New Books in Political Science

From a Distinguished International Relations Scholar comes The Unfinished Quest: India's Search for Major Power Status from Nehru to Modi (Oxford UP, 2024), an important book that looks at India's search for major power status. It is an unfinished quest with a long and winding road ahead. This is not to say that India's ambitions in world politics for greater peer recognition and institutional position is unattainable; but its current political class, bureaucratic elites, and intelligentsia must reorient India's statecraft. In this accessible and incisive book Unfinished Quest: India's Search for Major Power Status, T.V. Paul charts India's cumbersome path toward higher regional and global status, covering both the successes and failures it has experienced since the modern nation's founding in 1947. Paul focuses on the key motivations driving Indian leaders to enhance India's global status and power, but also on the many constraints that have hindered its progress. Paul's analysis of India's quest for status also sheds important light on the current geostrategic situation and serves as a new framework for understanding the China-India rivalry, as well as India's relative position in the broader Indo-Pacific theater. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Political Scientist Steve Knott has a new book that focuses on conspiracy theories within the American presidency and often promulgated by the president himself. This is not, per se, a book about conspiracy theories in general, but about the narratives that presidents have used—that constitutes a kind of conspiracy thinking—to engage voters and push for particular policy ideas and outcomes. Conspirator in Chief: The Long Tradition of Conspiracy Theories in the American Presidency (UP Kansas, 2025) spans the entire history of the United States, paying close attention to presidents Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Andrew Johnson, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, and finally Donald Trump. These particular presidents, both during their administrations and after, made use of conspiracies and/or demagogic rhetoric to encourage their supporters and to appeal to public fears. As Knott notes, Alexander Hamilton warns against this in both Federalist #1 and Federalist #85, wrapping the discussion of the new Constitution in concerns with regard to demagoguery. So many of the conspiracies that are pushed by presidents have at their base racism and an effort to fan the flames of racial fear and resentment. Jefferson, Jackson, Johnson, and Wilson all made use of racism as a part of their conspiracies. Conspirator in Chief: The Long Tradition of Conspiracy Theories in the American Presidency also mines the deep vein of conspiracy theories around moneyed and elite interests, since many presidents cast these interests as predatory and “out to get” the average citizen. This is another constant approach among the presidents from the early days of the republic through to our contemporary “conspirator in chief” Donald Trump. Part of the way that presidents use these kinds of conspiracies is to set up a dichotomy of those who are with the president and those who are against the president, and this latter group is, inevitably, also opposed to the country as a whole and the way of life in the United States. Knott explains that this was the kind of rhetoric that both FDR and Truman used in their implementation of this kind of conspiratorial rhetoric. This also leans on national security as a point of contention, and that those in opposition to the president or the president’s policies are also potential threats to the republic. This is another dimension that Trump builds on in his use of this kind of rhetoric and division. In the final part of Conspirator in Chief, Knott sketches out those presidents who go far in standing against this kind of language and these kinds of attacks. Included in this grouping are John Quincy Adams, Abraham Lincoln, William Howard Taft, and John F. Kennedy, among others. These individuals leaned into reason more than rumormongering, examining their own biases, and also pointing to the conspiracies that others were advocating. While we learn a great deal about demagogic presidents who stirred up conspiracies based in racism, fear, antisemitism, and classism, we also learn about those who operated differently, who tried to protect the country from such divisive rhetoric. Lilly J. Goren is a professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-host of the New Books in Political Science channel at the New Books Network. She is co-editor of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Volume I: The Infinity Saga (University Press of Kansas, 2022), and of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Volume II: Into the Multiverse (University Press of Kansas, 2025) as well as co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012). She can be reached @gorenlj.bsky.social Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

The field of Strategic Studies, which studies the use and threat of force for political purposes, has seen the repeated rise of concepts to dominate discourses and research agendas, only to eventually fall to the margins again. What explains this cyclical pattern? What are the consequences for our understanding of war?Reconceptualizing War: The Rise and Fall of Fashionable Concepts in Strategic Studies (Oxford UP, 2026) by Dr. Chiara Libiseller examines these questions by likening the coming and going of theories to fashions. While in vogue, fashionable concepts are used widely, becoming broader and vaguer until essentially stripped of meaning. At the same time, they are bestowed with authority and power that allows them to withstand criticism and marginalizes alternative perspectives. These characteristics severely affect the quality, depth, and diversity of research by narrowing and siloing the field of inquiry.Tracing three concepts—revolution in military affairs, counterinsurgency, and hybrid warfare—through their fashion lifecycle, Dr. Libiseller demonstrates how fashionability affects the concepts themselves, related research, and the field more generally. Embedded within a discussion of the history and dynamics of Strategic Studies, the book calls for more reflexivity in the study of war and strategy. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

A provocative new history of America's constitution and an urgent call to action for a nation confronted by challenges its founders could never have imagined The American Revolution occurred at a time when Britain's constitutional order failed to adapt to the extraordinary growth of its colonies. The framers designed an American constitution to succeed where Britain's had faltered, planning for continuous population and territorial expansion that would eventually cross the continent. Yet by the end of the nineteenth century, it was already ill-suited for an increasingly urban, industrialized society, and the transformations of the twentieth century have pushed it to a breaking point. The Making and Breaking of the American Constitution: A Thousand-Year History (Princeton UP, 2026) charts the history and aims of the American constitution from its origins in an agrarian past to the grave crisis we face today. Mark Peterson traces the American constitutional tradition to the control of land in medieval England, showing how the founders incorporated the aspirations of Magna Carta with the administrative principles of the Domesday Book, a meticulous survey and valuation of landed property commissioned by William the Conqueror. This framework encouraged the growth of democratic self-government in a young nation. It also institutionalized the colonization of territory and the expulsion of Indigenous peoples, establishing a legal blueprint for transforming tribal lands into revenue-yielding real estate for settlers. Peterson's riveting narrative paints an arresting picture of a dynamic republic whose frame of government has changed enormously to meet the challenges of the modern age but whose written constitution has changed very little. Marking the 250th anniversary of American independence, The Making and Breaking of the American Constitution reveals how this widening disconnect threatens the very existence of our democracy. It calls for a constitution that sustains the ideals developed over the past thousand years while meeting the challenges of the future. Mark Peterson is the Edmund S. Morgan Professor of History at Yale University. He is the author of The City-State of Boston: The Rise and Fall of an Atlantic Power, 1630–1865 (Princeton) and The Price of Redemption: The Spiritual Economy of Puritan New England. Mark Peterson traces the American constitutional tradition to the control of land in medieval England, showing how the founders incorporated the aspirations of Magna Carta with the administrative principles of the Domesday Book, a meticulous survey and valuation of landed property commissioned by William the Conqueror. This framework encouraged the growth of democratic self-government in a young nation. It also institutionalized the colonization of territory and the expulsion of Indigenous peoples, establishing a legal blueprint for transforming tribal lands into revenue-yielding real estate for settlers. Peterson’s riveting narrative paints an arresting picture of a dynamic republic whose frame of government has changed enormously to meet the challenges of the modern age but whose written constitution has changed very little. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

“Parental rights” is a rallying cry for today’s American conservatives, signaling opposition to mandatory vaccination and “woke” public school curricula. In Every Man's Home a Castle: Parental Rights and the Makings of Modern Conservatism (Princeton UP, 2026), Dr. Julia Bowes traces the origins of the modern parental rights movement to the nineteenth century, when the introduction of compulsory schooling laws, child labor regulations, and vaccine requirements provoked a resistance rooted in the presumed right of white men to govern their homes. A wide-ranging coalition—including Irish Catholic immigrants in Illinois, Mormon enclaves in Utah, and Protestant clergy in Virginia—believed that the state had usurped the “natural rights” of parents and “invaded the home.”Dr. Bowes shows how, by the turn of the century, those disparate voices had coalesced into national conservative movements. Anti-vaccinationists, alternative medical practitioners, and parents who opposed compulsory school medical exams joined forces to form the National League for Medical Freedom. Deciding a case brought by conservative Catholic lawyers, the Supreme Court declared parental rights a “fundamental liberty” protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. And the Sentinels of the Republic, a conservative citizen’s lobby, mobilized a campaign to defeat the proposed federal Child Labor Amendment, bringing together pro-family and free-market politics with far-reaching consequences.Exploring the emergence of parental rights as an antistatist ideology through legal cases, legislative debates, and political movements, Dr. Bowes argues that the expansion of state power over children provoked such fierce opposition because the paternal rights of white men—considered the “rights-bearing” individuals of American democracy—were widely viewed as the mark and measure of their independence. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Today’s political debates are fiercely polarized. But looking beyond the headlines, The Trigger Points: Inequality and Political Polarization in Contemporary Society (Policy Press, 2026) shows that ordinary citizens hold much more nuanced, less divided views. Drawing on rich survey data and group discussions, this work maps four major areas of conflict: migration, climate change, diversity, and economic justice. Across these conflicts, most citizens take positions that are middle-of-the-road, contradictory, or undecided. It is only certain ‘trigger points' – like gendered pronouns or refugee admissions – that predictably ignite tensions and deep disagreement. Political entrepreneurs know this and weaponize trigger points for their agenda. Yet the real key to contemporary conflicts, the book argues, lies in social inequality. This is a vital work that maps today’s political landscape without sensationalism, offering a fresh lens on public debate. This interview was conducted by Dr. Hannah Pool, a senior researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Studies of Societies. Her research focuses on human mobilities and her new book has been published in 2025 by Oxford University Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

J. Michael Cole is a Taipei-based security analyst and writer who has spent over two decades documenting Taiwan’s political and security landscape. A former analyst with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), he is a Research Fellow and Executive Editor with the Prospect Foundation in Taiwan, and advises various private and governmental actors. He is also a Senior Non-Resident Fellow with the Global Taiwan Institute in Washington, D.C., the Macdonald-Laurier Institute in Ottawa, and the University of Nottingham’s Taiwan Hub. In this episode of the New Books Network, we chat with Cole about his latest book, The Taiwan Tinderbox: The Island-Nation at the Centre of the New Cold War (Polity, 2025). Starting with the Sunflower Student Movement and rise of Xi Jinping, the book explores why the Taiwan Strait has become such a “tinderbox”, and surveys various tactics that the People’s Republic of China has used to destabilize Taiwan. With the Ukraine War’s shadow looming, Cole also examines the prospects of conflict between Taiwan and China, and discusses various means through which Taiwan and its liberal democratic allies can build resilience and interconnection. Anthony Kao is a writer who intersects international affairs and cultural criticism. He founded/edits Cinema Escapist—a publication exploring the sociopolitical context behind global film and television—and also writes for outlets like The Guardian, Al Jazeera, The Diplomat, and Eater. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Coming in the thick of the second Trump term, What Does the American Presidency Mean? The Need for Interpretation in Presidency Studies is a timely and provocative new title for the Routledge Series on Interpretive Methods. In it, Richard Holtzman sets an agenda for interpretivist presidency research. Using Tulis’s The Rhetorical Presidency as a bridge between presidency studies and interpretive political science, the book succinctly outlines how by interpreting presidential words and symbols our understanding of the presidency is enriched, and causal-inferential studies of presidential behaviour, complemented. Though the book directly addresses researchers of the American presidency, as we discuss in this episode of New Books in Interpretive Political and Social Science, it holds lessons for researchers of executive power everywhere.  Presidency studies your thing? Other episodes on the New Books Network that might interest you include Coe and Scacco on The Ubiquitous Presidency, and Hennessey and Wittes talking about their Unmaking the Presidency. Looking for something to read? To start the day Rich suggests Thich Nhat Han’s Peace is Every Step, and perhaps to conclude it, Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut.  This interview summary was not synthesised by a machine. Unlike the makers and owners of those machines, the author accepts responsibility for its contents. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

While nationalism is a term that is often associated with instability, violence, extremism, terrorism, wars and even genocide, in fact most forms of nationalism are nonviolent.  Beyond politics, it is a set of discourses and practices that shape economic, social, legal, and cultural life all over the globe.  Siniša Malešević's Nationalism as a Way of Life: The Rise and Transformation of Modern Subjectivities (Cambridge University Press, 2025) explores the global rise and transformation of nationalism and analyses the organisational, ideological, and micro-interactional mechanisms that have made it the dominant way of life in the twenty-first century.  In a series of case studies across time and space, the book zooms in on three key forms of lived experience: how nationalism operates as a multi-faceted meta-ideology, how national categories have become organisationally embedded in everyday practices and why nationalism has become the dominant form of modern subjectivity.  The book is aimed at readers interested in understanding how nation-states and nationalisms have attained such influence in contemporary world. Siniša Malešević is Professor of Comparative Historical Sociology at the University College, Dublin, and Senior Fellow at CNAM, Paris. He is the author of the award winning books Grounded Nationalisms (Cambridge, 2019) and Why Humans Fight (Cambridge, 2022). His work has been translated into fourteen languages.Stephen Satkiewicz is an independent scholar with research areas spanning Civilizational Sciences, Social Complexity, Big History, Historical Sociology, Military History, War Studies, International Relations, Geopolitics, and Russian and East European history. He is currently the Book Review Editor for Comparative Civilizations Review. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Contentious Citizenship: Salvadoran Activism and Belonging Across Borders (U Arizona Press, 2026) reshapes how we understand belonging, identity, and political participation in the context of migration. Drawing on decades of Salvadoran activism from the 1980s solidarity movement to the post–civil war era, Arely M. Zimmerman offers a powerful ethnographic account of how migrants challenge exclusionary state practices and redefine citizenship on their own terms using transnational networks and revolutionary politics that transcend borders.Drawing on nearly fifty interviews with activists who fled El Salvador, Zimmerman traces how political refugees carried with them strategies of resistance and community organizing that shaped social justice movements in the United States. The book addresses the political turmoil and grassroots mobilizations in El Salvador, the sanctuary movement of the 1980s, contemporary activism, and the impact of women’s strategies and forms of resistance.Essential reading for scholars and students of migration, Central American studies, and political movements, Contentious Citizenship is a bold intervention into contemporary debates on identity, legality, and resistance. Zimmerman’s work honors the ingenuity and resilience of Salvadoran activists and invites readers to consider what it means to belong. This interview was conducted by Mary Reynolds, publicity manager for the University of Arizona Press. Her book, The Quake That Drained the Desert (forthcoming in 2026) investigates the 1887 borderlands earthquake that changed surface water and groundwater in Arizona and Sonora, Mexico. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

By exploring the dynamic relationships between politics, policymaking, and policy over time, Climate Politics: Can't Live with It, Can't Mitigate without It (Cambridge UP, 2026) aims to explain why climate change mitigation is so political, and why politics is also indispensable in enacting real change. It argues that politics is poorly understood and often sidelined in research and policy circles, which is an omission that must be rectified, because the policies that we rely on to drive down greenhouse gas emissions are deeply inter-connected with political and social contexts. Incorporating insights from political economy, socio-technical transitions, and public policy, this book provides a framework for understanding the role of specific ideas, interests, and institutions in shaping and driving sustainable change. The chapters present examples at global, national, and local scales, spanning from the 1990s to 2020s. This volume will prove valuable for graduate students, researchers, and policymakers interested in the politics and policy of climate change. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Miranda Yaver’s new book, Coverage Denied: How Health Insurers Drive Inequality in the United States (Cambridge UP, 2026), has lots of examples and incidents that will seem quite familiar to anyone who has dealt with health insurance coverage in the United States. In a sense, this book speaks to everyone because we have all been in situations like the ones that Yaver hears about from her interviewees. We know what it is like to have a test or a scan or a prescription ordered by a medical professional for us only to have an insurance company tell us that we cannot have that test or scan or medicine. Yaver dives into this quagmire and unearths the constellations of causes and reasons why this is now the essential operating process for much of American health insurance. By unpacking these causes and reasons, Coverage Denied clarifies so many of our experiences and helps us to think about the myriad ways in which health insurers and health insurance contribute to inequality in the United States, across a range of dimensions including race, socio-economic position, gender, sexuality, ability, and more. Part of what Yaver’s research finds is that very few individuals appeal coverage denials with their insurance companies. The question becomes one of who is denied coverage or tests or prescriptions, and who is going to try to access the means for getting those denials reversed. This is part of the administrative burden that is not equally distributed, given different economic, disability, employment, and family situations. Thus, the appeals process is part of the driver of inequality in terms of healthcare and healthcare coverage. The findings also note that women are more likely to be denied coverage than are men, in part because women often make more use of healthcare than do men. But this inequity translates across minoritized groups, including those who are disabled and sick, of lower economic status, and/or are Black or Hispanic. Thus, the access to medical care is distributed unequally across a number of different vectors. The denial of coverage, thus the denial of care, also leaves the medical professionals in a quandary as well, since they are unsure of what to prescribe and what is likely to actually happen for a patient. Thus, those trying to prescribe different kinds of care, be it tests or prescriptions or interventions, have little certainty that their patients will receive what the prescribing individual intends for them. While the initial reason behind coverage assessments and the requirement for prior authorization was cost containment, the results, at this point, are a system that often does not work for those who need medical assistance and for the medical professionals working with their patients. Coverage Denied: How Health Insurers Drive Inequality in the United States is a patient-centered book in that it focuses on the experiences of patients as they try to work their way through this distorted and obtuse system, but it also brings in the perspective of medical providers because they are often equally lost in terms of knowing what kind of care their patients can and do receive. This book is as must read for anyone who is interested in the way healthcare and health insurance operate in the United States, and why these issues, policies, and processes are often so confusing and confounding. Coverage Denied can be purchased at The White Whale Bookstore in Pittsburgh, PA. Lilly J. Goren is a professor of political science at Carroll University. She is co-host of New Books in Political Science. She is co-editor of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Volume I: The Infinity Saga and of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Volume II: Into the Multiverse as well as co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics. She can be reached @gorenlj.bsky.social Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

This week on Democracy Dialogues, host Esam Boraey speaks with Shandana Khan Mohmand and Marjoke Oosterom, democracy experts at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), University of Sussex, to unpack the takeaways of the newly released Democracy Report “Where’s the Dēmos in Democracy? Building Democratic Futures and Resisting Autocracy.” At a moment when autocracies outnumber democracies for the first time in twenty years, this report argues that the democratic crisis is not simply an institutional one, it is a crisis of exclusion. For too long, efforts to build democracy have focused on formal institutions like legislatures, courts, and electoral commissions, while neglecting the people those institutions are supposed to serve. The report puts forward eight building blocks for recentering citizens in democratic life, from building active citizenship and supporting informal mobilization, to reclaiming digital agency and strengthening accountability mechanisms. Drawing on decades of research across the Global South, from Pakistan and Zimbabwe to Uganda, Brazil, and beyond, Shandana and Marjoke bring the report's findings to life with vivid examples of how ordinary people fight back against backsliding, reclaim civic space, and keep democratic values alive even under authoritarian pressure. The conversation also addresses the role of inequality in driving democratic decline, the double-edged nature of digital technology, the power of youth movements, and what the dismantling of USAID means for global democracy support. Transcript here and the report is here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

This episode features S. Karthikeyan and S. Subbulakshmi, the Convenor and Secretary of the Ambedkar King Study Circle, an anti-caste organization based in Silicon Valley. Our conversation began with a discussion of the choice of B. R. Ambedkar and Martin Luther King Jr. as the titular heads of the organization, then moved on to a conversation about its membership-based structure, the anti-caste struggles in which the AKSC has participated, and the significance of California in general, and the Silicon Valley in particular, as an epicenter of caste consolidation and anti-caste mobilization. Guests: S. Karthikeyan is an IT professional based in Silicon Valley and regular contributor to public outlets such as The Wire. S. Subbulakshmi is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Stanford Centre on Longevity. Mentioned in the episode: B. R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste Martin Luther King Jr., “Where Do We Go from Here?” Savera is a multiracial, interfaith, anticaste coalition of organizations and activists. S. Karthikeyan, “The Hindu Supremacist Disinformation Campaign Against the Caste Discrimination Litigation in US” S. Karthikeyan, “How Protections Against Caste Discrimination Are Being Opposed in the US” S. Karthikeyan, “Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing” Ajantha Subramanian, The Caste of Merit Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

This week on Democracy Dialogues, host Maya Tudor speaks with two democracy experts at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Freedom House to understand the headlines from Freedom House’s 2026 Report, entitled the growing shadow of autocratization. We discuss the drivers behind the 20th consecutive year of global democratic decline and compare the similarities and differences between Freedom House and Varieties of Democracy reports. We conclude by anticipating what lies ahead, what our experts are looking to understand, and what everyday citizens can do to strengthen democracy. Links: Freedom in the World 2026 25 Years of Autocratization Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Why and how did Labour win the 2024 election? In The British General Election of 2024 Robert Ford, a Professor of Politics at the University of Manchester, Tim Bale, Professor of Politics at Queen Mary, University of London, Will Jennings, Professor of Politics at the University of Southampton, and Paula Surridge, Professor of Politics at the University of Bristol present a detailed analysis of the context, campaign and election result. Part of a long running series of books that offer definitive accounts of British elections, the book uses a range of methods, including examining of social, print and televisual media, fieldwork with individuals from the key political parties, and deep psephological analysis to both describe and explain the 2024 result. As accessible and engaging as it as academically rigorous, the book is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand contemporary politics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Noo Saro-Wiwa is an author and journalist. Born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, and raised in England, she attended King's College London and Columbia University in New York.​ Her first book, Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria (Granta), was published to critical acclaim in 2012. It was selected as BBC Radio 4’s Book of the Week in 2012; named The Sunday Times Travel Book of the Year, 2012; shortlisted for the Author’s Club Dolman Travel Book of the Year in 2013; nominated by The Financial Times as one of the best travel books of 2012. Looking for Transwonderland has been translated into French and Italian, and was awarded the Albatros Travel Literature Prize in Italy in 2016. Noo's second book, Black Ghosts (Canongate, 2023) explores the African community in China and was named Edward Stanford Travel Book of the Year in 2025. Her latest publication, The Burning Ground: Oil and Militancy in Nigeria (Columbia Global Reports) examines the social and environmental effects of the insurgency that arose in the oil-rich Niger Delta after the death of her father, the environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa. In the report, Noo highlights the undervalued role of women and meets individuals who are working towards sustainable development. It will be published in the US on 14th April 2026, and in the UK on 28th May 2026. Noo has also contributed to the following anthologies: Go Girl 2: The Black Woman’s Book of Travel and Adventure (2024); An Unreliable Guide to London (Influx Press, 2016); A Place of Refuge (Unbound, 2016), an anthology of writing on asylum seekers; and La Felicità Degli Uomini Semplici, an Italian-language anthology based around football. ​​ Noo is a staff writer for Condé Nast Traveller magazine, and she has contributed book reviews, travel, opinion and analysis articles for various publications including The Guardian newspaper, The Financial Times, The Times Literary Supplement, City AM, and Chatham House. She lives in London and supports Liverpool FC. Ayisha Osori is a lawyer and Director at Open Society Foundations Ideas Workshop. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Former Brazilian president Bolsonaro was found to have attempted a coup after losing the 2022 presidential elections, and he was convicted to 27 years in prison. Such a conviction is unusual both for Brazil and in global comparison and speaks to the difficult but crucial role the judiciary can play when an elected leader tries to concentrate power and exceed constitutional constraints. In this second PPP episode about Brazil (you can listen to the first one, on the role of the military, here), host Licia Cianetti talks to Luciano Da Ros and Manoel Gehrke about the role the courts played in Bolsonaro’s downfall, based on their recent article “How to Bring Authoritarians to Justice” published in the January 2026 issue of the Journal of Democracy. Transcript here Guests: Luciano Da Ros is Associate Professor of political science at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil. His research explores the links between democracy, judicial politics, corruption and anticorruption, particularly in Latin America, and he is the co-author of the book Brazilian Politics on Trial: Corruption and Reform under Democracy (Lynne Rienner, 2022). Manoel Gehrke is a Research Fellow at the University of Pisa, Italy, and former Research Fellow at CEDAR. He works on political accountability, contemporary threats to democracy, judicial politics, and the political economy of environmental degradation. He has published widely on the causes and consequences of prosecuting and convicting former heads of government. Presenter: Licia Cianetti is Associate Professor at the University of Birmingham and Founding Deputy Director of CEDAR. The People, Power, Politics podcast brings you the latest insights into the factors that are shaping and re-shaping our political world. It is brought to you by the Centre for Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation (CEDAR) based at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. Follow us on LikedIn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Electric Life: Utility Regulation and the Fight for Energy Democracy (MIT Press, 2026) by Dr. Nikki Luke traces the intertwined history of Atlanta’s racialized uneven development and growing electricity use to show how electricity infrastructure shapes everyday life. Nikki Luke looks at how quotidian relationships with the electric utility catalyze intersectional organizing for energy democracy. She also investigates the legal and material construction of the investor-owned utility as a regulated monopoly and the state public service commission that regulates it.Contemporary organizing for energy democracy questions how the utility and the systems that govern it need to change to ensure energy affordability, provide remedy and reparation for enduring environmental and energy injustice, and build a just and equitable energy transition from fossil fuels. Bridging urban, environmental, and labor studies, the author demonstrates how these demands to change the utility emerge from the tradition of civil rights, labor, and environmental organizing for fair treatment from the utility, affordable energy, protection from pollution, and good jobs. The book is available Open Access. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Yoga has offered the Indian state unprecedented opportunities for global, media-savvy political performance. Under Modi, it has promoted yoga tourism and staged mass yoga sessions, and Indian officials have proposed yoga as a national solution to a range of social problems, from reducing rape to curing cancer. But as yoga has gone global, its cultural meanings have spiraled far and wide. In Flexible India: Yoga's Cultural and Political Tensions (Columbia University Press, 2024), Dr. Shameem Black travels into unexpected realms of popular culture in English from India, its diaspora, and the West to explore and critique yoga as an exercise in cultural power. Drawing on her own experience and her readings of political spectacles, yoga murder mysteries, court cases, art installations, and digital media, Dr. Black shows how yoga’s imaginative power supports diverse political and cultural ends. Although many cultural practices in today’s India exemplify “culture wars” between liberal and conservative agendas, Flexible India argues that visions of yoga offer a “culture peace” that conceals, without resolving, such tensions. This flexibility allows states, corporations, and individuals to think of themselves as welcoming and tolerant while still, in many cases, supporting practices that make minority populations increasingly vulnerable. However, as Dr. Black shows, yoga can also be imagined in ways that offer new tools for critiquing hierarchical structures of power and race, Hindu nationalism, cultural appropriation, and self-help capitalism. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

In this episode of International Horizons, RBI Acting Director Eli Karetny interviews Jacob Siegel, writer, Army veteran, and author of The Information State. Siegel traces how military information operations, post‑9/11 surveillance programs, and Silicon Valley’s rise converged to create a new public‑private regime of control over information, attention, and consent. He discusses the intellectual roots of technocratic governance from Francis Bacon and Leibniz through progressivism, World War I propaganda, and cybernetics, and explains how the “information state” differs from classical authoritarianism. Finally, Siegel reflects on Trumpism, the tech counter‑elite around figures like Elon Musk, and how AI may usher in a more “Pharaonic” and quasi‑spiritual form of politics beyond traditional expert‑driven technocracy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

In this sixth episode of Season 5, I interview Mr. Chris Griswold. An alum of Wheaton College and Princeton Theological Seminary, he was formerly a senior advisor to then Senator Marco Rubio, and is currently the Policy Director for American Compass—a leading center-right public policy think-tank. Recently, he contributed to the book, The New Conservatives (2025), an anthology edited by his colleague, Oren Cass, that re-articulates a conservative economic vision for the country. Drawing on it, we discuss the crisis of America’s political economy, from questions surrounding current AI, automation, and the end of free trade; political instability and populism; how economic policy can best serve American workers and families; and what makes us hopeful for the country’s future during its 250th anniversary. Hosted by Ryan Shinkel, Madison’s Notes is the podcast of Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. The transcript for this interview is available on our new Substack page, “Madison’s Footnotes.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Following the collapse of the Russian Empire, the small nation of Georgia established its independence in May 1918. Its leaders surprised the world by creating the first social democratic state. Based on a combination of parliamentarianism and direct democracy, it was a representative government of the peasants and workers themselves, with ballots in their hands. The First Social Democracy: The Democratic Republic of Georgia, 1918–1921 (Harvard University Press, 2026) is the definitive history of a government that should inspire social democrats today. Professor Stephen F. Jones chronicles how the founders of the new state navigated myriad challenges, including territorial threats from abroad, internal ethnic conflicts, and geopolitical rivalries between the imperial Ottomans, the British, and the Germans. In the midst of these existential challenges, Georgia’s social democrats set about writing a constitution to put the country on a distinctive path of genuine self-government—protecting democratic rights, promoting political pluralism, and championing equality. Professor Jones brings to life the passionate debates that shaped Georgia’s democracy during a moment of acute global instability. The Democratic Republic of Georgia was strangled in its crib. Just four days after the constitution was ratified, the capital fell to the Red Army. Under Soviet rule, the republic was lost to history. Soviet scholars were forbidden to research this Georgian story, and Western scholars had little interest in a small and peripheral state that was independent for only three years. Recovering a forgotten experiment in democratic citizenship and statecraft, Dr. Jones reminds us of those audacious times when Georgians created and defended political freedom against the rise of Soviet communism. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

The global refugee regime has shifted under our feet. Over the last forty years, international asylum practices have expanded to include the queer and trans displaced. At least thirty-seven countries now recognize LGBTIQ refugees on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, with some states providing specialized support. Yet amid this expansion, backlash has intensified against refugee protection as well as the hard-earned rights of LGBTIQ people. In this disquieting context, the protection of LGBTIQ refugees remains partial and exclusionary. The Way Out: Justice in the Queer Search for Refuge (University of California Press, 2026) examines the complexities of queer and trans displacement around the world. Centering personal narratives of LGBTIQ refugees, the book exposes the shortcomings of an international protection regime that is unable to address the harms that drive displacement. Rebecca Buxton and Samuel Ritholtz's analysis of the stakes of queer and trans inclusion in accounts of displacement justice offers a vibrant example of theory brought to life. This interview was conducted by Dr. Hannah Pool, a senior researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Studies of Societies. Her research focuses on human mobilities and her new book has been published in 2025 by Oxford University Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Today I have the pleasure of speaking with Gary Hoover about his new book, Ladder or Lottery: Economic Promises and the Reality of Who Gets Ahead (University of California Press, 2026). Gary is Professor of Economics and Executive Director of the Murphy Institute at Tulane University. One of the most challenging aspects of life is that sometimes, despite our very best efforts, we still miss the mark. Life can feel like a lottery, where success comes down to luck or the privilege to have the resources to buy as many lottery tickets as possible. For some, life appears like a ladder. No matter where you start, all you need to do is climb to get to the top. These metaphors encapsulate the dilemmas explored by Gary in his important work, as he examines in a variety of case studies whether economic conditions look more like a ladder or more like a lottery. When enough people feel that the system is more like a lottery than a ladder, social order breaks down, protests erupt, and, on occasion, revolutions take place. To take on this weighty topic, I’m thrilled today to have Gary Hoover on the podcast. Gary A. Hoover is Executive Director of the Murphy Institute, Professor of Economics, and Affiliate Professor of Law at Tulane University. Caleb Zakarin is the CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Why do adversaries sometimes cooperate to restrain their military competition? Why do they design arms control agreements with intrusive verification in some cases but rely on minimal transparency in others? Amidst ongoing international competition, arms control remains rare despite potential mutual benefits, and agreements vary dramatically in their approaches to monitoring. Enemies in Agreement: Political Volatility and the Design of Arms Control (Cambridge UP, 2026) reveals how uncertainty from domestic political changes, such as leadership transitions or social unrest, can enable arms control. The book identifies two paths to agreement: during periods of uncertainty, states that previously relied on informal understandings hedge by establishing lightly monitored agreements, while those that anticipated deception take calculated risks through agreements with intensive verification. Through comprehensive data analysis and rich case studies, Jane Vaynman challenges conventional wisdom about uncertainty in international relations while offering policymakers insights. As states confront challenges from nuclear competition to emerging technologies, understanding when arms control becomes viable is more vital than ever.Our guest is Professor Jane Vaynman, an Assistant Professor of Strategic Studies at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University. Our host is Eleonora Mattiacci, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Amherst College. She is the author of "Volatile States in International Politics" (Oxford University Press, 2023). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Our Recall This Buck series began by speaking with Christine Desan of Harvard Law School about how key ideas—and the actual currency, physical coins and bills— underlying the modern monetary system get “invisibilized” with that system’s success, so that seeing money clearly is both harder and more vital. Today, illustrious Princeton historian Peter Brown narrates the … Continue reading "42 Recall This Buck 2: Peter Brown on wealth, charity and managerial bishops in early Christianity (JP)" Elizabeth Ferry is Professor of Anthropology at Brandeis University. Email: [email protected]. John Plotz is Barbara Mandel Professor of the Humanities at Brandeis University and co-founder of the Brandeis Educational Justice Initiative. Email: [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Political theorist Alisa Kessel (University of Puget Sound) has an important and impressive new book, Rape Fantasies: Rape Culture and the Persistence of Sexual Violence. Kessel’s research grew out of her work on questions of consent and how consent is embedded within the social contract structure. Initially the plan for the research was to critique this concept of “rape culture” which had found its way into popular discourse as well as academic work and was somewhat unclear in terms of application and understanding. Kessel notes in the book and in our conversations that her thinking about the idea of rape culture owes a great deal to black feminists who had been writing about and discussing the underlying issue at the heart of rape culture, which is not just about violence against women, but more broadly about the political, societal, and cultural dimensions of domination, victimhood, and human value. Rape Fantasies develops this understanding and provides fascinating examples of this intersectional concept. One of the key claims of the book is that sexual violence is not accidental, it is not necessarily based on physical urges that just cannot be controlled; it is, instead, based in the dynamic of political domination thus making rape itself a political act. Part of the unexamined problem with rape is that it is built around an entitlement to dominate, which also makes the threat of sexual violence a political act. Rape Fantasies traces this idea through a number of different case studies that unpack the dimensions of this threat of sexual violence in a variety of circumstances and situations, tied, inevitably, to the duality of domination and subordination or victimization, which is also wrapped up with questions of who is deserving of protection and who is not as deserving. Kessel explains that in examining sexual violence, what she found was multifaceted reflections and refractions, since the issue and the individual’s experience with sexual violence are neither simple nor linear. And the examples and case studies that make up the thrust of the book present this multidimensional nature of sexual violence. This multifaceted thinking about sexual violence also integrates an intersectional analysis, drawing on work from indigenous studies, feminist and women’s studies, feminist theory, black feminism, political theory and other connected schools of thought. The interrogation of rape and rape culture, particular in context of the political valence, “occurs across multiple axes of oppression, including white supremacist, heteropatriarchal, cisgender, settler colonial, and capitalist axes.”[1] The case study examples in Rape Fantasies include bathroom bills across the states, the idea of the frontier and modes of extraction, consent contracts and consent apps, and OnlyFans and intimacy on demand. Each example is deeply researched and unpacked, providing the reader with historical, legal, political, economic, cultural, and societal analyses of these complex areas of domination and entitlement. Rape Fantasies: Rape Culture and the Persistence of Sexual Violence is an expansive undertaking, bringing together theoretical frameworks from different schools of thought and analysis, threaded with important case studies that help the reader think deeply about this concept and how it is operationalized in our daily lives. Even if we are not aware of these narratives, they surround us and shape so much of our thinking about how the world works. And why sexual violence remains so persistent. Susan Liebell is Professor Emerita of Political Science at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. Lilly J. Goren is a Professor of Political Science at Carroll University in Waukesha, Wisconsin.  [1] Alisa Kessel. Rape Fantasies: Rape Culture and the Persistence of Sexual Violence. Oxford University Press, 2025. p. 6. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Daniel A. Bell joins the podcast to discuss his new book, Why Ancient Chinese Political Thought Matters: Four Dialogues on China’s Past, Present, and Future (Princeton UP, 2026). This isn't your standard, dusty history — it’s a series of modernized dialogues that grew out of Bell’s own classroom at the University of Hong Kong. In this episode, Daniel tells us about the time he spent as an academic Dean at Shandong University, and where he saw firsthand how ancient Legalist ideas about strict punishment were making everyday life, and even faculty meals, feel rigid and 'joyless'. We talk about why he chose to write the book as a 'heavyweight match' between the descendants of thinkers like Confucius and Zhuangzi, and why he believes the ancient concept of 'harmony' is actually about celebrating differences rather than enforcing sameness. Whether we're talking about the 'fire exit' of modern divorce laws or the high stakes of corruption in Beijing, Daniel shows why these ancient voices are still the most relevant ones in the room. The book is an entertaining introduction to ancient Chinese thinkers, and what they can teach us about today’s most pressing political questions in China and beyond. China’s most original, diverse, and fascinating political debates took place more than two millennia ago, but they have profoundly shaped Chinese political thinking and practice ever since and, remarkably, their influence on the country’s leaders is only growing today. Yet these timeless debates which are very likely to influence the answers to such questions as whether China should use military force to take control of Taiwan seem far too little understood in the West. In this enlightening and entertaining book, Professor Bell takes the greatest thinkers from China’s past — Confucius, Mencius, Xunzi, Shang Yang, Han Feizi, Zhuangzi, and Mozi—and puts them in dialogue with each other in modern settings. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Few time periods have been as defined by waves of monumental social change as the United States during the 1960s. Even today, almost sixty years later, the era is often depicted as a triumph of social progress. Yet, as Dr. Larry M. Bartels and Dr. Katherine J. Cramer show in The Politics of Social Change: From the Sixties to the Present Through the Eyes of a Generation (U Chicago Press, 2026), it was Americans’ diverse reactions to the milestone events of the time—from the welcoming, to the fiercely resistant, to the largely oblivious—that planted the seeds of our current political turmoil. Their masterful analysis draws on a unique historical resource: the longest-running systematic tracking of individual Americans’ political attitudes and behavior ever attempted. The study began in 1965 when researchers interviewed hundreds of high school students across the country and then periodically reinterviewed them over the next three decades. Bartels and Cramer supplement this historical record with in-depth interviews with dozens of the original students, painting a detailed picture of the generation’s individual and collective political development. By tracing the responses of the Class of ’65 to major events of their political lifetimes—including the Civil Rights and Women’s Rights movements, the Vietnam War, the shifting role of religion, escalating economic inequality, immigration, and the rise of Donald Trump—Dr. Bartels and Dr. Cramer shed new light on the evolution of public opinion and the unsteady progress of American democracy. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Supreme Pressure: The Rejection of John J. Parker and the Birth of the Modern Supreme Court Confirmation Process (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025) examines the 1930 Supreme Court nomination of John J. Parker, a turning point in American judicial politics. Alarmed by some of his past statements and opinions, labor and civil rights groups mounted a fierce campaign to block his confirmation. Not only was control of the Supreme Court hanging in the balance, but Parker's nomination symbolized a profound clash of ideologies, political agendas, economic doctrines, and interpretations of the Constitution. Their efforts sparked a dramatic Senate revolt, marking the first successful grassroots campaign to block a Supreme Court nominee. By exploring the circumstances of Parker's rejection, this book traces how that battle laid the foundation for today's highly partisan and contentious confirmation process. The book also reintroduces Parker as a consequential but largely forgotten figure in American jurisprudence--one whose rulings helped shape the South's legal response to Brown v. Board of Education. Beyond the nomination fight, it delves into Parker's political campaigns, judicial opinions, and relationships with key public figures, charting his dramatic rise, humiliating defeat, and enduring influence. Packed with intrigue, strategy, and the clash of competing ideologies, this is the story of how one nomination forever changed the rules of the game. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Over the last twenty-five years, the concept of per-sonhood has become central to many contentious debates. Corporations have won free speech protections, as if they were individuals. The right to life or freedom has been claimed on behalf of fetuses, trees, and elephants. The fund of human rights is spilling over into the nonhuman.Lisa Siraganian’s The Problem of Personhood: Giving Rights to Trees, Corporations, and Robots (Verso, 2026) reveals the unsettling consequences of granting rights to imagined persons, such as Sophia the robot citizen or New Zealand’s Whanganui River. Synthesizing the political and phil­osophical debates on personhood and drawing on a varied cast of thinkers that includes Simone Weil, Hannah Arendt, and Dr. Seuss, Siraganian un­covers the disturbing impact of this contemporary development. Awarding rights to robots and rivers all too easily becomes a legal tool to turn people into capital. When robot Sophia is made a citizen, “she” is transformed into a subject in the law without the corre­sponding legal duties that protect us from her.At the root of this trend is the US Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling that grants First Amendment rights to corporations as if they were individuals. The result has not been the transformation of things into humans so much as humans into things, when animals and the environment would be better protected with reference to our humanity rather than to theirs. Lisa Siraganian is the J. R. Herbert Boone Chair in Humanities and Professor in the Department of Comparative Thought and Literature at Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, Maryland, USA). Her work has won multiple awards and has been supported by fellowships from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Endowment of the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Siraganian has written award-winning scholarly monographs that bridge literary criticism, art criticism, and legal and philosophical scholarship. More recently, she was the Editor of the Norton Anthology of American Literature, 10th edition, Volume D (1914-1945) (2022). Tim Wyman-McCarthy is a Lecturer in the discipline of Human Rights and Associate Director of Graduate Studies at the Institute for the Study of Human Rights and the Department of Sociology at Columbia University. He can be reached at [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Lithium is necessary for the green transition but its mining comes with significant environmental and social harms. This is the conundrum at the core of decarbonisation, which host Licia Cianetti discusses with Thea Riofrancos. They talk about how Riofrancos’s book Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism (published by W.W. Norton in 2025) helps us understand the local and global politics of lithium extraction and the lessons it holds for a more just green transition. Transcript here Thea Riofrancos is Associate Professor of Political Science at Providence College, Strategic Co-Director of the Climate and Community Institute, and a fellow at the Transnational Institute. She researches the politics of climate change and of resource extraction and is also the author of Resource Radicals: From Petro-Nationalism to Post-Extractivism in Ecuador (Duke University Press, 2020) and co-author of A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal (Verso Books, 2019) Licia Cianetti is Associate Professor at the University of Birmingham and Founding Deputy Director of CEDAR. The People, Power, Politics podcast brings you the latest insights into the factors that are shaping and re-shaping our political world. It is brought to you by the Centre for Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation (CEDAR) based at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

In this episode of Radio ReOrient’ s occasional series The State of the Ummah, SherAli Tahreen, Shehla Khan, Tanzeen Doha, and Salman Sayyid unpack the intertwined stories of authoritarianism and resistance in Bangladesh and Pakistan. Moving beyond Orientalism, methodological nationalism, and Indological approaches, they explore Bangladesh’s relative success in overthrowing Sheikh Hasina’s authoritarian rule, while Pakistan continues to suffer under a Khaki-Kleptocratic regime, one example of whose many cruelties is the inhumane imprisonment of the deposed Prime Minister Imran Khan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Sustaining Peace After Civil War: Insights from 48 Recent Cases (Springer, 2026) examines one of the most important questions in peace research: What leads to enduring peace after civil wars, and what leads to the resurgence of violence? For decades, intrastate conflicts have been the predominant form of armed conflict, and most recent civil wars were conflicts that recurred. The research presented in this book focuses on influenceable factors, first and foremost on the type of civil war termination and on the post-civil war order that is shaped by the distribution of military power between the former warring parties and the scale of political compromise. Moreover, it shows that the peacekeeping environment has a major influence on whether peace endures.The insights provided in this book are relevant for the academic community, and for decision-makers and practitioners involved in civilian or military efforts to establish and preserve peace. Thorsten Gromes is a Project Leader and Senior Researcher at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt's (PRIF) Research Department Intra­state Conflicts. His research focuses on post-civil war societies and so-called humani­tarian military inter­ventions. Sidney Michelini is a post-doctoral researcher working on Ecology, Climate, and Violence at the Peace Research Institute of Frankfurt (PRIF). Book Recommendations: Sixteen Million One: Understanding Civil War by Patrick M. Regan How Civil Wars Start and How to Stop Them by Barbara Walter Why We Fight: The Roots of War and the Paths to Peace by Christopher Blattman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

In Sarah Wambaugh and the Plebiscite: The Turbulent History of a Democratic Alternative to War (Cambridge UP, 2026) Dr. Andrew Park tells the story of the rise and fall of the plebiscite, once seen as a promising democratic solution to international conflict which – more than once – became embroiled in controversy and war in the first half of the twentieth century. The book's central figure is the brilliant but largely forgotten American scholar Sarah Wambaugh, the leading expert on the plebiscite technique whose dramatic career took her to many of the world's political hotspots. The norms she developed for the technique continue to shape how self-determination and popular suffrage in international affairs are thought about and conducted today. In a world where borders are again being redrawn by force and democracy everywhere appears under strain, this book is a timely and compelling reminder that such events are not new. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

The Colombian village of Briceño might, at first glimpse, look like many communities in the rural Global South. Many of the people living there rely on small-scale farming, even as a newly constructed hydroelectric dam threatens traditional livelihoods. Yet after decades where Briceño suffered from a bloody conflict, the village has more recently become central to the nation’s hopes for peace. In Governing the Excluded, sociologist Alex Diamond shares a closer look at Briceño and offers unique insight not only into the contemporary Colombian state but to how people across the Global South are struggling to maintain rural livelihoods amid economic dispossession.Governing the Excluded describes a landmark peace process between the Colombian government and the radical FARC guerrillas from the perspective of Colombian farmers, drawing links between economic transformation, drug economies, and armed conflict. Exclusion from global markets for traditional crops like coffee first pushed farmers to grow coca, the raw material for cocaine. This ushered in an era of violent conflict for control of the illicit economy, while farmers continued to be priced out of legal markets. In exchange for peace and state protection, farmers ultimately agreed to sacrifice profitable coca. But with its disappearance, they now find themselves dependent on the state: for machinery to maintain the roads they need to get legal harvests to market, municipal jobs that are the only decent work available, and for public resources to subsidize food crops with razor-thin profit margins. Ongoing economic struggles in the legal sector make the state’s newfound authority tenuous, as some villagers replant coca, abandon the village for uncertain urban futures, or join a rearmed guerrilla group.Informed by deep ethnographic research and firsthand stories from Briceño residents, Governing the Excluded shows that when it comes to the forces driving dispossession—be they international corporate megaprojects, global food prices, or national initiatives to replace coca cultivation—state authority goes only so far as its ability to sustain local livelihoods. Sneha Annavarapu is Assistant Professor of Urban Studies at Yale-NUS College. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

"The contempt and naive idealization of China are two sides of the same coin. The latter cannot be an antidote to the former." So argues Ho-Fung Hung in the conclusion of The China Question: Eight Centuries of Fantasy and Fear (Cambridge University Press, 2026). For centuries, Western scholars portrayed China either as a land of superior morality, economy, and governance or as a formidable country of pagans that posed a global threat to Western values. Idealized images of China were used to shame rulers for their incompetence, while China was demonized as an external threat to cover up domestic political failures. In the twentieth century, the geopolitics of global capitalism have facilitated more nuanced perspectives, but the diversifying of knowledge about China is far from complete. In this thought-provoking study, Ho-fung Hung finds that both Western elites and China's authoritarian regime today continue to promote many Orientalist stereotypes to advance their economic interests and political projects. He shows how big-picture historical, social, and economic changes are inextricably linked to fluctuations in the realm of ideas. Only open debate can overcome extremes of fantasy and fear. Ho-Fung Hung is Henry M. and Elizabeth P. Wiesenfeld Professor in Political Economy at the Sociology Department and the Paul H Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. Lucas Tse is Examination Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

I had a substantive conversation with Dr. Stephen Onyango Ouma, author of Africa Unbound: Decolonial Pathways to Sovereignty and Liberation (Brill, 2026). He explained that, despite achieving political independence, African countries still experience significant colonial and neo-colonial influences in their economies, education systems, cultures, and political structures. The book argues that genuine liberation must include economic independence, epistemic freedom, cultural reclamation, and Pan-African unity. Dr Ouma highlights the importance of revitalising indigenous knowledge systems, strengthening regional cooperation, and addressing dependencies that limit Africa's ability to determine its own path. We discussed topics ranging from the lasting mental effects of colonialism to the potential of the AfCFTA, the rise of youth activism, and the key role African women play in liberation movements. It was a thoughtful look at what decolonisation should mean today. For those interested in African philosophy, global politics, or contemporary decolonial thought, this book and the accompanying interview offer valuable insights. Amisah Bakuri (PhD) is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Her work explores the intersections of religion, sexuality, gender, and migration, especially within African diasporic communities in the Netherlands. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

War offers opportunities for women to liberate their communities and build a better life for themselves. When women join rebel groups, they often take on new roles, cultivate new social networks, and develop new skills. These rebel women often gain the respect of rebel leaders, their comrades-in-arms, and the communities they're fighting for. When the guns are silenced, however, women have struggled to maintain the progress and prestige that they gained during war. Hilary Matfess investigates the gendered legacies of conflict and considers why it is so difficult for female veterans to defend the gains they made during war. After Liberation: Women and the Politics of Expectations in Rebel-to-Party Transitions (Stanford UP, 2026) by Dr. Hilary Matfess explores how both individual female veterans and former-rebel political parties balance the incentives to continue their wartime activities or moderate them to succeed in the postwar period. The particular balance struck—by party elites and by female veterans—shapes women's rights and representation after war. Drawing on cross-national statistics and in-depth qualitative case studies of rebel groups—from Ethiopia, Namibia, El Salvador, and Nepal—Dr. Matfess advances a theory to explain the postwar legacies of women's participation in rebellion at both the individual and the organizational levels. This book helps us understand why women that were once lauded as the backbone of the revolution are so frequently relegated to the backburner after war. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

How did the far right go from illegitimate fringe to contender for public office, and did Europe have anything to do with it? Europe As Ideological Resource: European Integration and Far Right Legitimation in France and Italy (Oxford UP, 2024) argues that European integration functioned as an ideological resource for far right parties looking for legitimation because it enabled them to refashion their political message in a more acceptable form, while maintaining the allegiance of their existing supporters.Drawing on the qualitative analysis of over 400 documents produced by the Movimento Sociale Italiano/Alleanza Nazionale in Italy (1978-2009) and the Rassemblement National in France (1978-2019), Lorimer identifies the core concepts and discourses the parties used to talk about Europe, and the legitimation mechanisms associated with them. The book's narrative is developed through the analysis of four key concepts: the concept of identity, which enabled the parties to transnationalise their message and create a positive association between themselves and Europe; the concept of liberty, which made it possible for them to foster an image of actors holding uncontroversial positions; the concept of threat, which helped them promote the idea that 'desperate times call for desperate measures; and the concept of national interest, which helped them stress commitment to core principles in their ideology.Ever since its re-emergence on the European political scene, scholars have sought to explain the mainstreaming of the far right. By understanding how the process of European integration facilitated its transition from the margins to the mainstream, this book adds one piece to the puzzle of far right legitimation. Marta Lorimer is a Lecturer in Politics at the School of Law and Politics at Cardiff University, where she teaches on European politics and populism, and co-editor of the journal Political Research Exchange. Her research on far-right politics and European integration has been published widely, including in the Journal of European Public Policy and the Journal of Common Market Studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

What role did Gen Z play in the popular uprising that led to the fall of the Sheikh Hasina regime in the summer of 2024? And what marks have the uprising left on democratic politics in Bangladesh? We discuss these questions with Arild Engelsen Ruud, Mubashar Hasan, and Ishrat Hossain whose work on the 2024 July Revolution appeared in a special issue of Journal of Bangladesh Studies in early 2026. We also discuss what the Gen Z Revolution can tell us more generally about processes of autocratization, resistance and mass protests in the contemporary world, and about the conditions under which popular mobilization can succeed in dislodging autocratic governments. Arild Engelsen Ruud is Professor of South Asia Studies at the University of Oslo, Norway Mubashar Hasan is Adjunct Research Fellow at the University of Western Sydney, Australia Ishrat Hossain is an Associate at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies Kenneth Bo Nielsen, your host, is Associate Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo, Norway Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Foucault and Liberal Political Economy: Power, Knowledge, and Freedom by Mark Pennington This highly original and innovative book is the first to comprehensively engage the ideas of the French social theorist and philosopher Michel Foucault from within the tradition of liberal political economy. Divided into two parts the book commences by demonstrating important commonalities between Foucault's ideas and those of a neglected 'post-modern' stream in liberal political and economic thought. These ideas draw on a social theory emphasising a culturally situated individualism; a philosophy of science highly critical of socio-economic 'scientism' and 'expert rule'; and an understanding of freedom as an open-ended process of 'self-creation' in the face of cultural power relations—a freedom threatened by alignments between state power and more decentred manifestations of power.Part two combines the tools of Foucault's critical social theory with those of a post-modern liberalism to problematise four separate though overlapping 'bio-political' or 'pastoral' dispositifs in contemporary liberal societies focused on social justice, public health, ecological sustainability, and law and order. Where the Foucauldian and the post-modern liberal approaches suggest that freedom requires a cultural and economic 'creative destruction' that destabilises existing modes of thought and ways of being, the pastoral dispositifs that seek to 'monitor and correct' multiple pattern anomalies are shown to stifle the space for that creative freedom.Though the book does not engage the question of whether Foucault himself moved towards endorsing liberal political economy, it throws considerable light on how key Foucauldian concerns may be addressed within the liberal tradition, and why Foucauldians may have reason to embrace a reconstituted or post-modern liberalism Mark Pennington has been Professor of Political Economy and Public Policy in the Department of Political Economy, King's College, University of London, since 2012, and is currently Director of the Centre for the Study of Governance and Society. Prior to King's he taught for twelve years in the Department of Politics and International Studies at Queen Mary, University of London. He has a PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/a48266/videos Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Time spent and words spent—what does each signal? Deceptive mimicry—the manipulation of individual or group identity—includes passing off as a different individual, as a member of a group to which one does not belong, or, for a group, to ‘sign’ its action as another group. Mimicry exploits the reputation of the model it mimics to avoid capture (flight), to strike undetected at the enemy (fight), or to hide behind or besmirch the reputation of the model group (‘false-flag’ operations).  Fight, Flight, Mimic: Identity Mimicry in Conflict (Oxford UP, 2024) offers a theory and game-theoretic model of mimicry, an overview of its use through history, and a deep empirical exploration of its modern manifestations through several case studies by leading social scientists. The chapters cover mimicry in the context of the Northern Ireland conflict, terrorism campaigns in 1970s Italy, the height of the Iraq insurgency, the Rwandan genocide, the Naxalite rebellion in India, and jihadi discussion forums on the Internet. Thomas Hegghammer is Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. Lucas Tse is Examination Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

How the rise of the culture wars afflicts the politics of education.  On August 9, 2022, the Denton Independent School District held a meeting to address complaints about its libraries. Like so many districts in Texas and across the country, Denton had been responding to accusations that children had access to inappropriate books at school. During the public comment session, a local man stood up to the podium and read a sexually explicit passage from a book that he wanted removed from Denton’s school libraries. But beguiled by the prospect of securing a political win, he had confused the title of the lurid psychological thriller he read aloud with a young adult fiction series about mermaids. While his attempt to ban a book that was never in Denton’s school libraries in the first place received a few laughs, it also reflects a deeply serious and troubling culture of conflict that has taken over the politics of education and now divides people so completely as to make public education as a shared endeavor seem impossible.  In Willing Warriors, Mark Hlavacik shows how the culture wars have redefined the politics of US schooling from the 1970s to the present through vivid accounts of public controversies featuring Allan Bloom, Oprah Winfrey, Lynne Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, Betsy DeVos, Nikole Hannah-Jones, and others. Beginning in the 1970s, Hlavacik shows, efforts at innovation in schooling have increasingly been met by attempts to discredit them through exposé. As the culture wars have accelerated and exploded, this cycle of innovation and exposé has embroiled public schools in increasingly heated debates. He explains the dynamics that make curriculum controversies so intractable and confronts the delicate question of whether raucous public arguments are bad for education. With clarity and insight, Hlavacik reveals why bitter contests between educational ideologies not only add another burden for the schools, but also for the people—the willing warriors—who devote their lives to fighting for their betterment. Mark Hlavacik is assistant professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism at Texas A&M University. He is the author of Assigning Blame: The Rhetoric of Education Reform. Laura Beth Kelly is an associate professor of Educational Studies at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

The Politics of Failed Policies (Oxford UP, 2025) examines how the interplay of politics and data affects when failed policies get recognized. It shows how compelling data and analysis is an important political tool for highlighting failure. Importantly, the research demonstrates how data and analysis themselves are the products of political processes and reflections of those in power. Using case studies from education and juvenile criminal justice and tax policy, the book makes a theoretical contribution to the study of policymaking, state politics, and the role of knowledge and information in contemporary American politics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Why fifty years of changemaking and reform haven't fixed Congress—and what that reveals about American democracy. Congress, the central democratic institution in the United States, is hanging on by a thread. On January 6, 2021, a violent attack on the Capitol Building left five people dead, and threats and attacks against politicians are on the rise. In Stuck: How Money, Media, and Violence Prevent Change in Congress (JHU Press, 2026), Maya Kornberg chronicles the efforts of congressional reformers over the last fifty years and documents the mounting forces that have kept their reforms from creating meaningful change. The "Watergate babies" of 1974, the Contract with America conservatives of 1994, and the historic 2018 class fueled by backlash to Donald Trump all represent younger, more diverse, and less entrenched members who arrived in Washington energized and idealistic. Kornberg reveals the ways Congress has become increasingly inhospitable to change. Political violence, astronomical campaign costs, relentless fundraising demands, shrinking staff, and centralized party leadership all constrain the ability of new members to legislate and represent their constituents. Social media, while offering new platforms for political expression, has also heightened harassment and fed a performative culture that rewards spectacle over substance. Bolstered by dozens of interviews, congressional records, and the voices of lawmakers past and present—including Henry Waxman, Toby Moffett, Phil English, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Lauren Underwood—Stuck offers a sobering portrait of a legislative body paralyzed by its own internal dynamics. Kornberg outlines tangible reforms that could restore Congress's capacity to function and amplify the power of its newest members. At a time when Americans are losing faith in democracy's most representative institution, Stuck makes the case for how it could be saved. Host Ursula Hackett is Reader in Politics at Royal Holloway, University of London, where she specialises in the study of public policymaking and litigation in the US. A former British Academy Mid-Career Fellow, she is the author of the award-winning book,America’s Voucher Politics: How Elites Learned to Hide the State (Cambridge University Press, 2020). Maya Kornberg is Senior Fellow and Manager in the Elections and Government program at the NYU Brennan Center for Justice. Her first book Inside Congressional Committees: Function and Dysfunction in the Legislative Process (Columbia University Press, 2023) was shortlisted for the 2025 WJM Mackenzie Book Prize. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

A richly detailed collection of transcripts of Henry Kissinger's secretly recorded phone conversations from his time in the Nixon administration that touch on every important issue of Kissinger's day and provide a sweeping view of his era.Henry Kissinger is unquestionably one of the most consequential foreign policy makers in American history. A remarkably influential academic during his long tenure at Harvard, Kissinger became Richard Nixon's National Security Advisor in 1969 and Secretary of State in 1973.Like Nixon, Kissinger left a trail of secretly recorded evidence in his wake. Kissinger began taping in 1969, two years before Nixon did in 1971, and he continued taping for over three years after Nixon's recording system was dismantled in 1973. In The Kissinger Tapes: Inside His Secretly Recorded Phone Conversations" (Oxford UP, 2026), Tom Wells draws on his expertise in the Nixon era to provide carefully selected, edited, and annotated transcripts of Kissinger's phone conversations, which chronologically highlight the most momentous crises and controversies of the era. They not only provide context and many revelations on Kissinger's role in numerous events but also throw his personality, character, and checkered record into sharp relief.The conversations cover a wide range of issues, including the Vietnam War, the India-Pakistan conflict, the opening to China, the Middle East, the Greek coup in Cyprus, the Nixon administration's illegal wiretapping, and the Watergate scandal. The transcripts reveal Kissinger's opinions and attitudes on important policy matters and his complex relationship with President Nixon, as well as the many battles he fought with other administration officials and his subtle manipulations of well-known journalists.A richly detailed collection of Kissinger's transcripts and commentary, this book provides a novel window into the Nixon administration and offers a genuinely unique perspective on one of the most important figures in modern American history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Gender is becoming a central battleground in contemporary authoritarian politics, but how do autocrats manipulate these debates to their own advantage? Some regimes now pursue a double strategy of simultaneous “gender bashing” and “gender washing”: mobilising anti-gender rhetoric and “traditional values” to attack feminists and roll back equality, while at the same time promoting loyal women into prominent roles to project an image of modernity, reform, and inclusion at home and abroad. By combining repression with reputation laundering, they mask authoritarian practices and complicate the struggle for genuine gender equality. Join the People, Power, Politics podcast as we talk to Elin Bjarnegård and Pär Zetterberg about their latest Journal of Democracy article and explore how this mix of gender bashing and gender washing is reshaping the fight for equal rights and democratic politics. Guest: Elin Bjarnegård is a Professor of Political Science at Uppsala University specialising in gender and politics, political violence, and authoritarianism. Her research explores how gender norms shape political institutions and how formal and informal rules affect women’s political representation. She has written extensively on gendered power structures, clientelism, and the strategic manipulation of equality reforms. A leading scholar in the field, Bjarnegård’s work has been published in major academic journals and contributes to our understanding of how gender dynamics intersect with democratic decline and political reform. Pär Zetterberg is a Professor of Political Science at Uppsala University specialising in elections, political representation, and democratic institutions. His research examines gender quotas, electoral systems, and the conditions under which institutional reforms strengthen or undermine democratic accountability. He has published widely on women’s political representation and the effects of electoral rules on inclusion and governance. Through his academic and policy engagement, Zetterberg has advanced debates on how representation can both support and be instrumentalised within contemporary political systems. Presenter: Dr Nic Cheeseman is the Professor of Democracy and International Development at the University of Birmingham and Founding Director of CEDAR. The People, Power, Politics podcast brings you the latest insights into the factors that are shaping and re-shaping our political world. It is brought to you by the Centre for Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation (CEDAR) based at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. Join us to better understand the factors that promote and undermine democratic government around the world and follow us on Twitter at @CEDAR_Bham! Transcript here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

The philosopher G.W.F. Hegel “viewed history as consisting of stages punctuated by times of upheaval,” the author John B. Judis wrote in a recent essay for NOTUS, and “assigned to what he called ‘world-historical individuals’ a special role in spurring the transition from one era to another.” Trump, Judis posited, “is exactly such an individual,” comparable in this respect to Alexander the Great, Caesar and Napoleon. In our conversation, we discuss this proposition—including the forces that brought Trump to this role and the bleak destiny that typically greets “world-historical individuals.” Judis is the author of a number of books, including The Populist Explosion (Columbia Global Reports, 2016). John B. Judis is an author and American journalist, a contributing editor at Talking Points Memo, a former senior writer at the National Journal, and a former senior editor at The New Republic Veteran journalist Paul Starobin is a former Moscow bureau chief for Business Week and a former contributing editor of The Atlantic. His companion Substack newsletter, America and Beyond,” offers commentary and insights on the podcast. He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and many other publications. His most recent book is Putin’s Exiles: Their Fight for a Better Russia (Columbia Global Reports, 2024). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science