Never has democracy been so ardently desired by those who don’t enjoy it. Rarely has it disappointed so bitterly those who do. How can it be reinvigorated in an interdependent world tasked with the implementation of a vast mutation addressing the institution of human communities, the adoption of a shared ethics of responsibility, the invention of new forms of society management and the transition from our current production/consumption model to sustainable societies? Such a long-term mutation, stretching from specific territories to the planet, presumes the emergence of new elites, a new time and space scale, and a new ability to handle complex matters together.

For this a solid democracy is needed, one willing to bank on its citizens’ intelligence and to give them the means to invent their future together. Such a conception is what Pierre Calame sets out to present in this book. Drawing from his long practice of statesmanship as a high ranking civil servant and from the numerous international exchanges he has kept up over the past three decades, and positing that politics is an ethos and a praxis, he elaborates, with supporting examples, on how to restore the stateliness of politics and the meaning of democracy.