外刊时文---The Mass Political Party on its Way Out 群众性政党是否大势已去？.docVIP

The Mass Political Party on its Way Out? 群众性政党是否大势已去？ BELONGING to a political party has never been cheaper. For example, It costs just €20 ($25) a year to be a member of the Socialist Party in France. Britain’s Conservatives ask you to stump up only ￡25 ($39). Yet despite such attractive prices, Europeans and Americans are turning away in droves from affiliating with any one party. Membership has been falling for many years, but the decline seems to be accelerating and taking on a different quality. The factors that gave rise to mass parties are fading and unlikely to return, as Ingrid and her colleagues argue in a recent paperominously entitled “Going, going… gone?”. 归属于某个政党从没有像现在这样成本低廉。例如，在法国，每年花20欧元（25美元）就可以成为社会党的党员。在英国，保守党只收你25英镑（39美元）。尽管价码如此诱人，欧美人却在大批地离党而去。党员人数减少已是持续多年的事了，但现在这种减少的趋势似乎正在加速，而且有了新的含义。正像英格丽和她的同事们在一篇不吉利地题为《离去，离去…消失》的论文中所说，那些促成群众性政党兴起的因素正在消失，也不像能够回归的样子。 Party membership has shriveled in Europe since the 1980s, and at an especially fast rate in the first decade of this century. In roughly ten years up to 2008 party membership fell in Germany by 20%, in Sweden by 27% and in Norway by 29%. In Britain, where the decline is even more pronouncedat 36%, the Caravan Club now has more members than all the political parties put together. Not everywhere has seen the same trend: parties remain strong in Austria, for instance. In Italy membership has even bounced back somewhat, thanks to newish parties such as the Northern League. In America, where people can state a party preference when registering to vote, the proportion of voters eschewing a party affiliation and calling themselves “independent” reached an average of 40% last year, a record high. The share of independents usually drops in presidential-election years, but in May the figure touched 44%—nine points more than at the same stage of the campaign in 2008. 自上世纪八十年代以来，欧洲政党的党员人数一直在缩减，本世纪头十年中，缩减的速度尤其加快。自世纪初到2008年，德国的党员人数减少了20%，瑞典27%，挪威29%。在英国，党员人数的缩减尤为明显，达到36%；目前房车俱乐部的成员人数比英国所有政党的党员人数加起来还多。当然也有例外，例