True Politics: Why We Must Sustain What May Never Need

What does a political community owe to people whose needs we may never share?In True Politics: Why We Must Sustain What We May Never Need, Ioannis Staikouras argues that politics begins where personal accounting ends: when citizens sustain conditions that allow other people to stand, speak, learn, worship, receive care, challenge power, and belong - even when they will never need those conditions themselves.Moving from accessible public space, education, healthcare, and freedom of conscience to due process, institutional resilience, and obligations to future generations, the book develops a rigorous account of the common world. It distinguishes political solidarity from transaction, charity, sameness, and compulsory unity.Inside, readers will discover: - why personal non-use does not erase a legitimate public claim;- how citizenship is diminished when the citizen is treated only as a customer;- why freedom is not merely private choice but a public achievement;- how institutions can sustain solidarity without demanding sameness;- what a state worth sustaining must preserve - and which limits it must respect.This is not a partisan manifesto or a defense of one ideology. It is a demanding, humane argument for a political world large enough to include the defeated, the unfamiliar, the numerically small, the distant, and the not-yet-born.True politics begins when the common world exceeds the self.