为什么西方民主国家的公民们变成了民族主义者，大规模反对移民，并且开始不信任国际机构？有一种声音认为，这种变化是由导致民众财富缩水和失业潮的经济危机所引起的。但是很显然这个说法站不住脚，因为经济发展停滞趋势已经持续了30年。更准确的答案应该是，这种转变是国民内部的国家主权意识和国际精英团体推行的全球化之间，存在的一种固有的紧张的心态冲突。而这种紧张的局面现在到达了濒临崩溃的突破点。

　　As economies and societies around the globe become more and more interconnected and bound within transnational rules and institutions, the range of policy options available to domestic policymakers has declined. Such constraints range from formal rules, such as the acceptance of the free movement of peoples within the European Union, or the asylum obligations that are outlined under the U.N. Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, or the limits on deficits stipulated in European Union’s Stability and Growth Pact and the implicit economic constraints imposed by global financial and investment flows. Thus, on issue after issue, from corporate taxation, to control over immigration, to fiscal and monetary policy, national elites frequently find themselves unable to deliver policies consistent with public preferences. Instead they have blamed international institutions for their inability to take actions that they privately do not condone. In this way, politicians feel obliged, in the words of Hillary Clinton, to maintain “both a public and a private position.”

　　在跨国条约、贸易协定以及国际机构的作用下，全球范围内国家间经济和社会的联系越来越紧密。而这种紧密让国家内部政策的可选择性也随之下降了。那些正式的非正式的条约正在发挥限制作用，例如，欧盟内部公民的自由往来规则，联合国难民地位公约要求的庇护责任，欧盟稳定与增长公约规定的财政赤字范围，以及被全球金融投资流向影响着的经济增长负担。就这样，从企业税收、控制移民，再到财政和货币政策，国家的精英阶层们发现自己越来越无法提供让民众满意的政策。因此他们会指责国际机构，对那些他们私底下无法容忍的事情不作为。在这种情形之下，就像希拉里说的，政客们只能「既有公开的立场，也有私下的立场」。

　　Yet the constraints on national sovereignty entailed by global markets and institutions has weakened the mechanisms that once translated popular views into public policy, leading to a “democratic deficit”’ that has left citizens increasingly frustrated with democratic politics, and increasingly with the democratic system itself. At the same time, the institutions of “global governance” have failed not only to provide avenues for popular participation, but also to deliver outcomes that such participation would be liable to generate, such as compensation for the losers from global trade, or protection of the identities and ways of life of local and national communities. In the words of Larry Summers, one of global integration’s advocates, it is a project “carried out by elites, for elites, with little consideration for the interests of ordinary people.”

　　全球化的市场和组织已经大大削弱了将民意转化为公共政策的机制，这种情形带来的「民主赤字」让公民们对民主制度丧失信心，也打击了民主制度本身。与此同时，那些正在进行「全球治理」的机构不仅无法提供公众参与渠道，而且还直接抛出治理的结果。例如对全球贸易失败者的补偿，或者对某些国家地区的生活方式以及公民身份的保护。就像萨默斯，这个全球一体化的倡导者之一，所说的，全球一体化政策这个项目「被精英们推进，为精英们推进，而绝少考虑普通民众的利益点」。

　　This frustration has set up a dangerous dynamic, the consequences of which are now only too visible. In many countries, the only viable challenge to an increasingly homogeneous set of decision-makers comes from political parties or movements established by outsiders, such as the tea party movement and now Donald Trump in the United States, or populist parties of the right and left in Europe. These movements explicitly set themselves against a metropolitan and cosmopolitan elite which, they claim — not always without reason — routinely ignores popular demands and policy preferences. As the differences between establishment parties on the left and right have dwindled in many countries, the only way for voters to effect a change in policy has been to rally to parties that reject many of the traditional rules of the democratic game. In this way, as politicians’ responsiveness to citizens has decreased, citizens have been encouraged to turn away from democracy.