A book promoting policies to make it easier to live the Good Life must do two things. Firstly, it must demonstrate that such policies are necessary; secondly, it must set out how such a policy programme is to be implemented. In other words, it has to show that the politics of sufficiency is feasible.
The new book by Uwe Schneidewind and Angelika Zahrnt titled "The Politics of Sufficiency - Making it easier to live the Good Life" deals with claims of feasibility, and with the objections to them. It demonstrates that a politics of the Good Life can be both justified and legitimated in modern free democratic societies - indeed, that it is an essential condition of such societies. The main section of the book sets out in detail how such a politics can be implemented, organised along four political dimensions. At the same time, this book can only represent a beginning, and that is its aim - a starting-point for a broad discussion over the coming years.
The book has been translated into English by Ray Cunningham and is available in printed version via Green Books. The authors will present and discuss their book at the Degrowth 2014 conference, 2 to 6 September in Leipzig.