At the age of ten, Madeleine takes part in the Seattle protests of 1999, a defining moment that marks the end of the economic optimism of the 1990s and the rise of a form of globalization that leaves many behind. From that moment on, she becomes the ideal interlocutor for Goffredo Buccini, who retraces twenty-five years of growing fractures between citizens and their representatives, declining trust in elections, and democracies that increasingly appear stalled, while digitally empowered autocracies gain ground among the disillusioned.

What emerges is a sharp and wide-ranging portrait of a deep democratic crisis. From the “no global” protests in Seattle to the present day, Buccini, a leading columnist and special correspondent for Corriere della Sera, guides the reader through the long unraveling of democratic systems at the turn of the millennium, a crisis that has come to define the first quarter of the 21st century. The book ultimately asks whether democracies can renew themselves by finding new ways to give voice to those who feel excluded from political and economic participation.

Part narrative, part political analysis, this is the story of the slow erosion of democratic legitimacy a “novel” of democracy’s decline.

About the author and keynote speaker Goffredo Buccini

A graduate in Classical Studies from the Tasso Lyceum in Rome and Sapienza University, and an alumnus of the Milan School of Journalism, he has written for Il Mattino, La Notte, Il Giornale, and La Repubblica. As an editorialist and special correspondent for Corriere della Sera, his scoops and interviews documented the ‘Mani Pulite’ investigation, earning him the 1995 Journalist of the Year Award.