Post-Democracy

Post-Democracy is a polemical work that goes beyond current
complaints about the failings of our democracy and explores the
deeper social and economic forces that account for the current
malaise.

Colin Crouch argues that the decline of those social classes
which had made possible an active and critical mass politics has
combined with the rise of global capitalism to produce a
self-referential political class more concerned with forging links
with wealthy business interests than with pursuing political
programmes which meet the concerns of ordinary people. He shows
how, in some respects, politics at the dawn of the twenty-first
century returns us to a world familiar well before the start of the
twentieth, when politics was a game played among elites. However,
Crouch maintains that the experience of the twentieth century
remains salient and it reminds us of possibilities for the revival
of politics.

This engaging book will prove challenging to all those who claim
that advanced societies have reached a virtual best of all possible
democratic worlds, and will be compelling reading for anyone
interested in the shape of twenty-first-century politics.