经济学人下载:活动组织者 政治中的阿拉丁神灯

Campaign organizers
活动组织者

The political genie
政治中的“阿拉丁神灯”

New and mysterious, the campaign organiser is credited with mighty powers
活动组织者们被认为有一种新的、神秘的伟大力量

ROBIN MCGHEE's desk is a library of transatlantic electoral wisdom. “The Audacity to Win: The Inside Story and Lessons of Barack Obama's Historic Victory”, reads one title. “Respect, Empower, Include”, urges another, a manual for Democratic Party activists in Colorado. Mr McGhee's choice of literature is apt: although he works for the Liberal Democrats in Bristol, his job as a professional campaigner is an American import.
罗宾·麦吉的书桌像是一个跨大西洋的选举智慧的图书馆。读取一个标题，“无畏的胜利：内幕和巴拉克·奥巴马取得历史性胜利的经验教训”。给另一个在科罗拉多州的民主党积极分子们一个指南，“尊重，授权，包容”。麦吉先生对文学的选择是恰当的：尽管他为布里斯托尔的自由民主党工作，但他作为一个职业竞争者的工作可以说是从美国进口的。

Organisers are fairly new to Britain: parties have generally concentrated their paid staff in London, leaving the ground war to candidates and volunteers. But that is changing. The three main parties were all deeply impressed by Mr Obama's presidential machines in 2008 and 2012, which used professional campaigners to cultivate a decentralised army of self-starting local volunteers. All three now have organisers in their target constituencies and in some seats they already hold. Party bosses talk about these hires, who tend to be recent graduates, in reverential tones. “Ah,” they chide sceptical journalists, “but you haven't considered our organisers.”
组织者对英国来说是陌生的：各党派都将他们的成员集中在伦敦，把麻烦留给了候选人和志愿者。但是这种现象正在发生变化。在2008年2012年，三个主要党派都被奥巴马的总统竞选团队深深的影响了，就是用职业竞选者对当地分散的志愿者进行培训。如今，这三个党派在他们的目标选区和已经持有一些席位的地区都有组织者。党派的领导者们常常用一种可敬的语气谈及这些雇工，因为他们往往都是应届毕业生。“啊”，他们斥责那些有怀疑态度的记者们，“你们没有考虑过我们的组织者。”

The life of these political operators has its hardships. They receive only basic training before being dispatched to the sticks. On arriving in constituencies, often with little local knowledge, a new organiser must be part management consultant, part social worker, fixing problems and soothing activists' egos. The hours can be long. Some work from rented bedrooms, coffee shops or, in one case, the clinic of a Labour-supporting psychiatrist. Most endure it all out of party loyalty and personal ambition, seeing organising as the springboard to a political career.
这些政治操盘手们的日子过得也颇为艰辛。在他们被派遣到目的地前只接受了基础训练。一到达目的选区，一个对当地不甚了解的组织者经常要时而兼职管理顾问，时而扮演社工，以解决问题同时安抚活动家们的自尊心。时间可能会很长。从租借房间或是咖啡厅，到某些情况下，甚至到一个支持工党的精神病专家的诊所去工作。最能忍受这些的，都是处于对党的忠诚和个人的抱负，把组织活动看做政治生涯中的跳板。

For their employers the advantages are more immediate. Prospective MPs increasingly enjoy high-flying jobs (often elsewhere in politics) before running for office, so may have less time to run their own campaigns. Local party machines even in crucial marginal seats can be doddery, disorganised and dominated by the few truculent oddballs inclined to turn up to meetings. Organisers can purportedly inject a dose of youthful dynamism into such outfits. They report to national headquarters, so faithfully enact party strategies. They must also hit monthly canvassing targets. The Labour Party circulates rankings comparing organisers' results. Paddy Ashdown, a pugnacious grandee, polices the performance of their Lib Dem counterparts.
对于他们的雇主来说，带来的益处是更直接的。未来的国会议员在竞选公职前，越来越享受有挑战性的工作（通常是政治中的其他领域），因此，他们可能只有很少的时间运作自己的竞选活动。当地正处于关键边缘时期的政党组织，就会被那些有意将会议声势放大的好斗的有心人士控制，变得只有毫无生气的散兵游勇。而组织者可以给这些组织注入新鲜活力。他们向全国总部报告，并切实的制定党的政策。他们还必须达到每月的游说目标。工党还发布对组织者进行的排名。帕迪·艾什顿，一个好斗的名门望族人士，监督他们自由民主党对手的各方面表现。

Three million wishes
三百万个愿望

Organisers also contribute computer know-how. Some elderly local activists are not comfortable using the snazzy voter databases purchased at great expense by party headquarters. Hiring people like Mr McGhee ensures that the new technology does not go to waste. In his Bristol office, he scrolls through voter categories, selecting “Labour-leaning”, “pensioners” and “Bishopston ward” and generating a list that can be beamed, via an app, to canvassers' mobile phones.
组织者们还要提供电脑技术的援助。一些年纪较大的地方活动人士不习惯使用由全国总部花大价钱购置来的选民数据库。雇用像麦吉先生这样的人确保了新技术不会被浪费。在他布里斯托尔的办公室，他通过滚屏浏览选民类别，选择“劳工意向”，“退休人员”和“毕晓普斯顿的病房”并且生成一个列表，并将这列表通过一个应用程序传送到游说者的手机中。

Besides persuading existing party members to get their act together, organisers are supposed to recruit new ones. Following the Obama playbook, that means asking members to invite friends, relatives and co-workers to meetings on local issues like bus services and child care. “A bit like a pyramid scheme,” says one British party strategist, only half-joking. Churches, mosques, neighbourhood watch schemes and trade unions also provide routes to prospective supporters. Partly for this reason (but mostly in response to a vote-rigging scandal in a candidate selection last year) on March 1st Labour reformed its long-standing relationship with the unions to give local parties and organisers direct access to individual union members.
除了说服现有的党员来共同行动，组织者们还要招募新人。而由奥巴马的“剧本”可知，那意味着成员要去邀请他们的朋友、亲人和同事来参与会议，讨论有关巴士服务和儿童保育等当地话题。“有点像传销”，一个英国的党派战略家半开玩笑的这样说道。教堂、清真寺、邻里守望计划和工会也给未来的支持者们提供路线。部分因为这个原因（但大部分是为回应去年在候选人竞选中的选举舞弊丑闻），在3月1日，工党和工会改变了其长期合作的关系，这给予了当地政党和组织者们对个别的工会成员直接访问的机会。

But the new methods may not be all they are cracked up to be. America's earnest, decentralised political culture does not always appeal to starchy Britons. In the last two presidential elections, Mr Obama's supporters held hundreds of house parties at which they implored their friends to support the campaign. In his ill-fated bid for the leadership of the Labour Party in 2010, David Miliband attempted to import this practice to Britain. Few supporters took up the invitation, which was widely mocked.
但新方法可能并不像他们吹捧的那样。美国式的认真的、分散的政治文化并不总是吸引着拘谨的英国人。在过去的两次总统选举中，奥巴马先生的支持者们举办了数百次的家庭聚会以恳求他们的朋友来支持这个选举。大卫·米利班德曾试图尝试将奥巴马在2010年几经波折的争取工党领导的方式引进英国并予以实施。而其结果却是几乎没有人接受此邀请，这件事也作为笑话流传开来。

And though campaign organisers are meant to revive local political volunteering, they might have the opposite effect. The arrival of one of these miracle-workers in a constituency risks giving harried candidates and disengaged activists the perfect opportunity to dump boring grunt work like canvassing and envelope-stuffing on the new recruit. If they do, organisers could end up speeding the professionalisation of politics, which they were supposed to be reversing.
虽然活动组织者的意愿是为了振兴当地的政治自愿活动，但他们可能会产生相反的效果。在候选区从这些创造奇迹的工作人员中过来的一个能给那些忙碌的候选人和积极分子带来摆脱像游说和招募新人等枯燥繁重工作的机会。如果他们这样做，组织者们可能会停止加速政治的职业化，这正是他们所期望被扭转的。