歐洲可能出現(xiàn)更多加泰羅尼亞？

If the EU tries to stop its constituent economies going global, I surmise from working trips to Milan and Amsterdam that it is terrible at it. These cities gleam with graphic evidence that Brussels is not the dead hand of Eurosceptic lore. It is either an enabler of mercantile openness or, at worst, an irrelevance.

從我到米蘭和阿姆斯特丹的出差經(jīng)歷看，如果歐盟(EU)在試圖阻止其成員經(jīng)濟體走向全球，那么它做得很無能。這些城市里滿是活生生的證據(jù)，證明布魯塞爾并不是歐洲懷疑論渲染的那種“死亡之手”。從好的方向說，歐盟是商業(yè)開放的促進力量;從最糟糕的方向說，它是無關(guān)緊要的。

With all rich regions, the complicated relationship is (or should be) with their own countries. It is the nation state that taxes their output and sends the receipts to other areas. It is the nation state that can act against their interests through sheer weight of electoral numbers. Ask Londoners. Next to this, the EU, for all its supranational pretensions, asks nothing of them.

對于所有富裕地區(qū)而言，復(fù)雜關(guān)系是(或者應(yīng)當(dāng)是)它們與所在國家之間的關(guān)系。正是民族國家對它們的產(chǎn)出征稅，然后把這些財政收入轉(zhuǎn)移到其他地區(qū)。正是民族國家可以通過選票的絕對力量，采取不符合它們利益的行動。問問倫敦人吧。相比之下，歐盟盡管擁有種種超國家主張，但沒有要求他們作出任何貢獻。

So why are there not more Catalonias? Or more Venetos and Lombardys, the two Italian regions that voted for more autonomy on Sunday? And might there be in future? Catalans have a stronger ethnic identity than most regional populations but the other raw materials of separatist feeling, which seem to include economic self-reliance and historic experience of self-rule, are there in city-regions across Europe and beyond.

那么為何沒有出現(xiàn)更多的加泰羅尼亞?或者是更多的威尼托和倫巴第(這是意大利的兩個地區(qū)，上周日投票要求更大自治權(quán))?未來會有更多嗎?加泰羅尼亞人具有比多數(shù)地區(qū)人口更強烈的民族認(rèn)同感，但是分離主義情緒的其他原料(似乎包括經(jīng)濟自立和歷史上的自治經(jīng)歷)存在于歐洲乃至其他地方的城市區(qū)域。

The material gap between cities and deindustrialised heartlands has grown over decades to become the most troublesome faultline in western democracies. Look at an electoral map of votes for Donald Trump in America, Marine Le Pen in France or EU exit in Britain. But the real trouble starts when we see this imbalance exclusively through the lens of the left-behind places, as something to be redressed through infrastructure projects, industrial protection and a new cultural sensitivity to conservative-minded provinces.

過去幾十年來，城市與去工業(yè)化的內(nèi)陸地帶之間的實質(zhì)性差距，已成為西方民主國家內(nèi)部最棘手的斷層線。看看美國唐納德•特朗普(Donald Trump)、法國馬琳•勒龐(Marine Le Pen)或者英國退歐的選民分布地圖吧。但是真正的麻煩始于我們只通過那些掉隊地區(qū)的視野來看待這種失衡，以為可以用基建工程、產(chǎn)業(yè)保護和以新的文化敏感對待保守傾向的鄉(xiāng)村地區(qū)來進行補救。

As a moral proposition, this is right: the weakest first. As a reading of how politics will actually unfold over time, it could be the wrong way around. The anger that poor regions feel for the rampant metropolis — that Pas-de-Calais feels for Paris, that Indiana feels for New York — might turn out to weigh less than the grievances that flow in the opposite direction. In this version of the future, it is the city dwellers who feel wronged by regions that free ride on their productive surplus and vote against their heathen ways from a distance. (Call it representation without taxation.) National governments find it harder to raise revenue from the one to subsidise the other. Regionalist movements emerge, pressing for greater and greater autonomy if not formal secession.

作為一項道德命題，這是正確的：先照顧弱勢群體。作為對隨著時間推移政治將如何發(fā)展演變的解讀，這可能本末倒置了。貧窮的鄉(xiāng)村地區(qū)對快速發(fā)展的大都市感到的憤怒——加來海峽(Pas-de-Calais)地區(qū)對巴黎的憤怒，印第安納州對紐約的憤怒——最終在分量上可能不如反方向上的憤怒。根據(jù)后一版本，未來的局面將是城市居民感到不公，他們覺得自己的富余產(chǎn)出被鄉(xiāng)村地區(qū)搭便車，卻在投票時被那些地區(qū)的不開化選民占上風(fēng)。(不妨稱其為“不納稅卻享有代表權(quán)”。)民族國家的政府發(fā)現(xiàn)，要從一個地區(qū)收稅來補貼另一個地區(qū)變得更難了。地方主義運動興起了，要求獲得越來越大的自治權(quán)，即便不是要求正式獨立的話。

In the absence of ethnic homogeneity, it is automatic fiscal stabilisers that mark out a nation. Nationhood is the willingness of rich regions to pay for the rest as a matter of course. If that willingness goes away, the nation becomes form without substance.

如果不存在民族同質(zhì)性，界定一個國家的將是自動財政穩(wěn)定機制。國家觀念無非是富裕地區(qū)理所當(dāng)然地愿意補貼其他地區(qū)。如果這種意愿消失了，國家也就變得有名無實了。

Might it? If anything characterises the present-day conservative, such as President Trump’s former adviser Steve Bannon or the people who brought you Brexit, it is a habit of talking about the nation state as though it were a non-negotiable constant of history rather than an improvisation of recent centuries. There is something of the arriviste about them, forever reading heritage into a mock Tudor mansion. The nation is too young to deserve this assumption of permanence. It emerged before the welfare state, when fiscal transfers between regions were too small to constitute a burden on anyone. It also predates a global economy whose returns are to knowledge and capital, which convene on cities rather than to land and industry. It is curiously untested by the modern world.

會這樣嗎?如果說有任何東西可以表征當(dāng)今的保守派——比如特朗普總統(tǒng)的前顧問史蒂夫•班農(nóng)(Steve Bannon)或者給你帶來英國退歐的那些人——那就是一種習(xí)慣：他們談起民族國家時，就仿佛那是歷史長河中一個不可談判的常數(shù)、而非最近幾個世紀(jì)臨時湊合的產(chǎn)物。他們散發(fā)出暴發(fā)戶的氣息，永遠對著一棟模擬的都鐸王府堡宣讀傳統(tǒng)。國家的歷史太短了，不配獲得這種永恒假設(shè)。國家出現(xiàn)在福利國家之前，那時地區(qū)之間的財政轉(zhuǎn)移太小，不會對任何人構(gòu)成負(fù)擔(dān)。國家也出現(xiàn)在全球經(jīng)濟之前，在全球經(jīng)濟產(chǎn)生回報的是在城市匯集的知識和資本，而不是土地和工業(yè)。國家這個概念尚未經(jīng)受過現(xiàn)代世界的考驗是奇特的。

Some Londoners dream of a sovereign republic, with a moat dug around the M25 and passport checks at Watford, but it is an improbable candidate by European standards. England became a political unit a millennium ago. Even if the UK were to flake away around it, there is still a nation in which London is immemorially enmeshed. Being the capital also serves as compensation for all the wealth sent elsewhere. It is the continent that is worth watching. Some of the richest European cities governed themselves and their surrounds for longer than the countries they now find themselves in have existed. Most do not have capital status as a sop.

有些倫敦人夢想著成立一個主權(quán)共和國，圍繞M25高速公路挖一條護城河，在沃特福特(Watford)設(shè)立護照檢查點，但以歐洲標(biāo)準(zhǔn)來看，倫敦是一個不太可能的獨立候選地區(qū)。英格蘭在1000年前已成為一個政治實體。即便聯(lián)合王國的其他部分分崩離析，倫敦自古以來就屬于的英格蘭仍會存在。充當(dāng)首都也是對倫敦輸送到其他地區(qū)的所有財富的補償。值得關(guān)注的是歐洲大陸。有些最富有的歐洲城市管理自己和周邊地區(qū)的時間，比它們?nèi)缃袼鶎俚膰掖嬖跁r間更長。其中多數(shù)城市并未獲得首都地位作為安慰。

There will be no restoration of the city states, no undoing of the Risorgimento, no secessions in Hamburg and Bordeaux. But there is every prospect of cities demanding more self-rule as relations deteriorate with nations that seem to need and resent them all at once. If conservatives cherish the nation state, they cannot become a one-sided lobby for the angriest provinces. That is an abusive relationship, not a country. The long-run threat to nationhood comes from productive, outward-facing regions that look at their domestic stragglers and feel — to steal a phrase —

未來將不會出現(xiàn)城市國家的恢復(fù)、復(fù)興運動(Risorgimento，指意大利統(tǒng)一——譯者注)的逆轉(zhuǎn)，或者漢堡和波爾多地區(qū)分離。但是，隨著城市與似乎既需要又厭惡它們的國家之間關(guān)系惡化，城市很可能會要求更大的自治權(quán)。如果保守派人士珍視民族國家，他們不能一邊倒地為最憤怒的鄉(xiāng)村地區(qū)游說。那是一種虐待關(guān)系，而非一個國家。國家面臨的長期威脅來自那些繁榮昌盛、面向外部的地區(qū)。這些地區(qū)看著國內(nèi)的掉隊者，感覺自己——借用一個短語——被枷鎖銬在一具尸體上。

shackled to a corpse. [email protected]

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