Philosopher Marcel Gauchet, a major thinker on the topic of democracy, plumbs the depths of our collective structures and finds, behind neoliberalism, a long, slow process coming to an end: that of shedding religion.

The so-called "New World" was born of a great turning point in the 1970s that saw globalization deployed from on high and increasing individualism in society from below. Its acceptance was accompanied by a triumph of democratic ideas that in turn made the singular crisis all democracies in the Western world were sinking into highly mysterious indeed. How did democracies that were, in theory at least, consensual prove so dysfunctional in their governance as to provoke frustration in a great many of their citizens? That is the question this book seeks to answer.