{"product_id":"9780241517635-secondhand-why-politics-fails-the-five-traps-of-the-modern-world-how-to-escape","title":"Why Politics Fails: The Five Traps of the Modern World \u0026 How to Escape","description":"An award-winning Oxford professor explains why the revolving doors of power always leave us disappointed - and how to fix it\n\nWhy do the revolving doors of power always leave us disappointed? In Why Politics Fails, award-winning Oxford professor Ben Ansell shows that it's not the politicians that are the problem, it's that our collective goals result in five political 'traps'.\n\nDemocracy- we all want a say in how we're governed, but it's impossible to have any true 'will of the people'. Equality- we want to be treated equally, but equal rights and equal outcomes undermine each other. Solidarity- we want a safety net when times are tough, but often we care about solidarity only when we need it ourselves. Security- we want protecting from harm, but not if it undermines our freedoms. Prosperity- we want to be richer tomorrow, but what makes us richer in the short run makes us poorer over the long haul.\n\nYou've probably noticed a pattern here, which is that our self-interest undermines our ability to deliver on our collective goals. And these traps reinforce one another, so a polarized democracy can worsen inequality; a threadbare social safety net can worsen crime; runaway climate change will threaten global peace.\n\nDrawing on examples from Ancient Greece through Brexit and using his own counterintuitive and pathbreaking research - on why democracy thrives under high inequality, and how increased political and social equality can lead to greater class inequality - Ansell vividly illustrates how we can escape the political traps of our imperfect world. He shows that politics won't end, but that it doesn't have to fail.","brand":"Secondhand Stock","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48584479965403,"sku":"9780241517635-SECONDHAND","price":12.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0523\/7646\/9701\/files\/e534ef89-e532-4fa4-b125-2223ac697b5d.jpg?v=1775840655","url":"https:\/\/bookgrocer.com\/products\/9780241517635-secondhand-why-politics-fails-the-five-traps-of-the-modern-world-how-to-escape","provider":"Book Grocer","version":"1.0","type":"link"}