2015考研英语阅读英文原刊《经济学人》：民主的程度

　　2015考研英语复习正是强化复习阶段，考研英语阅读在考研英语中占了40分，所以考研英语阅读是英语科目中重要的一项。新东方名师范猛老师曾建议过考研生需要坚持每天泛读10-15分钟的英文原刊。强烈推荐了杂志《经济学人》.杂志中的文章也是考研英语的主要材料来源.希望考研考生认真阅读，快速提高考研英语阅读水平。

　　Degrees of democracy

　　民主的程度

　　More education does not necessarily lead to greaterenthusiasm for representative politics

　　受教育程度越高并不一定对代表制政治产生更大的热情

　　Jun 23rd 2011 | from the print edition

　　ON JUNE 20th Zine el-Abedine Ben-Ali, Tunisia’sformer ruler, was sentenced in absentia to 35 yearsin prison. Many trace the origins of the popularrebellion that forced him from office to frustration over the treatment by the police of ayoung man with few job prospects. That combustible mixture of authoritarianism,unemployment and youth has played a big role in sparking many of the popular uprisingsacross the Middle East and north Africa that followed Tunisia’s. But some argue that increasededucation should also take credit for the Arab spring.

　　6月20号，前突尼斯总统Zine el-Abedine Ben-Ali在其未出席的情况下被判35年监禁。许多人探求这场大规模的反抗的根源，由于警察部门过分的对待一个没有就业前景的年轻人导致的反抗迫使他从当政者变为了阶下囚。即突尼斯之后，包括独裁主义、失业和年轻人的易冲动的混合体在中东和北非引起许多大规模的暴动。但是一些人认为增加的教育也应该为这场阿拉伯承担责任。

　　Many of the countries where disaffection with strongmen rulers has spilled over into revolthave seen their education levels rise sharply in recent decades. Young people in these countriesare far better educated than their parents were. In 1990 the average Egyptian had 4.4 years ofschooling; by 2010 the figure had risen to 7.1 years. Could it be that education, by makingpeople less willing to put up with restrictions on freedom and more willing to questionauthority, promotes democratisation?

　　许多由于对强硬领导人不满情绪涌出而导致起义的国家，其教育水平在近几十年中有大幅的提升。这些国家中的年轻人受到的教育远好于他们的父母。1990年平均每个埃及人接受4.4年的教育，到了2010年这个数字提升到7.1年。是教育促使民主化么?教育使得人们更少愿意忍受对自由的限制，更愿意挑战权威。

　　Ideas about the links between education, income anddemocracy are at the heart of what social scientistsin the middle of the last century termed the“modernisation hypothesis”. One of its most famousproponents, Seymour Lipset, wrote in 1959 that“education presumably broadens men’s outlooks,enables them to understand the need for norms oftolerance, restrains them from adhering toextremist and monistic doctrines, and increasestheir capacity to make rational electoral choices.”

　　关于教育、收入和民主之间联系的看法是上世纪中期被社会科学家称为“现代化假说”的核心。最著名的支持者Seymour Lipset在1959年写到“教育可能拓宽人们的视野，使他们能够理解宽容的必要性，减少他们对极端主义和一元论学说的依附，提高他们做出理性的选举决择的能力。

　　Since then plenty of economists and political scientists have looked for statistical evidence of acausal link between education and democratisation. Many have pointed to the strongcorrelation that exists between levels of education and measures like the pluralism of partypolitics and the existence of civil liberties (see left-hand chart). The patterns are similar whenyou look at income and democracy. There are outliers, of course—until recently, many Arabcountries managed to combine energy-based wealth and decent education with undemocraticpolitical systems. But some deduce from the overall picture that as China and otherauthoritarian states get more educated and richer, their people will agitate for greater politicalfreedom, culminating in a shift to a more democratic form of government.

　　自那时起，许多经济学家和政治学家就已经在寻找教育和民主化之间因果关系的统计上的证据。许多人已经指出教育程度与像党派政见的多元化等评测以及公民自由之间存在很强的关联性。当你看收入和民主时，他们的增长模式是相似的。当然也存在例外，至今，许多阿拉伯国家把以能源为基础的财富和良好的教育与非民主的体系结合在一起。但是一些人从整体推断，当中国和别的独裁主义国家得到更多的教育，变得更加富裕，他们的人民将煽动更大的政治自由，最终转变为一个更加民主的治理形式。

　　This apparently reasonable intuition is shakier than it seems. Critics of the hypothesis pointout that correlation is hardly causation. The general trend over the past half-century mayhave been towards rising living standards, a wider spread of basic education and moredemocracy, but it is entirely possible that this is being driven by another variable. Even if thecorrelation were not spurious, it would be difficult to know which way causation ran. Doesmore education lead to greater democracy? Or are more democratic countries better ateducating their citizens?

　　这个明显的合理的直觉不像它看上去那样稳固。该假设的反对者指出他们之间的联系不是因果关系。虽然过去半个世纪普遍的趋势是不断提高的生活水平，更加广泛的基础教育和更加民主，但是这个趋势完全可能是被其他别的因素驱动的。即使这个联系不是错误的，也很难知道这种因果关系是以哪种方式运行的。更好的教育导致了更大的民主?还是更加民主的国家能够为他们的国民提供更好的教育?

　　The modernisation hypothesis suggested aparticular direction of change: more education andincome should beget greater democracy. But asthe right-hand chart shows, there is virtually nostatistical association at all between changes in acountry’s level of education and its measured levelof democracy. If this is true, there is no particularreason to hope that more education will lead to amore democratic world.

　　现代化假说表明一个特定的变化方向：更好的教育和更多的收入应该能够导致更加民主。但是正如右边的图表所示的那样，在一个国家教育水平的变化和它测量的民主水平之间确实没有统计上的关系。假如真是这样的话，就不存在特别的原因希望更好的教育导致一个更加民主的世界。

　　A recent NBER paper* sheds light on why this might be the case. Those who posit that moreschooling leads to greater democracy often have specific ideas about how people’s attitudeschange as a result of their becoming more educated, arguing that it creates people who aremore willing to challenge authority. It is possible, however, that education reinforcesauthority and the power of ruling elites; indeed, it may often be designed to do precisely this.The study tried to find out which of these competing ideas of the effects of education is moreaccurate.

　　最近一个NBER论文解释了为什么可能是这样。那些假设更好的教育导致更加民主的人通常有一个特定的想法，认为作为人们得到更好教育的结果之一，人们的态度会发生改变，这导致了更加愿意挑战权威的人。但是，教育增强了权威和管理精英的力量是可能的，事实上，教育可能经常被设计去这样做。研究试图去找出这些不同的关于教育影响的观念中哪个是更加正确的。

　　The authors compared a group of Kenyan girls in 69 primary schools whose students wererandomly selected to receive a scholarship with similar students in schools which received nosuch financial aid. Previous studies had shown that the scholarship programme led to highertest scores and increased the likelihood that girls enrolled in secondary school. Overall, itsignificantly increased the amount of education obtained. For the new study the authors tried tosee how the extra schooling had affected the political and social attitudes of the women inquestion.

　　作者在69所小学挑选了一群肯尼亚的女同学进行对比，任意挑选一些学生给予一个奖学金，一些则没有这样的资助。奖学金计划导致了原先的学生有更好的成绩，并增加了被高中录取的可能性。整体来看，这明显增加了所获得的教育。对于这个新的研究，作者试图去看额外的教育如何影响妇女对于政治和社会的态度。

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