统（即 民~主）的成果，它允许加州人民反对强加在他们头上的根深蒂固的政客的野蛮想法。（佛罗里达也有类似的改革）。
但是从这篇论述中，你是猜不到滴。读了这篇论述，你会去相信，这些改革都仰仗位高权重的“慈善家和投资者”伯格鲁恩。
这已经不仅仅是陈述失实了。这是彻头彻尾的宣传大师的欺诈。

最后——就像一个失败的独裁者会觉得是"天之亡我"一样，仍然不能面对到底发生了什么。——《经济学人》试着对“不具约束力的公民投票”做出象征性的让步。这种投票只有让政治家认识到，这个事情刚刚得到了大多数选民的批准 才行啊！！
它要是不这么认真的话，就好了。

其他地方的经验——比如新西兰——说明这种让步比没有更糟···这恰恰是“特权的喉舌”提供他们的原因。在几个公投成功的通过之后——就会被腐败的政治家忽略掉，因为这和他们的愿望不一致——人们甚至放弃了要求他们的尝试。人们很快懂得那是在浪费时间和精力。

了解《经济学人》历史的读者会知道，它并不总是今天这幅讨厌的法西斯杂志的样子。长期读者会知道，《经济学人》有一个令人骄傲的支持真正的民主的历史···而不是发动无休止的宣传攻势摧毁民主。

这些就是我们对这个曾经伟大的报纸 在新编辑带领下 的更光明未来的殷切期待。

This essay leaves entirely out of account one of the mostpowerful (arguably THE most powerful) actors on the Western democratic stage -the big mass media brands like the BBC and CNN. They are: 1) much more powerfulthan politicians at influencing public attitudes; 2) are an unelected elitethat sets the political and cultural agenda 3) have a vested interest in eggingpeople on to despise politicians; 4) are driven, above all, by an imperative toover-dramatise (their highly selective version of) reality; 5) encourage theadolescent "who can I blame for all my troubles" side of humannature.
Not surprisingly, media abuse of power is the one story that never gets themedia spotlight.

这篇文章，完全没有提及西方民主政治舞台上最有权势的角色之一（也可以说最有权势）——传媒巨头 比如 BBC和CNN。他们是：1、比政治家更能影响公众态度；2、不经选举产生的权贵控制着这个政治和文化机构；3、出于既得利益怂恿民众向政治家扔鸡蛋；4、他们对“事实”（经过他们高度筛选的）有着难以想象的影响力；5、怂恿青少年“我有烦恼该骂谁”天性。

不足为奇，媒体泛滥的权力让这些事永远不会曝光在媒体的聚光灯下。

Using America as an example, what has gone wrong withdemocracy is that it has been hijacked by those who fund legislators'campaigns, or threaten to fund the campaign of a legislator's opponent. Thedesire of legislators to never lose their jobs is exploited in this fashion byprivate interests as a way of purchasing laws which serve their interests. Thisprocess of NON-representative government has destroyed the democracy ofAmerica. The people are not represented by their representatives. Theirrepresentatives are representing those who pay for campaigns, or those whothreaten to back an opponent. This means that democracy in America has becomecompletely corrupt.
The way corruption works in America is through theproviding of morally corrupt laws to those who purchase laws from federal andstate legislatures. The purchasing is done as described above through campaignfinance transactions or threats of backing opponents. America has more"laws" than any country in the history of the world. As stated byTacitus: "The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the state."Well said Tacitus.
In other less developed countries, corruption is quitestraightforward and easy to see as such. Old fashioned cash-for-deeds briberyis more prevalent in less developed nations. At least one can recognize it whenone sees it.
In America corruption is a much more insidious game, whichis worse because (i) it is almost always plausibly deniable by virtue of beingcloaked in "laws", and (ii) it is impossible for the citizens toescape.
The American banking sector, telecoms companies, insurancecompanies, America's multiple for-profit prison industries and the majorlicensed
professions: attorneys, physicians, financial services"professionals" (sic)and accountants (note that Americans reportedlypay $168 billion a year to get their taxes done) are all major spenders on thepurchasing of legislation which creates and protects their selfish economicopportunities at the expense of normal Americans who are not members of theselaw-buying clubs. 
Disturbingly, in the judicial branch of Americangovernment, there is reportedly a high level of cash-for-deeds corruption asset forth by the Yale Law Journal (118 YALE L.J. 1900 (2009))which formulatesand estimate of over 1 million bribery transactions per year in the Americanjudicial branch of government. There are also increasing indications of a highlevel of arrogance towards the citizens by members of government from localpolice and other local government employees, all the way up to national officeholders in federal legislatures and other branches of government.
However the worst and most inescapable and deleterious formof corruption going on in America is when private interests (or certain partsof government) get deals from legislatures and get the laws they want so thatthey can economically enslave -- and/or imprison -- American citizens.
Americans are being bled out by these custom, gov-for-salelaws like animals at a slaughterhouse. This is angering Americans as well itshould and it is causing Americans to lose their faith in American democracy.
The key to understanding the uniquely American flavor ofcorruption is to understand that is most often WRAPPED IN LAWS which laws seekto legitimize morally corrupt treatment of America's citizens, often under thefurther cover of some noble motive.
American corruption is unique and innovative in its manydisguises, but it is worse for the citizens than the forms of corruption foundin other nations due to the fact that American corruption is, by design,inescapable for its citizens, a large portion of whom are exploited as economicslaves by those privileged industries and professions who are holding all thecards in the form of laws they purchased from America's corrupt legislatures.
This is how democracy in America has come unraveled, andwhy Americans have lost faith in the current form of democracy. The only curefor America is to go to direct democracy, and get rid of the"representatives" who are not representing their constituents, butrather their own re-election campaigns, which of course means serving moneyinterests, not their citizen-constituents.

以美国为例，民主出的问题是 它被资助立法者竞选的人和威胁资助立法者竞争对手的人劫持了。立法者绝不想丢掉饭碗的渴望就这样被人抓住了。用这种方式，私人利益购买法律为他们的利益服务。不持立场的政府在这个过程中摧毁了美国民主。民众不再被他们的代表所代表。他们的代表，代表这支持竞选的人，或者威胁去力挺对手的人。这意味着美国的民主已经被完全破坏了。

这种腐败在美国的运作方式是 通过向那些从联邦和州议会“购买”法律的人提供道德败坏的法律实现的。如上所述，这种“购买”是 提供竞选资金或者威胁去支持对手。美国比历史上任何国家都有更多的“法律”。正如塔西陀所说：“法律越庞杂，国家越腐败。”说得好，塔希陀。

在其他的欠发达国家，腐败十分直接而易见。老派的现金行贿在欠发达国家更为流行。至少，当你看到的时候，就知道这是行贿。

在美国，腐败是更为阴险的游戏，说它更糟是因为，i)这种腐败在法律的遮盖下，于德行上无可指摘。ii)让国民无处可逃。

美国银行业，电信公司，保险公司，美国多个盈利监狱工厂还有主要的准入行业：律师，医生，金融服务业的“专业人士”（之类的）和会计师（注意，据报道，美国人每年要付1680亿美元才能把他们偷漏的税款补上），都是立法采购的主要挥霍者——他们以牺牲那些不是法定采购俱乐部成员的普通美国人的利益为代价，创造并保护他们自私的经济机遇。

令人不安的是，据耶鲁法律评论（118 YALE L.J. 1900 (2009)）的公开报道，美国司法部门中有高水平的现金贿赂，根据公式计算和估计美国司法系统内，每年有超过100万的贿赂交易。还有日趋增长的迹象表明，从地方警局和地方政府雇员，直到联邦政府立法机构和其他政府分支的雇员，对民众的态度愈发傲慢。

然而发生在美国的腐败问题最糟糕，最无可避免，最有害的是，当这些私人利益集团（或者某一部分的政府）从立法机关哪里获得了他们想要的法律的时候，他们就能在经济上奴役 并/或 囚禁美国公民。

这些习惯、政府卖出的法律，让美国人流血，就像屠宰场中的动物一样。这也正在激怒美国人，它会让，也正在让美国人丧失他们对美国民主的信仰。
理解独特的美式风味腐败的关键是 ，理解最常“裹在法律里的（内核）”——法律经常在高尚动机的深入覆盖下，寻求正当化地治疗美国公民的道德败坏。

美式腐败在它的很多伪装的打扮下，是独特而新颖的。但是，对民众来说，这比在其他国家发现的腐败形式更为糟糕，因为，真相是，美国的腐败是被设计出来的，他的公民无法避免，那些特权行业和职业，运用从美国腐败的立法机构那里买来的，一切有法律效力的纸片，把民众中的很大一部分，压榨成了经济上的奴隶。

这就是 民主是如何在美国解体的，和为什么美国人丢掉了对当前民主形式的信仰。美国的唯一对策就是，施行直接民主，扔掉那些不再代表他的选举人的“代表”，然而更准确的说，他们自己胜选连任，代表的当然是为金钱利益服务，而不是选出他的选民。

Six pages of turgid justification and obfuscation might bereduced to the single proposition: 
“Under no circumstancesWHATSOEVER may The People be allowed to exercise any effective control over theirgovernment; the Stinking Scum must be keptin their place.”
Were it not such a serious issue one might laugh out loud.
This piece is so riddled with distortions, misrepresentationsand – it has to be said – outright lies, that to single out a few risks lendingcredibility to the rest. Nevertheless, let’s pick out a few low points.
First and foremost, the article does not actually deal with“democracy”. It deals with the “sham democracy” of elective government. 
Casting an occasional vote for corrupt politicians,regimented into well-organised corrupt political parties, financed by – andbeholden to – corrupt Elite paymasters isnot democracy.
What makes this so remarkable – and it must be said,dishonest - are the repeated references to James Madison. Madison himself wasthoroughly anti-democratic and made no secretof the fact. Of democracy, he wrote:
“Democracy is the most vile form of government.”
One might or might not agree with Madison but at leastMadison was honest. At least Madison had the personal integrity to declare hisposition. At least Madison called a spade a spade. 
What makes this essay so revolting is the weaselly way inwhich the author wants to have his cake and eat it as well. He clearly has avisceral hatred of Democracy, but – dishonestly - he wants to appropriate thecredibility of Democracy by pretending that thoroughly non-democratic elective government bycorrupt politicians is“democracy”. 
That is dishonest. If you don’t like Democracy then say so.But do not pretend that anti-democratic government is Democracy. Don’t be acowardly weasel.
From this fundamental lie, all else follows. 
The supposed defects of Democracy are not defects ofDemocracy at all. They are for the most part the defects of the corrupt systemof elective government - sham democracy - that The Economist wants people tocall “democracy”.
To blame The People for rising government debt when thatdebt was actually incurred by corrupt politicians under a system of “shamdemocracy” is dishonest. Public debt is not incurred by voters who have noeffective control over their corrupt government. It is incurred by corruptpoliticians trying to buy votes from politically powerful lobbies andpolitically powerful minority voting blocs, and from subsidising the businessesinterests of influential mates, campaign donors and those who give them jobswhen they retire from office.
If you want to look at government debt under Democracy,then by all means look at government debt under Democracy. Look at the publicdebts of Switzerland and its cantons. 
But you cannot do that, because it doesn’t suit yourdishonest and elitist agenda. Public debt under Democracy is not a problem. Itis not a problem for the simple reason that The People – under truly democraticgovernment - do not allow their politicians to make it one.
六页长的枯燥辩护和混淆视听，可以精简为这个单称命题。

“无论在什么情况下，人民都应被允许尝试一切有效的方式控制他们政府，那些散发着恶臭的混蛋必须待在自己该待的地方。”

这不是个惹人发笑的严肃议题吗？

这篇文章充斥着歪曲的事实，虚假的陈述 和——不得不这样说——彻头彻尾的谎言，这是从仅剩的贷款信用中精心挑选出了一些风险。尽管如此，让我们找出一些拙劣的辩白吧。
第一，这篇文章没有真正地涉及民主。它针对的是民选政府的“假民主”。
为腐败政客打造的充满偶然性的投票，组织严密的腐败政党，资金来源于——也受制于——作为后台老板的腐败精英，这~不~是~民~主。
是什么让这篇文章如此引人注目呢？——必须说，它不诚实——就是反复引用詹姆士·麦迪逊的话。麦迪逊他自己就是毫不掩饰的、完全反民主的人。对于民主，他写道： “民主是政府最糟糕的形式。”

有人可能同意或者不同意麦迪逊的说法，但至少麦迪逊是诚实的。至少麦迪逊有一个正直的人格宣布他的观点。至少，麦迪逊直言不讳。
让这篇文章如此令人作呕的原因就是，作者以这种狡猾的方式做出的他的蛋糕，并且就这样吃了下去。显然，作者对民主有着发自肺腑的仇恨，但是——不够诚实地是——他打算，通过假设完全 非民主选举出来的 由腐败政客操持的政府 是 “民主的”，以便给民主留下适当的信誉。
这样做是不对的。如果你不喜欢民主，就直说。但是不要假设反民主政府是民主。别做懦弱的黄鼠狼。

误以为是民主缺陷的缺陷，压根就不是民主的缺陷。他们大部分都是腐败的选举制度下的政府的缺陷——假民主——《经济学人》希望人们称呼它为“民主”。
在“假民主”体制下，把腐败政客招致的持续增长的政府债务归罪于民众，是不诚实的。公共债务并非是由无力控制他们腐朽政府的选民造成的。它们来自于 腐败政客试图从有强大政治能量的游说团体那里购买选票，来自于 为了有影响力的竞选伙伴们 和在他们退休后能够给他们提供工作的捐助者们的商业利益，而发放的补贴。
如果你要看在民主制度下的政府债务，那一定要千方百计地才能看到。 去看一看 瑞士和他们各州的公共债务吧。

The leaders of many democracies have discovered that aself-serving pursuit of success in the next election - even at the expense ofthe state - creates personal rewards whose drawbacks are too delayed for theelectorate to track. Generations of mismanagement have been hidden by thesocial stability of strong institutions and the relative economic growth ofcapitalistic societies.
I fear that democratic governance will not become betteruntil western electorates are dragged outside of their comfortable bubbles bydesperate times.

许多民主国家的领导人为了找到在下次竞选中的制胜法宝这种自私追求——甚至不惜牺牲国家——创造了让选民无法察觉的有隐患的私人利益。世世代代的管理不善被在强大机构下的社会稳定和在资本主义社会中相对的经济增长所掩盖。
我害怕，直到西方的选民被拖出他们那舒适泡沫的绝望时刻，民主治理也没什么起色。

Still perpetuating the sham that so called"representative democracy" is democratic. In none of the so calleddemocracies you mention did the citizens ever have a choice or the ability toinfluence the basic framework and rules of how they are being governed. At bestthey were given a plebiscite, once, long ago.
Instead the established pattern keeps on repeating, a smallself perpetuating oligarchic circle dominating the legislative and executivebodies doing their best to marginalize and-or co-opt outside competition. Thelack of any genuine policy alternatives that can be observed in nearly all"democracies" today is rooted in this, together with theglobalisation you mention. By the time, if ever, genuine political oppositionbecomes established, it is inevitably corrupted by the perks and trappings ofoffice and power. 
This is ultimately the root of the overspending you lament.The overspending is trying to buy off the population so that the self servicecart can continue to roll along the corridors of power without being botheredby the pesky plebs.
In the end, there are only two options. The slow slide ofdysfunctional oligarchic rule to open autocracy or a radical transformationinto the closest practical form of true democracy, with the power of bindingreferendums on local, regional and national level as well as the authority tochange the constitution directly being conferred onto the general population.
The general reaction to the NSA affair and the naturalinstinct of incumbents to attempt to hold onto power as long as possible, evenwhen it is fraying, point to the first possibility being the most likely.

仍旧存续的假象是：所谓“代议制民主”是民主的。没有一个你提及的所谓民主国家的市民有机会或者有能力影响通知他们的基本框架或者规则。他们顶多能被给予一个全民公投，···曾经···很久以前。
取代现有模式被一遍遍提起，一个小的自我存续的寡头圈子统治了立法机关和执法机构，尽其所能的笼络外部的竞争者。以此为根基的所有当今“民主国家”，都没能让人看到，做出了任何名副其实的政策选择。

这就是让你失望的超支的终极根源。这种超支是试图收买人民，以便，让这辆自助车不被讨厌的贱民干扰，继续在通往权力的走廊上，滚滚向前。
到头来，只有两种选择，这种技能失调的寡头统治缓缓滑向开明的独裁，或者发生一个根本性的转变，朝着最接近的真正的民主尝试迈进，它有着受到本地的、地区的、全国水平的全民公投约束的权力，并授权改变宪法，让宪法中提及的权利直接落到普通民众头上。
尽管当前模式有些松动，鉴于对国安局事件的全民反应和尽可能地把持权力的当权者的天然本能，最有可能的还是走向第一种结局。

Pretty good essay. I would argue that China's model is notthe threat to democracy it currently might appear to be, though. Is anauthoritarian regime that is obsessed with public opinion and placating publicanger really authoritarian? It's not exactly the same but that sounds like themakings of representative democracy to me. China is certainly following arelatively more authoritarian course but the trend has clearly been towardsgreater freedoms for the past 40 years and that trend can't be ignored eithereven if it's not happening as fast as it has elsewhere. The question is arethey progressing away from the old ways over time? Very important for purposesof this discussion.

相当好的论说文。我要主张，目前看来，中国模式并非民主的威胁。一个执着于公众意见和安抚公众愤怒的独裁政权真的是独裁的吗？答案有些不同，但这对我而言，听起来像代议制民主的气质。中国当然是个威权政体，但过去的40年，的确朝着更为自由的方向发展了，而这一趋势不应被忽视，即使，、他的进展没有像其他地方那么快。问题是，随着时间的流逝，他们会离开他们的老路吗？这对此次讨论的意义非常重要。