What happens to democracy and our societies when the future seems no longer open? We are told that today's problems can be solved in tomorrow's elections. But the biggest issues facing the modern world - from climate collapse and pandemics to recession and world war - each seem to bring us to the edge of the irreversible.

In this engaging, eye-opening history of the future, Jonathan White reveals the history of an idea and delves into how politics has long been directed by shifting visions of the future, from the birth of ideologies in the nineteenth century to Cold War secrecy and the excesses of the neoliberal age.

As an inescapable sense of disaster defines our politics, he argues that a political commitment to the long-term may be the best way to safeguard democracy. 

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Prof Jonathan White is Professor of Politics at the London School of Economics. His research interests lie in the fields of political sociology and political theory, with a focus on political engagement, partisanship, ideology, ideas of the future, the politics of emergency, the relation between social and political ties. He has held visiting positions at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, Harvard, Stanford, the Humboldt University, Hertie School of Governance, Sciences Po in Paris, and the Australian National University. He has also written for The Guardian, New Statesman, OpenDemocracy and Boston Review. White was awarded the 2017 British Academy Brian Barry Prize for Excellence in Political Science.

GOOD READS

In The Long Run: The Fututre as a political idea (2024); Politics of Last Resort: Governing by Emergency in the European Union (2019); The Meaning of Partisanship (with Lea Ypi, 2016); Political Allegiance after European Integration (2011).