Prompted by the EU referendum in the UK and 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 and why, crucially, it matters.
First he considers moments in history - Periclean Athens, the English
Civil War, the American and French Revolutions, among them - in which
the challenges we face today were first encountered and what solutions,
however imperfect, were found.
Then he lays bare the specific problems of democracy in the 21st century
and maps out a set of urgently needed reforms. With the advent of
authoritarian leaders and the simultaneous rise of populism,
representative democracy appears to be caught between a rock and a hard
place, yet it is this space that it must occupy, says Grayling, if a
civilised society that looks after all its people is to flourish.