Roberto Mangabeira Unger's Politics, described by Geoffrey Hawthorn as “the most powerful social theory of the second half of the twentieth century,” was originally published in three volumes by Cambridge University Press in 1987. This book is a selection of its key texts, collected together in a single volume.

Politics presents an explanatory theory of society and a programme for social reconstruction as a radical alternative to Marxism and social democracy. The explanatory part of the work rejects the search for a lawlike science of society and history, and emphasizes the haphazardness and replaceability of social arrangements. Unger shows how such an antideterministic approach can inspire surprising explanations of past and present institutions, with the result of broadening and refining our sense of the possible.

Unger then proposes measures to make democratic institutions more faithful to the essentially experimental nature of democracy. The consequence is to redefine the focus for ideological debate and institutional innovation throughout the world, in developed and developing countries alike.

With an introduction that locates Unger's work in the history of politics and social theory, and explores its major themes, this book provides a useful introduction to contemporary debates in social theory as well as to Unger's ideas.

Roberto Mangabeira Unger is Professor of Law at Harvard University. His previous books include The Critical Legal Studies Movement, False Necessity: Antinecessitarian Social Theory in the Service of Radical Democracy, What Should Legal Analysis Become?, and Democracy Realized: The Progressive Alternative (Verso).

Zhiyuan Cuî is a lecturer in social theory at MIT.