Who decides? Who is the Sovereign? What is a good act? In quest of answers to these vitally important questions, Bertrand de Jouvenel examines successively the nature and history of authority, the political good, the sovereign, and liberty. His concern is with the prospects for individual liberty in democratic societies in which sovereignty purportedly resides in the whole people of the body politic. His objective is a definition and understanding of the canons of conduct for the public authority of a dynamic society. He writes for whoever would exercise the duties of a citizen.