Democracy and Its Crisis

Resumen del libro

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 twenty-first 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 civilized society, that looks after all its people, is to flourish.

Biografía del autor

A. C. Grayling es escritor y filósofo. Profesor del Birkbeck College hasta 2011, imparte clases en el New College of the Humanities, la universidad que fundó en 2010, y es miembro del St Annex{0026} x02019;s College. Antiguo columnista en The Guardian y The Times, colabora actualmente en medios como New Statesman, Times Literary Supplement, Literary Review e Index on Censorship. Galardonado con el Forkosch Literary Prize y el Premio Bertrand Russell, es autor de numerosos libros sobre filosofía, historia de las ideas, derechos humanos y ética. Entre sus obras destacan Contra todos los dioses, El buen libro, El poder de las ideas y La era del ingenio, todas publicadas por Ariel.