欧洲可能出现更多加泰罗尼亚？
从我到米兰和阿姆斯特丹的出差经历看，如果欧盟(EU)在试图阻止其成员经济体走向全球，那么它做得很无能。这些城市里满是活生生的证据，证明布鲁塞尔并不是欧洲怀疑论渲染的那种“死亡之手”。从好的方向说，欧盟是商业开放的促进力量;从最糟糕的方向说，它是无关紧要的。
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.
对于所有富裕地区而言，复杂关系是(或者应当是)它们与所在国家之间的关系。正是民族国家对它们的产出征税，然后把这些财政收入转移到其他地区。正是民族国家可以通过选票的绝对力量，采取不符合它们利益的行动。问问伦敦人吧。相比之下，欧盟尽管拥有种种超国家主张，但没有要求他们作出任何贡献。
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.
那么为何没有出现更多的加泰罗尼亚?或者是更多的威尼托和伦巴第(这是意大利的两个地区，上周日投票要求更大自治权)?未来会有更多吗?加泰罗尼亚人具有比多数地区人口更强烈的民族认同感，但是分离主义情绪的其他原料(似乎包括经济自立和历史上的自治经历)存在于欧洲乃至其他地方的城市区域。
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.
过去几十年来，城市与去工业化的内陆地带之间的实质性差距，已成为西方民主国家内部最棘手的断层线。看看美国唐纳德•特朗普(Donald Trump)、法国马琳•勒庞(Marine Le Pen)或者英国退欧的选民分布地图吧。但是真正的麻烦始于我们只通过那些掉队地区的视野来看待这种失衡，以为可以用基建工程、产业保护和以新的文化敏感对待保守倾向的乡村地区来进行补救。
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.
作为一项道德命题，这是正确的：先照顾弱势群体。作为对随着时间推移政治将如何发展演变的解读，这可能本末倒置了。贫穷的乡村地区对快速发展的大都市感到的愤怒——加来海峡(Pas-de-Calais)地区对巴黎的愤怒，印第安纳州对纽约的愤怒——最终在分量上可能不如反方向上的愤怒。根据后一版本，未来的局面将是城市居民感到不公，他们觉得自己的富余产出被乡村地区搭便车，却在投票时被那些地区的不开化选民占上风。(不妨称其为“不纳税却享有代表权”。)民族国家的政府发现，要从一个地区收税来补贴另一个地区变得更难了。地方主义运动兴起了，要求获得越来越大的自治权，即便不是要求正式独立的话。
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.
如果不存在民族同质性，界定一个国家的将是自动财政稳定机制。国家观念无非是富裕地区理所当然地愿意补贴其他地区。如果这种意愿消失了，国家也就变得有名无实了。
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.
会这样吗?如果说有任何东西可以表征当今的保守派——比如特朗普总统的前顾问史蒂夫•班农(Steve Bannon)或者给你带来英国退欧的那些人——那就是一种习惯：他们谈起民族国家时，就仿佛那是历史长河中一个不可谈判的常数、而非最近几个世纪临时凑合的产物。他们散发出暴发户的气息，永远对着一栋模拟的都铎王府堡宣读传统。国家的历史太短了，不配获得这种永恒假设。国家出现在福利国家之前，那时地区之间的财政转移太小，不会对任何人构成负担。国家也出现在全球经济之前，在全球经济产生回报的是在城市汇集的知识和资本，而不是土地和工业。国家这个概念尚未经受过现代世界的考验是奇特的。
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.
有些伦敦人梦想着成立一个主权共和国，围绕M25高速公路挖一条护城河，在沃特福特(Watford)设立护照检查点，但以欧洲标准来看，伦敦是一个不太可能的独立候选地区。英格兰在1000年前已成为一个政治实体。即便联合王国的其他部分分崩离析，伦敦自古以来就属于的英格兰仍会存在。充当首都也是对伦敦输送到其他地区的所有财富的补偿。值得关注的是欧洲大陆。有些最富有的欧洲城市管理自己和周边地区的时间，比它们如今所属的国家存在时间更长。其中多数城市并未获得首都地位作为安慰。
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 —
未来将不会出现城市国家的恢复、复兴运动(Risorgimento，指意大利统一——译者注)的逆转，或者汉堡和波尔多地区分离。但是，随着城市与似乎既需要又厌恶它们的国家之间关系恶化，城市很可能会要求更大的自治权。如果保守派人士珍视民族国家，他们不能一边倒地为最愤怒的乡村地区游说。那是一种虐待关系，而非一个国家。国家面临的长期威胁来自那些繁荣昌盛、面向外部的地区。这些地区看着国内的掉队者，感觉自己——借用一个短语——被枷锁铐在一具尸体上。
shackled to a corpse. janan.ganesh@ft.com
janan.ganesh@ft.com 译者/何黎
