Theme: Political Ideas | Content Type: Book review

Review: How Democracies Live. Power, Statecraft, and Freedom in Modern Societies, by Stein Ringen

Edmund Fawcett

roman ruins

Giovanni Paolo Panini

| 0 mins read

Many books lately have told us of democracy's decline or death. Stein Ringen is not so glum. Focussing on the representative kind, he thinks democracy is alive and can stay alive on two related conditions. Government needs to be much better at its job. People must accept that governments, not they, are in charge.

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  • Edmund Fawcett

    Edmund Fawcett

    Edmund Fawcett is author of Liberalism: The Life of an Idea (2nd 2018) and Conservatism: The Fight for a Tradition (2020).

    Articles by Edmund Fawcett
Volume 96, Issue 3

Latest issue

Volume 96, Issue 3

This issue features a collection titled 'The Intellectual and Political Legacy of David Marquand', who died in April 2024, edited by Colin Crouch, Ben Jackson and Peter Sloman. In this collection, authors including Jean Seaton, Will Hutton and Hilary Wainwright consider Marquand's legacy as a great progressive thinker, his biography of Ramsay MacDonald, Labour's first prime minister, and the role of socialism for Marquand. Other articles include a commentary by Deborah Mabbett titled 'Welfare reform by numbers'; Jeremy Gilbert and Alex Williams on 'The Vices of Values: Matthew Goodwin and the Politics of Motivation'; Helen McCarthy on 'Why the WASPI has no Sting: Gender, Generation and Pension Inequalities'; and Sam Taylor Hill, Tariq Modood and John Denham on 'Multicultural Nationalism: Saving the White Working Class from Blue Labour?' A selection of book reviews feature Edmund Fawcett's review of 'Nationalism: A World History' by Eric Storm and Samuel Cohn's review of 'Controlling Contagion: Epidemics and Institutions from the Black Death to Covid' by Sheilagh Ogilvie.

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