Professor David Runciman is a political theorist at the University of Cambridge where he is Head of the Department of Politics and International Studies (POLIS). He has worked as a columnist for The Guardian newspaper and written for many other publications.

He currently writes about politics for the London Review of Books. Professor Runciman’s latest book, Politics: Ideas in Profile, asks the big questions about politics: what is it, why we do we need it and where, in these turbulent times, is it heading?

His research interests include: late-nineteenth and twentieth century political thought;  theories of the state and of political representation; various aspects of contemporary political philosophy and contemporary politics.

He is the author of The Confidence Trap: A History of Democracy in Crisis from the First World War to the Present (Princeton University Press, 2013), Political Hypocrisy: The Mask of Power from Hobbes to Orwell and Beyond (Princeton University Press, 2008), Representation (with Monica Brito Vieira) (Polity Press, 2008), and The Politics of Good Intentions: History, Fear and Hyprocrisy in the New World Order (Princeton University Press, 2006).