Why Politics Fails

byBen Ansell

The Five Traps of the Modern World & How to Escape Them

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When it comes to politics, there are five goals that voters generally agree upon. We all want a say in how we're governed, to be treated equally, a safety net when times are hard, protection from harm and to be richer in the future. So, why does politics not deliver that?

The problem is each of these five goals results in a political trap. For example, we all want a say in how we're governed, but it's impossible to have any true 'will of the people'. And we want to be richer tomorrow, but what makes us richer in the short run makes us poorer over the long haul.

In Why Politics Fails, award-winning Oxford professor Ben Ansell draws on examples from Ancient Greece through Brexit to vividly illustrate how we can escape these traps, overcome self-interest and deliver on our collective goals. Politics seems to be broken, but this book shows how it can work for everyone.

A meticulous study of how different societies find it so difficult to achieve widely shared goals, like democracy, equality, a decent welfare state, security from crime and sustainable prosperity

Nick Pearce, Financial Times

About Ben Ansell

Ben Ansell is Professor of Comparative Democratic Institutions at Nuffield College, University of Oxford. Following a PhD at Harvard he taught at the University of Minnesota for several years, becoming a full Professor at Oxford in 2013 at the age of thirty-five. He was made Fellow of the British Academy in 2018, among the youngest fellows at that time. His work has been widely covered in the media, including in the World Bank's World Development Report, The New York Times, The Economist, The Times and on BBC Radio 4's 'Start the Week'. He is the Principal Investigator of the multi-million-pound ERC project 'The Politics of Wealth Inequality', co-editor of the most-cited journal in comparative politics, and has written three award-winning academic books. This is his first for a general reader.
Details
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • ISBN: 9780241992753
  • Length: 352 pages
  • Dimensions: 196mm x 28mm x 128mm
  • Weight: 240g
  • Price: £10.99
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