爱华网
American democracy
美国的民主
Powering down
日渐式微
Voters have chosen change, but America's political system makes that far too hard
选民选择了改变，但是美国的政治体系令变革势比登天
Nov 8th 2014 | WASHINGTON, DC | From the print edition of The Economist
译者：老狒狒
FOR anyone interested in how a free society governs itself there is nothing quite as spectacular as an American election. The country has just spent nearly $4 billion on a fierce contest that has changed the balance of power in Congress. Add to this the races for governors, statehouses, attorneys general, judges and so on—well over 10,000 offices in total—and it seems that America's democracy is in fine fettle.
对于对自由社会治理方式感兴趣的人来说，再没有比美式选举更蔚为壮观的事情了。这个国家刚刚为一场改变了国会权力平衡的激烈选举花去了将近40亿美元。除此之外，还有州长、州议员、州检察长、州法官等林林总共超过10000个职位的各种选举。表面上看，美式民主境况良好。
Furthermore, optimists believe the mid-term elections will usher in a period of compromise: Republicans, having captured the Senate and increased their majority in the House, will want to prove that they can govern; Barack Obama will have little choice but to work with them. Polls show that, in general, voters increasingly favour politicians who seek consensus over those who do not. Deals on things like trade and tax reform seem possible.
进一步讲，乐观派坚信，中期选举将带来一段妥协期：共和党，由于已经赢得了参议院并且扩大了在众议院多数地位，想要证明他们有能力进行管理；奥巴马除了合作之外，将别无选择。民调显示，总的来说，选民日渐倾向于能够寻求共识的政客，而不是相反。贸易和税收改革等协议似乎胜利在望。
The next Congress could hardly accomplish less than its predecessor, which comes to a close in December and is likely to be remembered as one of the least productive in history. It has shut down the government once and flirted with a sovereign default twice. But the low standard by which progress is judged and the limited expectations of even the most cockeyed optimists are signs of deeper trouble in America's political system. Designed to make legislating difficult, it has recently looked dysfunctional. In a new book, “Political Order and Political Decay”, Francis Fukuyama of Stanford University argues persuasively that America “suffers from the problem of political decay in a more acute form than other democratic political systems”, a statement that not long ago would have seemed ludicrous.
下届国会可能会在难有作为方面同其前任有得一比，而将于12月任期届满的本届国会有可能作为史上效率最低的国会之一而留下骂名。它曾经关闭政府一次，并两次险些造成主权债务违约。但是，这种被用来判断进步的低标准和甚至是最荒唐的乐观派的有限期望正是美国政治体系更深层次问题的迹象。近年来，这套体系已经因其让立法变得困难的设计而显现出运转失灵的病症。在其最新著作《政治秩序和政治衰败》中，斯坦福大学的弗朗西斯·福山令人信服地指出：美国“所遭受的民主衰败难题，其表现形式之尖锐，超出了其他民主政治体系。”如果在不久前，这可能会被认为是一个荒唐的结论。
Sand in the cogs
害群之马
There is no shortage of explanations for why this might be: the only thing generally agreed upon is that the trouble started at some point between 1787, when the Founding Fathers determined that their new creation would not be pushed around by an overmighty government, and 2010, when the Supreme Court loosened the rules on campaign spending. But two explanations for the sorry state of American politics stand out. The first is that small, increasingly partisan groups wield vetoes over the federal government, blocking it from moving forward or back except in exceptional circumstances, such as economic crisis or war. The second is that much of the federal bureaucracy was created at a point in the middle of the 20th century that was, in political terms, highly unusual. Under more normal conditions it struggles.
不乏对造成这一问题的可能的原因的解释，其中唯一有普遍共识的一点是：这一问题始于国父们决定不让他们刚创建的共和国被一个权力过大的政府所左右的1787年和联邦最高法院放宽了竞选开支限制的2010年之间的某一个时间点。但是，在所有关于美国政治悲惨现状的解释中，以下两种是最应该值得注意的。第一种解释认为，除了在经济危机和战争这样的意外情况下，党派倾向日渐严重的小团伙对于否决权的行使，阻挠了联邦政府的前进或后退。第二种解释认为，大多数联邦机构都是在20世纪中期创建的。换言之，从政治的角度来看，这些机构创建于一个非同寻常的年代。一旦各种条件趋于正常，它们就会难以生存下去。
Begin with the vetoes. For reasons that include the sorting of the electorate into like-minded folks, redistricting and the cultural divide between cities and prairies, only 5% of the House's 435 districts were truly competitive on November 4th. There were 69 congressional districts where the candidate faced no opponent. This means that the main threat to the jobs of congressmen comes from primary elections, in which fewer than 20% of the electorate vote, about the same proportion who describe themselves as holding consistently conservative or consistently liberal views. Few congressmen lost to primary challengers in 2014, but results like the defeat of Eric Cantor, the House Majority Leader, in Virginia's seventh district remind them that such voters are not wild about anything that smells of compromise with the other side. These voters have the first veto.
先从否决权谈起。由于存在着将选民归类、重新划分选区和地域文化差异等原因，在众议院的435个选区中，在11月4日那天，真正有竞争性选区只有5％，而候选人面对无对手情况的选区有69个。这意味着，对国会议员职位的主要威胁来自初选。这些初选占选举人票的比例不到20％；参加初选的选民，一半是由自称一贯持保守派观点的共和党粉丝组成，一半是由自称一贯持自由派观点的民主党粉丝组成。在2014年的中期选举中，几乎没有国会议员输掉初选。但是像国会众议院多数党领袖艾里克·坎托在佛州第七选区败选的结果提醒议员们注意，这样的选民是不会疯狂到对任何有着向对方妥协味道的事情感兴趣的。这些选民拥有第一个否决权。
Getting a bill safely through the House, something that has become harder since Republicans adopted the idea that bills should have the support of a majority of their caucus to pass, is straightforward compared with getting one through the Senate, thanks to the filibuster rule. Since a filibuster requires a bill to gain a 60-vote majority, a group of 41 senators can halt almost any piece of legislation. Even the smallest state has two senators, so those 41 sometimes represent a small chunk of the electorate: Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia has worked out that states that are home to just 11% of Americans can elect the senators needed to block legislation. This potent weapon gives the minority party in the Senate the second veto.
让一件议案安全地通过众议院，虽说已经因为共和党采纳了任何提案都应当获得他们党团的支持才能通过的做法以来变得更加困难。但是，与让一件议案在参议院过关相比，这还是比较容易的。究其原因，这是因为参议院有阻挠议事规则在作怪。由于阻挠议事规则需要一件议案获得60票的绝对多数，因此由41位参议员组成的团伙能够叫停几乎所有的立法。再者，由于最小的州也拥有2名参议员，因此这41人代表的是极少数的选民。据佛州大学的Larry Sabato的研究显示，美国总人口比例仅为11％的几个州就能够选出阻挠立法所需要的参议员。这个有效的武器赋予参议院少数派第二个否决权。
Other delaying tactics and procedural quirks enhance the power of small groups, and even individual politicians, to stall congressional action. These were once used sparingly, but the gulf between the parties and their policies has grown so wide that they are now wielded to block minor legislation. The founders feared such a development. “There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties,” wrote John Adams in 1780. “This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our constitution.” In the decades since America's two great parties were remade by the fight over civil rights in the 1960s, they have steadily become more ideologically consistent. Congressional Republicans and Democrats have withdrawn from each other, to the point where there is now hardly any common ground between them.
其他各种拖延战术和程序方面的一些怪癖，对于一些小团伙乃至单个政客的权力的强化足以令议会停摆。这些战术，在以前的时候，是很少被用于实践的。但是，随着两党以及两党政策的分歧逐渐加大，如今，这些战术已被用来阻挠一些常规立法。国父们当年所担心的恰恰就是这种局面。约翰·亚当斯曾在1790年写道：“最令我担心的莫过于共和国分裂为两大政党。依照我这个卑微之人的理解，这是宪法所允许的最大的政治恶行。”在因为上世纪60年代的民权斗争而被重塑的数十年中，两党已经逐步地在意识形态方面，变得更加固执己见了。国会中的共和党人和民主党人已经远离对方，彼此之间不存在任何共同点。
Voting patterns in Congress suggest that the parties are even further apart now than they were in the mid-1990s, when Republicans tried to impeach Bill Clinton, or the middle of the past decade, when Democrats denounced George W. Bush as a warmonger. Over the past 20 years, the share of Americans who express consistently liberal or consistently conservative opinions has doubled, according to a study by the Pew Research Centre. Most of these people now believe that the other party's policies “are so misguided that they threaten the nation's well-being”. The results of the mid-terms, far from repudiating this dynamic, have reflected it. The defeat of John Barrow in Georgia leaves just one white Democratic congressman in the deep South; most of the Senate seats picked up by Republicans were at the expense of moderate Democrats in states that voted for Mitt Romney.
正如国会的种种投票模式所示，两党之间的当前距离比共和党人试图弹劾克林顿的上世纪90年代中期，或者民主党指责小布什为战争贩子的本世纪头十年中期又远了一步。据皮尤调查中心的研究显示，在过去的20年中，自称一贯持开明观点或者一贯坚持保守立场的美国人的比例已经翻了一番。如今，这些人中的大多数都坚信另一个政党的政策“具有强烈的误导性，以致对国家前途形成威胁”。中期选举的结果，不仅远未否定这种变化，反而是反映了这种变化。John Barrow在佐治亚州的失败，使得极端保守的南部各州仅存一名白人民主党国会议员；落入共和党之手的大多数参议院席位都曾经属于把选票投给罗姆尼的温和民主党人。
This degree of political polarisation is often described as unprecedented, but that is mistaken. The parties were similarly divided at the end of the 19th century, following the civil war. The difference then was that Republicans won most federal elections, so the restraints built into the constitution did not resemble leg-irons, as they do now.
这种程度的政治两极化，经常被冠以“史无前例”的的字样。但是，这是一种被曲解的认识。两党在内战结束后的19世纪末期同样是分裂的。那时与现在的不同支出是：当时的共和党赢得了大多数联邦选举，因此宪法所写明的各种制衡措施并不像当前这样碍手碍脚。
未完待续。。。
