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.
* Exam copies only available to lecturers for whom the book may be suitable as a course text.
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'Colin Crouch has the great gift of bringing theory down to accessible earth. Social capital theory is applied to the policies needed for civil renewal. This thoughtful book is a culmination of all that we have been expecting-and more-from his Fabian pamphlets and Political Quarterly articles on the dilemmas of democracy in troubled times.' Professor Bernard Crick
1. Why Post-Democracy?.
2. The Global Firm: The Key Institution of the Post-Democratic World.
3. Social Class in Post-Democracy.
4. The Political Party under Post-Democracy.
5. Post-Democracy and the Commercialization of Citizenship.
6. Conclusions: Where Do We Go From Here?.
References.
Index.
