New Books in Political Science
Episodes
PostScript: The Barbie Movie: A Conversation about a Cinematic and Cultural Event
23 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode of POSTSCRIPT explores and examines director Greta Gerwig’s film, Barbie. This Warner Brothers’ movie has been in theaters for ...
Corina Rodríguez Enríquez and Masaya Llavaneras Blanco, "Corporate Capture of Development: Public-Private Partnerships, Women’s Human Rights, and Global Resistance" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
23 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) have gained a renewed momentum in recent years, and have come to be viewed by governments and funders alike as a si...
Postscript: Guns, Violence, and the Law: How Federal Courts are Trying to Figure Out the Second Amendment
22 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Two blockbuster cases came down in June of 2022. The Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade and New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen...
Ruchi Chaturvedi, "Violence of Democracy: Interparty Conflict in South India" (Duke UP, 2023)
21 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Violence of Democracy: Interparty Conflict in South India (Duke UP, 2023), Ruchi Chaturvedi tracks the rise of India’s divisive politics throug...
Morgan L. W. Hazelton et al., "The Elevator Effect: Contact and Collegiality in the American Judiciary" (Oxford UP, 2023)
21 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Does it matter if judges are nice to each other? The Elevator Effect: Contact and Collegiality in the American Judiciary (Oxford UP, 2023)argues tha...
Jean M. Twenge, "Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents—and What They Mean for America's Future" (Atria, 2023)
20 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The United States is currently home to six generations of people: -the Silents, born 1925-1945 -Baby Boomers, born 1946-1964 -Gen X, born 1965-1979...
David Broder, "Mussolini's Grandchildren: Fascism in Contemporary Italy" (Pluto Press, 2023)
20 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The fastest-rising force in Italian politics is Giorgia Meloni's Fratelli d'Italia - a party with a direct genealogy from Mussolini's regime. Surging ...
Samuel Moyn, "Liberalism Against Itself: Cold War Intellectuals and the Making of Our Times" (Yale UP, 2023)
19 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
By the middle of the twentieth century, many liberals looked glumly at the world modernity had brought about, with its devastating wars, rising totali...
The Future of Traditionalism: A Discussion with Mark J. Sedgwick
18 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Twenty years ago, it seemed Traditionalism was an esoteric and irrelevant set of beliefs. Since then, powerful people sympathetic to its ideas have ov...
In Praise of Reason: Why Rationality Matters for Democracy
18 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Why does reason matter, if (as many people seem to think) in the end everything comes down to blind faith or gut instinct? Why not just go with what y...
Civil Society Elites: Field Studies from Cambodia and Indonesia
18 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What does civil society look like in Indonesia and Cambodia, and who are civil society elites? In this podcast interview, editors of the recently publ...
Samuel Ramani, "Putin's War on Ukraine: Russia’s Campaign for Global Counter-Revolution" (Hurst, 2023)
17 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Eight years after annexing Crimea, Russia embarked on a full-scale invasion of neighboring Ukraine in February 2022. For Vladimir Putin, this was a le...
Take Back the Center: Progressive Taxation for a New Progressive Agenda
17 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Midcentury America was governed from the center, a bipartisan consensus of politicians and public opinion that supported government spending on educat...
What Can We Learn from Indonesian Democracy? A Conversation with Dan Slater
16 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What can we learn from Indonesia about democratic resilience and backsliding? Why should we think of Indonesian democracy as a useful example? And wha...
Terrence Lyons, "The Puzzle of Ethiopian Politics" (Lynne Rienner, 2019)
15 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
How did a group with its origins in a small Marxist-Leninist insurgency in northern Ethiopia transform itself into a party (the EPRDF) with eight mill...
Anthony Seldon and Raymond Newell, "Johnson at 10: The Inside Story" (Atlantic Books, 2023)
15 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
After his dramatic rise to power in the summer of 2019 amid the Brexit deadlock, Boris Johnson presided over the most turbulent period of British hist...
Martin Plaut and Sarah Vaughan, "Understanding Ethiopia's Tigray War" (Oxford UP, 2023)
14 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Martin Plaut and Sarah Vaughan about their new book Understanding Ethiopia's Tigray War (Oxford UP, 2023) The ongoing war and con...
The Future of Underground/Sea Cables: A Discussion with Henry Farrell
12 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
How much of US power is underground? We hear a lot about the US military assets used on land, on the sea, and in the air - but not much about what’s...
Michael J. Diamond, "Ruptures in the American Psyche: Containing Destructive Populism in Perilous Times" (Phoenix Publishing, 2022)
11 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Michael J. Diamond's book Ruptures in the American Psyche: Containing Destructive Populism in Perilous Times (Phoenix Publishing, 2022) describes Tr...
Keren Winterford et al., "Reframing Aid: A Strengths-Based Approach for International Development" (Practical Action, 2023)
10 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The practice of international development continues to change as more is understood about what works. A shift from a deficit or problem-solving approa...
Len Niehoff and Thomas Sullivan, "Free Speech: From Core Values to Current Debates" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
09 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Why do we protect free speech? What values does it serve? How has the Supreme Court interpreted the First Amendment? What has the Court gotten right a...
Elizabeth Humphrys, "How Labour Built Neoliberalism: Australia's Accord, the Labour Movement and the Neoliberal Project" (Haymarket, 2019)
09 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Why do we always assume it was the New Right that was at the centre of constructing neoliberalism? How might corporatism have advanced neoliberalism? ...
Frank Jacob, "Wallerstein 2.0: Thinking and Applying World-Systems Theory in the 21st Century" (Transcript Publishing, 2022)
08 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Immanuel Wallerstein's world-systems theory can help to better understand and describe developments of the 21st century. The contributors of Wallerst...
Postscript: Protecting the Public? Guns, Intimate Partner Violence, and the US Supreme Court
07 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Postscript invites scholars to react to contemporary political events and today’s podcast welcomes an expert on domestic violence and firearms law ...
Benjamin Meiches, "Nonhuman Humanitarians: Animal Interventions in Global Politics" (U Minnesota Press, 2023)
07 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Both critical and mainstream scholarly work on humanitarianism have largely been framed from anthropocentric perspectives highlighting humanity as the...
Dynamics Among Nations: The Evolution of Legitimacy and Development in Modern States
02 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Liberal internationalism has been the West's foreign policy agenda since the Cold War, and the West has long occupied the top rung of a hierarchical s...
Kathryn Cramer Brownell, "24/7 Politics: Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News" (Princeton UP, 2023)
01 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
As television began to overtake the political landscape in the 1960s, network broadcast companies, bolstered by powerful lobbying interests, dominated...
Talking Clarence Thomas: A Conversation with Amul Thapar
01 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
As the last few months of landmark Supreme Court decisions have showcased, Clarence Thomas is one of the most important men in America. To wrap up our...
Shaul Shenhav, "Analyzing Social Narratives" (Routledge, 2015)
31 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Analyzing Social Narratives (Routledge, 2015) is one of the concise and informative volumes in the Routledge Series on Interpretive Methods, whose t...
Blair Kelley, "Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class" (LIveright, 2023)
31 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the United States, the stoicism and importance of the “working class” is part of the national myth. The term is often used to conjure the contr...
Manfred B. Steger and Ravi K. Roy, "Neoliberalism: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2021)
30 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Anchored in the principles of free-market economics, neoliberalism emerged in the 1990s as the world's most dominant economic paradigm. It has been as...
India's Development Diplomacy and Soft Power in Africa
28 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Kenneth King (University of Edinburgh) & Meera Venkatachalam (University of Mumbai), discuss their recently co-edited volume, India'...
Benjamin Studebaker, "The Chronic Crisis of American Democracy: The Way Is Shut" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2023)
28 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Benjamin Studebaker about his new book The Chronic Crisis of American Democracy: The Way Is Shut (Palgrave MacMillan, 2023) Ameri...
Lisa Mitchell, "Hailing the State: Indian Democracy Between Elections" (Duke UP, 2023)
25 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Hailing the State: Indian Democracy Between Elections (Duke UP, 2023), Lisa Mitchell explores the methods of collective assembly that people in I...
Postscript: Is it Unconstitutional to Take Guns Away from Domestic Abusers?
24 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Supreme Court recently wrapped up their term – and announced that they will hear a very controversial case about domestic abuse, the power of Co...
Helen Ting M. H. and Donald L. Horowitz, "Electoral Reform and Democracy in Malaysia" (NIAS, 2022)
21 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Why is Malaysia in need of electoral reform? How can we explain recent changes including the anti-party hopping law and the successful UNDI18 campaign...
Penny M. Von Eschen, "Paradoxes of Nostalgia: Cold War Triumphalism and Global Disorder Since 1989" (Duke UP, 2022)
19 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Paradoxes of Nostalgia: Cold War Triumphalism and Global Disorder since 1989 (Duke University Press, 2022) Dr. Penny M. Von Eschen offers a sweep...
Jeffrey S. Kopstein and Jason Wittenberg, "Intimate Violence: Anti-Jewish Pogroms on the Eve of the Holocaust" (Cornell UP, 2018)
19 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Why do pogroms occur in some localities and not in others? Jeffrey S. Kopstein and Jason Wittenberg examine a particularly brutal wave of violence tha...
Mere Natural Law: A Conversation with Hadley Arkes
18 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What is natural law, and what does it have to do with originalism? Why does the Right defend religion yet so often struggle to define it? Next up in o...
Ariane Chebel d'Appollonia, "Violent America: The Dynamics of Identity Politics in a Multiracial Society" (Cornell UP, 2023)
18 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Violent America: The Dynamics of Identity Politics in a Multiracial Society (Cornell University Press, 2023), Dr. Ariane Chebel d'Appollonia coun...
Anne Phillips, "Unconditional Equals" (Princeton UP, 2021)
18 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
For centuries, ringing declarations about all men being created equal appealed to a shared human nature as the reason to consider ourselves equals. Bu...
Ajay Gudavarthy, "Politics, Ethics and Emotions in ‘New India’" (Routledge, 2023)
16 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
How do emotions mobilise in politics? How do they frame ideologies? Broadly focusing on these questions, Ajay Gudavarthy's book Politics, Ethics and...
Samuel Issacharoff, "Democracy Unmoored: Populism and the Corruption of Popular Sovereignty" (Oxford UP, 2023)
15 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The 2016 election of Donald Trump focused people's minds on populism, and most of the attention paid to the subject since has been on the threat it po...
Roluah Puia, "Nationalism in the Vernacular: State, Tribes, and Politics of Peace in Northeast India" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
15 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Roluah Puia's book Nationalism in the Vernacular: State, Tribes, and Politics of Peace in Northeast India (Cambridge UP, 2023) illuminates our under...
Jade McGlynn, "Memory Makers: The Politics of the Past in Putin's Russia" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
14 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Why aren't ordinary Russians more outraged by Putin's invasion of Ukraine? Inside the Kremlin's own historical propaganda narratives, Russia's invasio...
Ethnicity and Nation-Building in Myanmar
14 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Did the bloody 1 February 2021 military coup in Myanmar produce an unexpected ‘solidarity dividend’ by unifying opponents of the new regime from a...
Is Laos a Criminal State?: Kearrin Sims on the Current Status of Laos
13 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
There is a growing list of human rights abuses and acts of violence against those who have sought to promote political transparency and freedom in Lao...
Morgan L. W. Hazelton and Rachael K. Hinkle, "Persuading the Supreme Court: The Significance of Briefs in Judicial Decision-Making" (UP Kansas, 2022)
10 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Each June in the United States, scholars, journalists, law makers, law enforcers, lawyers, and members of the public wait for the announcement of majo...
Marcos González Hernando and Gerry Mitchell, "Uncomfortably Off: Why Higher-Income Earners Should Care about Inequality" (Policy Press, 2023)
08 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
How can we build a better social and political settlement? In Uncomfortably Off: Why the Top 10% of Earners Should Care about Inequality (Policy Pr...
Hindu Nationalism and Lower Caste Politics
07 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Why and how has India’s Hindu nationalist party, the BJP, become so adept at appealing to and recruiting people from the lower castes? And what does...
James Crossland, "The Rise of Devils: Fear and the Origins of Terrorism" (Manchester UP, 2023)
06 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the dying light of the nineteenth century, the world came to know and fear terrorism. Much like today, this was a time of progress and dread, in wh...
Kristina Horn Sheeler and Karrin Vasby Anderson, "Woman President: Confronting Postfeminist Political Culture" (Texas A&M Press, 2013)
06 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Kristina Horn Sheeler and Karrin Vasby Anderson have each worked on and researched questions of gender, leadership, executive positions, and popular c...
Studying the Pipeline to Politics for Women
06 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
When we teach about how women go into politics, how are we looking for the places and ways that women get involved? Are we giving enough consideration...
Ben Terris, "The Big Break: The Gamblers, Party Animals, and True Believers Trying to Win in Washington While America Loses Its Mind" (Twelve, 2023)
05 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Big Break: The Gamblers, Party Animals, and True Believers Trying to Win in Washington While America Loses Its Mind (Twelve, 2023) investigates...
Greg Berman and Aubrey Fox, "Gradual: The Case for Incremental Change in a Radical Age" (Oxford UP, 2023)
05 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Many experts believe that we are at a fulcrum moment in history, a time that demands radical shifts in thinking and policymaking. Calls for bold chang...
The Future of Oceans: A Discussion with Chris Armstrong
03 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Amidst all the talk of a green revolution what about the blue stuff? There are the seas that will wash over inhabited land, there’s the sea economy ...
The Supreme Court's Past, Present, and Future: A Conversation with John Yoo
03 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
It has been a momentous few weeks for the Supreme Court. What better time to discuss the Court's history and future? We are therefore launching our "S...
Making Democracy Fun: How Game Design Can Empower Citizens and Transform Politics
02 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Anyone who has ever been to a public hearing or community meeting would agree that participatory democracy can be boring. Hours of repetitive presenta...
Kevin J. Elliott, "Democracy for Busy People" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
01 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
John Dewey and Jane Addams are both credited with the claim that the cure for democracy’s ills is more democracy. The sentiment is popular to this ...
Samuel Helfont, "Iraq Against the World: Saddam, America, and the Post-Cold War Order" (Oxford UP, 2023)
30 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The move away from post-Cold War unipolarity and the rise of revisionist states like Russia and China pose a rapidly escalating and confounding threat...
Afghanistan-Pakistan Relations: A Clash of Identities?
30 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
With Afghanistan once again under Taliban rule and Pakistan reeling under a severe economic and political crisis, the relationship between the neighbo...
Joscha Abels, "The Politics of the Eurogroup: Governing Crisis and Conflict in the European Union" (Routledge, 2023)
30 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Before this century's first global financial crisis struck Europe in 2007-2012, only people in the Brussels bubble had heard of the Eurogroup. By th...
Danielle Allen, "Justice by Means of Democracy" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
29 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Danielle Allen, the James Bryant Conant University Professor and the Director of the Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University, ha...
Markus Virgil Höhne, "Between Somaliland and Puntland: Marginalization, Militarization and Conflicting Political Vision" (Rift Valley Institute, 2023)
28 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On February 6, 2023, fighting erupted around Las Anod, a city in the eastern parts of the de facto independent state of Somaliland. This still-ongoi...
Mark Harrison, "Secret Leviathan: Secrecy and State Capacity under Soviet Communism" (Stanford UP, 2023)
28 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Soviet Union was one of the most secretive states that ever existed. Defended by a complex apparatus of rules and checks administered by the secre...
Nicholas Dagen Bloom, "The Great American Transit Disaster: A Century of Austerity, Auto-Centric Planning, and White Flight" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
27 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Many a scholar and policy analyst has lamented American dependence on cars and the corresponding lack of federal investment in public transportation t...
Philip A. Wallach, "Why Congress" (Oxford UP, 2023)
27 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
To achieve legitimate self-government in America's extended Republic, the U.S. Constitution depends on Congress harmonizing the country's factions thr...
Stephen Vladeck, "The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic" (Basic Books, 2023)
26 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Many people are familiar with the United States Supreme Court’s merit docket. Each case follows detailed and professional proceedings that include f...
Bradley C. S. Watson, "Progressivism: The Strange History of a Radical Idea" (U Notre Dame Press, 2020)
25 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
“Only recently have scholars outside the historical profession identified progressivism for what it was and continues to be: a fundamental rupture w...
Anne Irfan, "Refuge and Resistance: Palestinians and the International Refugee System" (Columbia UP, 2023)
24 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the decades after World War II, the United Nations established a global refugee regime that became central to the lives of displaced people around ...