2015考研英语阅读富国穷国和弱国

　　Wealth, poverty and fragile states

　　富国、穷国和弱国

　　MOST people think they know what a failed statelooks like. An obvious one is Somalia, where anoutbreak of famine in the south was formally acknowledged by the United Nations this week.Help has started to trickle in after the Shabab, an Islamist militia, lifted its ban on aid agenciesthat it once termed anti-Muslim. In most ways the afflicted region epitomises the collapse ofauthority: extremists control roads and markets; the government is powerless outside thecapital; outsiders provide what little assistance exists.

　　大多数人自以为懂得何谓失败的政权。索马里就是一个典型的例子。这个星期联合国正式承认索马里南部闹饥荒。伊斯兰民兵组织Shabab解除被它称为反伊斯兰教的援助机构入境的禁令之后，援助终于缓缓而来。这个备受磨难的地区很大程度上体现了这个国家政权的崩塌：极端主义者控制了道路和市场;政府在首都外无能为力;外援少之又少。

　　But not all failed or fragile states look like Somalia. This month the World Bank issued itsannual list of countries by income category: rich, middle, poor. Several African countries arefaring rather better than Somalia; they have graduated from poor to middle-income status. Yetstrikingly, some 15 of the 56 countries on the banks lower-middle income list also appear on the list of fragile and failed states maintained by the OECD, a rich-country club. They range from C?te dIvoire to Yemen; the most important of them arePakistan and Nigeria. State failure, it appears, does not necessarily go hand in hand with otherhuman woes, such as poverty.

　　但并非失败或脆弱的政权就该这样。这个月世界银行发布了一份清单：它将国家分为富裕、中等、贫穷几个级别。好几个非洲国家的状况比索马里好：它们脱离贫穷了。然而令人惊讶的是，在56个收入属于中等偏低的国家里，大约有15个被经合组织列为政权不稳。从科特迪瓦到也门都属于这一行列，其中最重要的是巴基斯坦和尼日利亚。似乎政权衰败并不总是与人类其它灾难例如贫穷共进退。

　　Why should it matter that a group of countries has crossed some arbitrary line separatingpoor from middle-income status? Perhaps, some may say, it shows that state failure is anextremely elastic term, embracing both countries in total collapse and thosewhich merely contain large ungoverned spaces. In fact, the emergence of a group of middle-income but failed or fragile states is more than a curiosity. The groupcall them MIFFsincludes countries crucial to the future of west Africa and South Asia. The new state ofSouth Sudan , which combines oil wealth with instability and underdevelopment, will surely joinits ranks.

　　为什么一些不贫穷的国家也表现出贫穷国家的一些特征呢?有人也许会说，这反映了政权衰败是一个很灵活的用语，既包括哪些完全分崩瓦解的国家，也包括那些有大半领地处于无政府管辖的国家。确实，这些不贫穷但政权衰弱的国家的存在显得很怪。这些国家中，有些对西非和南亚的未来发展很关键。石油为苏丹南部的新政权带来财富，但那里依旧属于欠发达地区，并且不稳定。毫无疑问，它将会加入这一行列。

　　The group matters for several reasons. Although itsmembers may be semi-prosperous when measuredby income per person, they contain a large andrising share of very poor people. Geoffrey Gertz andLaurence Chandy of the Brookings Institution, aWashington, DC, think-tank, calculate that MIFFcountries account for roughly 180m of the worldsneediest people .That is 17% of the total number of the worldspoorestmore than the 10% who live in poor butstable countries. Anybody concerned withalleviating world poverty must reckon with the MIFFs.

　　这样一些国家的存在有几个理由：尽管按照每个国民的收入来衡量的话，他们的收入处于中等水平，但是这些国家有大量处于赤贫状况的人。华盛顿某智囊团Geoffrey Gertz和Laurence Chandy of the Brookings组织估计MIFFs国家的赤贫国民约有1.8亿，占全球总数的17%比那些岁穷但稳定的国家的赤贫人群还要多。任何有意解决全球贫困问题的人都不得不考虑MIFFs。

　　The category has also grown fast. Failed states were once poor almost by definition. TheWorld Banks fund for helping fragile states is called the Low-Income Country Under Stressfund; once countries stop being low-income, they no longer qualify as under stress, even ifthey are. In 2005, MIFF countries contained fewer than 15m people living on less than $1 aday, not even 1% of the worlds poorest. Since then, the group has expanded mostly becauseonce-poor states have grown richer, but no more functional. It is rarer to find a middle-incomestate in which law and order once existed but later failed.

　　区分国家类别的标准也变化得很快。几乎是按照定义来得出来的结论：这些衰败的国家曾经都很穷困。世界银行针对政权不稳的国家的援助基金就叫做困难低收入国家援助基金。一旦该国家收入水平不再低，那他们就不属于困难国家，尽管他们依旧很困难。 2005年MIFFs国家有少于1.5亿人日均消费水平低于1美元跟全球赤贫人群相比，这个消费低于他们的1%。从那以后，这类国家数量增大的最大原因是那些曾经贫困的国家都脱贫了，但政权依旧不稳。而那些法律法规曾经比较完善的中等收入国家，后来法律法规却不再适用的，却很少见。

　　And that points to one broad lesson from the emergence of this new group. Indigent placesare often racked by chaos; but somewhat better-off ones are not necessarily more stable. Thisyears World Development Report showed that violence plays a greater role than oncethought in keeping countries poor. Yet countries do escape poverty, and do not always growmore peaceable in the process.

　　然而这样一些国家的存在也表明一个更大的问题：贫困的国家经常遭遇骚乱，但并不意味着经济状况稍好的国家就会更稳定。今年的《全球发展报道》表明在使国家陷入贫穷方面暴力的危害比想象中大。在这个过程中，国家确实脱贫了，但并不总是更趋稳定。

　　As a background paper to the WDR shows, almost 70% of wars and conflicts took place in thepoorest quarter of countries in the 1960s; little more than 10% then took place in the nextquarter up, the lower-middle income countries. In the 2000s, however, that changed. The shareof conflicts in the poorest group fell below 40%; the share in the lower-middle group rose toover 40%. Strife is getting more common in lower-middle income countries, and weakgovernment is at least as big a predictor of violence as poverty itself.

　　就如一份向WDR提交的背景文件所表明的，1960年几乎70%的战争和骚乱发生在国家最贫困的区域;然而在1970年只有略高于10%骚乱发生于中低收入水平的国家。然而进入千禧年后，情况改变了。在最贫困的国家，骚乱的发生率降到低于40%，而在中低收入国家该比率超过40%。在后者，骚乱的发生越来越常见。而脆弱的政府跟贫穷至少起着同样大的作用。

　　The MIFFs are a headache for aid donors. Middle-income states in general need little financial supportor technical advice. Yet the MIFFs contain manypoor people whom the local government cannot orwill not help. As Andy Sumner of the Institute ofDevelopment Studies at Sussex University hasargued, the Wests aid business has grown up inpoor, stable places, such as Tanzania. The UNsmillennium development goals, like most other aiddeclarations, reflect the old way of doing aid.Donors admit that what works in poor, stablecountries probably wont in those which are not poor and not stable.

　　援助国对于MIFFs也感到很头疼。一般来说，收入中等的国家需要的资助和技术鸡翅不多。然而MIFFs有很多当地政府无能力或者不会去帮助的穷人。就如Sussex大学发展研究所的Andy Sumner说的，西方的援助之手已经伸向贫穷且稳定的地区，比如Tanzania。联合国千年发展计划，正如大多数其他的援助宣言一样，属于旧方式。援助国承认那些在贫穷且稳定的地区行得通的方案在那些不贫穷却不稳定的地区可能行不通。

　　MIFFs also pose a big problem for Western governments which want to influence them. Beingno longer poor, their elites rarely see the need for aid, military or developmental. Being fragile,their governments often consist of complex, fractious coalitions that are hard to deal with.The combination is deadly. Look at Pakistan. In a warning to the country, Americas Congressthis month suspended $800m worth of aid. That drew barely a flicker from the government ofPresident Asif Ali Zardari. The aid is worth less than 1% of GDP. Internal political calculationsmatter more than external ones.

　　MIFFs也为那些想要施加影响力的西方政府出了一个大难题。由于他们不再贫穷，这些国家的精英们觉得不需要援助，不管是军事上还是发展上;由于政权很脆弱，这些政府经常面对那些复杂而又随意的组织的挑战。作为对这个国家的一个警告，这个月美国国会终止了价值8亿美元的援助。而这些援助对于Asif Ali Zardari.总统来说，不过小菜一碟。这援助占他们国家的GDP含量还不到1%。内部比重远比外部比重重要。

　　The MIFF phenomenon is not entirely new. Papua New Guinea and Equatorial Guineabothundeveloped places with big extractive industriesare longstanding examples. But untilrecently, there were few of them and they mattered less. Now countries like Pakistan, Yemenand Nigeria may pose bigger problems to the West than traditional failed states, such asCongo, whose disasters are mostly visited on their unfortunate citizens.

　　MIFF现象并不新鲜。Papua New Guinea和Equatorial Guinea是两个大型采掘业所在地，都属于欠发达地区。但最近，这些国家慢慢脱离了这一行列，他们的影响力也越来越小。现在对于西方国家来说，巴基斯坦、也门和尼日利亚等国家比起那些脆弱的传统国家是更大的挑战，因为后者的国民遭遇得更多。