Has liberal democracy failed us? In recent years we’ve come to think of politics as the preserve of the technocrat – professional, pragmatic, devoid of big ideas or meaningful ideological framework. Perhaps that’s why turnout at UK elections continues to plummet. But our assumptions of the benevolence of democratic liberalism are under attack from all angles, and from some unlikely sources. This issue of IAI News sees a series of concerted attempts – by journalists, authors, politicians, even a biologist – to bring philosophy back into mainstream politics in order to rescue the democratic project.

One of today's most outspoken voices is Guardian columnist and author Owen Jones. Jones blames the failure of liberal democracy on today's political elites. “Our social order is totally bankrupt,” he says. What’s missing, he says, is hope. In The Burning Flame of Hope, Jones urges "conviction, determination and courage” in order to achieve tangible political change.

Because change, our contributors agree, is needed. The old oppositions have outlived their meaning. The answer lies in the return of philosophy. For Phillip Blond, a leading proponent of Red Toryism and the brains behind David Cameron’s Big Society project, this means beginning with Plato, and the critical question: “What is the good?” Blond argues that “the legacy of neoliberal economics is the crash". It’s time, he says, to move beyond the statism of the left and the individualism of the right. In The Real Problem with Liberalism, Blond outlines his radical vision for a new politics of “social conservation”.