Ordinary Europeans long trusted elites with the business of democracy – and often even seemed to prefer unelected elites. If they now want to modify the social contract (and assuming that direct democracy remains impossible), change ought to be based on a clear, historically grounded sense of which innovations European democracy might really need – and of whom Europeans really trust to hold power.
普通欧洲人长久以来一直信任民主精英——甚至似乎经常偏好非选举产生的精英人物。如果他们现在想要修改社会契约（同时假定直接民主仍不可能实现），应该基于欧洲民主可能真正需要的从历史出发的创新措施——由欧洲人真正信任的当权者来进行改革。这样的讨论才刚刚起头。