David Runciman

What kind of hypocrite should voters choose as their next leader? The question seems utterly cynical. But, as David Runciman suggests, it is actually much more cynical to pretend that politics can eve

A preeminent political scientist's account of the demise of Western democracy and exploration of what lies aheadSince the end of World War II, democracy's sweep across the globe seemed inexorable. Yet today, it seems radically imperiled, even in some of the world's most stable democracies. How bad could things get?In How Democracy Ends, David Runciman argues that we are trapped in outdated twentieth-century ideas of democratic failure. By fixating on coups and violence, we are focusing on the wrong threats. Our societies are too affluent, too elderly, and too networked to fall apart as they did in the past. We need new ways of thinking the unthinkable--a twenty-first-century vision of the end of democracy, and whether its collapse might allow us to move forward to something better.A provocative book by a major political philosopher, How Democracy Ends asks the most trenchant questions that underlie the disturbing patterns of our contemporary political life.

Why do democracies keep lurching from success to failure? The current financial crisis is just the latest example of how things continue to go wrong, just when it looked like they were going right. In

Why do democracies keep lurching from success to failure? The current financial crisis is just the latest example of how things continue to go wrong, just when it looked like they were going right. In

"Why do democracies keep lurching from success to failure? The current financial crisis is just the latest example of how things continue to go wrong, just when it looked like they were going right. I

What kind of hypocrite should voters choose as their next leader? The question seems utterly cynical. But, as David Runciman suggests, it is actually much more cynical to pretend that politics can ev

Tony Blair has often said that he wishes history to judge the great political controversies of the early twenty-first century--above all, the actions he has undertaken in alliance with George W. Bush.

Set against the broad context of philosophical arguments about group and state personality, Pluralism and the Personality of the State tells, for the first time, the history of political pluralism. The pluralists believed that the state was simply one group among many, and could not therefore be sovereign. They also believed that groups, like individuals, might have personalities of their own. The book examines the philosophical background to political pluralist ideas with particular reference to the work of Thomas Hobbes and the German Otto von Gierke. It also traces the development of pluralist thought before, during and after the First World War. Part Three returns to Hobbes in order to see what conclusions can be drawn about the nature of his Leviathan and the nature of the state as it exists today.

Set against the broad context of philosophical arguments about group and state personality, Pluralism and the Personality of the State tells, for the first time, the history of political pluralism. The pluralists believed that the state was simply one group among many, and could not therefore be sovereign. They also believed that groups, like individuals, might have personalities of their own. The book examines the philosophical background to political pluralist ideas with particular reference to the work of Thomas Hobbes and the German Otto von Gierke. It also traces the development of pluralist thought before, during and after the First World War. Part Three returns to Hobbes in order to see what conclusions can be drawn about the nature of his Leviathan and the nature of the state as it exists today.