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Despite the global expansion of democracy, a looming threat has appeared in the countries that claim to love it most: declining electoral turnout, diminishing faith in political institutions and the growing gap between the political class and those who elect them...Historian and commentator Paul Ginsborg goes back to first principles and examines anew a concept that we once fought for in this brilliant and bold new diagnosis of our political system.Political parties have lost swathes of members and effective power is ever more concentrated in the hands of their leaders. Behind these trends lie changing relationships between economics, the media and politics.Electoral spending has spiralled out of all control, with powerful economic interests exercising undue influence. The 'level playing field', on which democracy's contests have supposedly been fought, has become ever more sloping and uneven. In many 'democratic' countries media coverage, especially that of television, is heavily biased. Electors become viewers and active participation gives way to mass passivity. Can things change?By going back to the roots of democracy and examining the relationship between representative and participatory democracy, political historian Paul Ginsborg shows that that they can and must.

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