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Why Politics Fails
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  • Published: 30 January 2024
  • ISBN: 9780241992753
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $30.00

Why Politics Fails

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

Formats & editions
Paperback
30 Jan 2024
Tr. Paperback
18 July 2023
EBook
27 Apr 2023
Audiobook
27 Apr 2023
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An award-winning Oxford professor explains why the revolving doors of power always leave us disappointed - and how to fix it

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.
  • Published: 30 January 2024
  • ISBN: 9780241992753
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $30.00
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About the author

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.
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Praise for Why Politics Fails

I think the book is beautifully written and engaging. Ben has the rare gift of writing like he talks, and even when he gets out of storytelling mode into "here's the facts" it's an engaging read. I also think book-readers are ready for a message that isn't telling us that we are marching steadily towards a better world. Nor does hopeless disaster - endless polarization, climate apocalypse - await humanity. The truth, as usual, is in the middle. Politics is hard. There are trade-offs. If we want to build a better society, let's put aside naive optimism and pessimism and get more sophisticated

Chris Blattman, author of Why We Fight

Salutary reading for the world we live in now

James A. Robinson, co-author of Why Nations Fail

Brilliant ... a must-read

Daron Acemoglu, co-author of Why Nations Fail

A must-read ... In an era of great challenges to the world, the urgency of what Ansell shows us, practical ways to overcoming political obstacles to collective decision making, is all the more timely

Victor Shih, UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy 

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