John Keane considers the implications of Simon Tormey’s recent book, The end of representative politics, launched in Sydney on 15 May 2015.
‘ … rather than witnessing the end of representative politics, we’re now living in times faced by a double democratic challenge: the challenge of breathing life back into political parties as trusted representatives of the wishes and needs of citizens considered as equals, and the difficult, potentially complementary struggle to extend the principles of representation into every field of power where arbitrary rule currently mangles the lives of people and their environment.’