style="overflow: hidden; color: #000000; background-color: #ffffff; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; border: medium none;">Look around, or beyond the borders where you live. You’ll probably have noticed that disquiet and disaffection are spreading through the drought fields of democracy. Political parties and legislatures are not exactly in favour. Public disenchantment with politicians and official “politics” is rising everywhere, fed by corruption and power-grabbing, factional infighting and mischief-making populists. There are widening gaps between rich and poor, the powerful and the powerless. The rich are hyper-rich. Middle-class citizens fear for the future. A new precarious class of semi-employed or permanently unemployed people has meanwhile been born. And xenophobia and bigoted nationalism are on the rise.