Post-Democracy is a polemical work that goes beyond currentcomplaints about the failings of our democracy and explores thedeeper social and economic forces that account for the currentmalaise. Colin Crouch argues that the decline of those social classeswhich had made possible an active and critical mass politics hascombined with the rise of global capitalism to produce aself-referential political class more concerned with forging linkswith wealthy business interests than with pursuing politicalprogrammes which meet the concerns of ordinary people. He showshow, in some respects, politics at the dawn of the twenty-firstcentury returns us to a world familiar well before the start of thetwentieth, when politics was a game played among elites. However,Crouch maintains that the experience of the twentieth centuryremains salient and it reminds us of possibilities for the revivalof politics. This engaging book will prove challenging to all those who claimthat advanced societies have reached a virtual best of all possibledemocratic worlds, and will be compelling reading for anyoneinterested in the shape of twenty-first-century politics.