According to a 2023 survey, 42% of young people aged 18 to 35 believe that a military government is a good way to govern a country.
Political scientist Cristina Monge has presented her new book Against Discontent. Within its pages, she analyzes the discomforts that traverse our democracies and is an invitation to rebuild trust, dialogue, and a common future.
In this work, which has won the Paidós Award 2026, the political scientist addresses the main challenges of the 21st century: precariousness, digital loneliness, the ecological crisis, and the disaffection of citizens towards institutions and their representatives. “A disaffection, the author comments, that connects with the 15M, which sought to improve democracy, both Podemos and Ciudadanos.”
However, now those who capitalize on discontent and indignation, like Vox, question democratic values in the face of an uncertain future.
“The environmental crisis, the technological revolution (including AI), a geopolitical change of magnitudes that we are still unable to calculate, and when we see these future challenges, we suddenly realize that we do not trust anyone to manage it,” she states.
According to a 2023 survey, 42% of young people aged 18 to 35 believe that a military government is a good way to govern a country. What can we do to free ourselves from what Rubén Darío called a “terror future”?
A lucid essay on the discomforts that traverse our democracies and an urgent invitation to rebuild trust, dialogue, and a common future.
The social discomforts that have been accumulating for decades are crystallizing today into a deep discontent that calls into question the very foundations of democratic coexistence, trust in institutions, and the idea of the future. In this context, the question arises: what can we do?
In Against Discontent, Cristina Monge, sociologist, university professor, and one of the most influential analysts in the Spanish political landscape, offers a critical and, in the end, hopeful reading of this collective discomfort. With a clear tone and without renouncing analytical depth, she addresses the main challenges of the 21st century: precariousness, digital loneliness, the ecological crisis, and the disaffection of citizens towards institutions and their representatives. Through this journey, she outlines the profile of a tired, frightened society that is unable to imagine other paths.
Far from pessimism or nostalgia, this book advocates the need to recover public conversation, defend certain facts in the era of post-truth, and rebuild a new social contract based on cooperation, justice, and sustainability through alliances to create desirable futures. Against Discontent is a manifesto for a stronger democracy and a shared future that is still within our reach.
Number of pages: 256
Publisher: Ediciones Paidós
Binding: Paperback
ISBN: 9788449344954
Price: 18.90 euros