Participative and Representative Democracy: a Plea for "Anthropolitics"

This is a somewhat unusual article in that it is based on a long letter from Pierre Gonod to Hugues de Jouvenel about the concept of “the common good”, the links between foresight studies and politics, and what Pierre Gonod calls “anthropolitics”. The letter is the latest in a lively correspondence in which Pierre Gonod reacted to various editorials in Futuribles, after Hugues de Jouvenel had declined to publish a long article that he had offered to Futuribles on “An alternative approach to foresight and politics”, its style having been judged too abstruse. Pierre Gonod favours “complex thinking” (which he distinguishes from systems analysis), and has long been a keen advocate for it. This has included trying to explore ways in which it could give a fresh impetus to foresight studies by suggesting new types of representation, taking greater account of the time dimension, and thus contributing to the development of a new political “praxeology”.