
Prompted by the EU referendum in the UK & the presidential election in the USA, A. C. Grayling investigates why the institutions of representative democracy seem unable to hold up against forces they were designed to manage, & why, crucially, it matters. First he considers moments in history
- Periclean Athens, the English Civil War, the American & French Revolutions, among them
- in which the challenges we face today were first encountered & what solutions, however imperfect, were found. Then he lays bare the specific problems of democracy in the twenty-first century & maps out a set of urgently needed reforms. With the advent of authoritarian leaders & the simultaneous rise of populism, representative democracy appears to be caught between a rock & a hard place, yet it is this space that it must occupy, says Grayling, if a civilized society, that looks after all its people, is to flourish.