STATES OF SOLIDARITY
HOW TO BUILD A SOCIETY
Solidarity is essential for addressing the defining challenges of
our time. While many societies engage in debates about justice
and fair institutions, they have often failed to create the
conditions for social and planetary flourishing. A key reason is
the neglect of solidarity: the horizontal ties that bind people
together beyond kinship, love, or friendship. Without this
‘social glue’, societies struggle with declining trust, eroded
democratic legitimacy, and increasing social and political
fragmentation. The book explores the concept of solidarity and
its entanglement with justice, trust, and care. It then examines
three major societal challenges—climate change, the loss of
democratic control in economic governance, and the rise of
artificial intelligence and digital infrastructures—through the
lens of solidarity. Rather than offering merely new policy tools,
this perspective reshapes the questions we ask and opens up new
possibilities for action. Concluding with a vision for the ‘good
state’ in the twenty-first century, the book makes a compelling
case that solidarity is not a nostalgic ideal but a vital,
generative force for democratic resilience and social cohesion in
an age of uncertainty.
Barbara Prainsack is a professor of comparative
policy analysis at the University of Vienna, where she heads the
Contemporary Solidarity Studies research group and serves as
co-director of the Vienna Centre for Advanced Studies (ViCAS);
she is a Fellow of the British Royal Society of Arts, an elected
foreign member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and
Letters, an elected member of the Academia Europaea (AE), an
elected member of the German Academy of Science and Engineering
(acatec), and a full member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences
Donna Andrews is Senior Researcher for the
Global Health Solidarity Index Project at the EthicsLab,
Department of Medicine, University of Cape Town (UCT). She is a
political economist and holds an MA in Development Studies from
the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), Erasmus
University Rotterdam, and a PhD in Political Theory from UCT
Moderation:
Hendrik Wagenaar is Senior Academic Advisor,
International School for Government, King’s College London,
Adjunct Professor, Center for Deliberative Democracy and Global
Governance, The University of Canberra, Fellow, Center for the
Study of Contemporary Solidarity, University of Vienna.
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