Margaret Stout's book “Radically Democratic Response to Global Governance” starts with an account of a variety of crises faced by world and humanity in these days. Adopting the perspective of sustainable development, the first chapter identifies problems related with unrestrained economic growth and unequal distribution related therewith, environmental crisis that is inter alia associated with the view of nature largely influenced by preconceptions of the industrialized society as well as social crisis, which might be seen as a response to the governance models insufficiently implementing inclusive participatory and democratic practices. The crisis of governance is all the more urgent that even the people in democratic countries, not authoritarian regimes, call for more participation in decision-making and for more direct democracy. Social movements embracing these ideas are seen as a symptom of these critical situations and an incentive for the people in charge of the current governance structures to address the causes of the problems leading to the current state-of-affairs. This critical account should not be seen only as a grim and hopeless picture: a proper diagnosis and looking in the mirror is a precondition for improvement of the current situation. Margaret Stout addresses these issues in her book from a variety of different perspective, ranging – not exhaustively - from political economy to sociology.
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