Topics in this collection of essays range from a utopian-style foray into possible structures for democratic governance at the global level to a Hobbesian analysis of the ongoing challenges that democratic theory faces; from an assertion of the importance of social and economic equality to a recognition of the limits of solidarity in the real world of pluralistic and divided societies in which we live; from identification with the cosmopolitan and the international to a defence of the national and the local; from a predilection for direct democracy and the lost community of republican theory, past and present, to a recognition of the fairly circumscribed ways in which these can ultimately be expressed in our day. In spite of the challenges facing global democracy, Resnick looks to the next millennium with renewed hope for the democratic project.

Philip Resnick began writing poetry in Montreal, stopping for a time when he embarked on an academic career at the University of British Columbia. His marriage to Andromache (Mahie), who was Greek, resulted in numerous stays in Thessaly, in the city of Volos, and in a village on adjacent Mount Pelion. These stays rekindled his poetic inspiration and resulted in the publication of a number of collections in the late 1970s and 1980s. Philip has continued to write ever since and has published numerous poems in magazines and journals, as well as a 2015 collection Footsteps of the Past and 2018 collection Passageways. As a political scientist at the University of British Columbia for over forty years until his retirement in 2013, Philip has published widely on political topics. He makes his home in Vancouver, British Columbia.

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"Resnick has set himself the ambitious task of elucidating some of the fundamental issues surrounding the practice of democracy at the end of the twentieth century, and to do so within a global context. He asks large questions that, given the breadth of the subjects touched upon and their highly speculative nature, cannot be answered fully. However, asking such large questions is inherently useful, and the essays are interesting, inventive, and thought provoking." Reg Whitaker, Department of Political Science, York University "Resnick articulates and defends some unique and provocative theses that will surely spark useful debate." Frank Cunningham, Department of Philosophy, University of Toronto