In this illuminating celebration of the political world, Bernard Crick asserts that politics, with
its compromises and power struggles, remains the only tested alternative to government by
coercion, making both freedom and order possible in heterogeneous societies. For Crick,
politics is messy and complex, and his book defends it against those who would identify it with (and reduce it to) ideology, democracy, nationalism, or technology.
This Fourth edition has been updated to include an assessment of the revolutions in 1989 in
Eastern Europe. It also examines current...