Governing a crisis society

Abstract

The persistence of crises in our societies and, above all, the fact that overcoming them is linked to certain political transformations raises the ques tion not only of the nature of these crises and their corresponding transformations, but also of the capacity of democratic societies to carry them through. The perspective of political philosophy and sociological theory can help us to identify such situat ions and objectives, as well as the peculiar difficulties of our governments to successfully manage such complex crises. The rationale of this paper is to analyse the nature of these crises, to ask about the kinds of changes they seem to demand, to explain what ultimately makes such changes so difficult, and to propose a conceptual framework for understanding the kind of intervention in society that would be necessary.