Why Politics Fails: The Five Traps of the Modern World & How to Escape Them Paperback – 18 July 2023

Why do the revolving doors of power all the time leave us disappointed? In Why Politics Fails, award-winning Oxford professor Ben Ansell shows that it isn’t the politicians that are the problem, it’s that our collective goals result in five political ‘traps’.

Democracy- we all want a say in how we’re governed, but it’s unimaginable to have any true ‘will of the people’. Equality- we wish to be treated equally, but equal rights and equal outcomes undermine each other. Solidarity- we want a safety net when times are tough, but incessantly 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 wish to be richer the next day, but what makes us richer in the short run makes us poorer over the long haul.

You’ve probably noticed a pattern here, which is that our self-interest undermines our ability to deliver on our collective goals. And these traps enhance one another, so a polarized democracy can worsen inequality; a threadbare social safety net can worsen crime; runaway climate change will threaten global peace.

Drawing on examples from Ancient Greece through Brexit and the usage of 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 will be able to escape the political traps of our imperfect world. He shows that politics may not end, but that it doesn’t have to fail.