Life After Politics

New thinking for the twenty-first century.

Across the developed world, public confidence in politics and politicians has slumped.

Solutions that once worked in tackling acute problems like unemployment, crime or low educational standards are no longer producing results, and the grand ideologies that dominated the twentieth century seem bankrupt, empty of relevance and popular appeal. Yet thought has not ceased, and the last few years have seen a ferment of new and radical thinking about how we might live, and how our societies might be organized, in the next century.

The independent think-tank Demos has been at the forefront of this reconstruction of political thinking. Committed to linking practical field work with theoretical analysis, its studies of ethics and values, employment, taxation, educational needs, nationalism, urban planning, social democracy, time and new technology have levered into position some of the foundation stones upon which we might build new ways of changing politics and society.

This collection offers some of the best of Demos’ work, with timely and vibrant new assessments of where we are, where we should be going and how we should get there from thinkers of the stature of Samuel Brittan, Amital Etzioni, Howard Gardner, John Gray, Charles Hampden-Turner, Roger Scruton, Peter Singer and Helen Wilkinson.
Accessible, iconoclastic and innovative, Life After Politics is indispensable for anyone interested in the ideas that are set to reshape our societies in the next century.