Documenting the process by which government and controlling majorities have grown increasingly powerful and tyrannical, this book demonstrates how democracies have failed to limit the powers of government. Jouvenel traces this development all the way back to the days of royal absolutism, which established large administrative bureaucracies, and thus laid the foundation of the modern omnipotent state. Bernard de Jouvenel is the author of The Ethics of Redistribution, Sovereignty: An Inquiry into the Political Good and The Pure Theory of Politics.