New Books in Political Science

Peter Allen, "How to Think about Politics: A Guide in Five Parts" (Oxford UP, 2025)

02 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What part should politics play in our everyday lives? In How to Think About Politics: A Guide in Five Parts (Oxford University Press, 2025) Peter A...

Jeanne Sheehan, "American Democracy in Crisis: The Case for Rethinking Madisonian Government Post January 6" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024)

01 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

American Democracy in Crisis: The Case for Rethinking Madisonian Government Post January 6 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024) analyzes the roots of widesprea...

Katarina Kušic, "Beyond International Intervention: Politics of Improvement in Serbia" (University of Michigan Press, 2025)

01 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Studies of statebuilding and peacebuilding have been criticized for their disregard of people living the consequences of intervention projects. Beyon...

Jaime Lee Kucinskas, "The Loyalty Trap: Conflicting Loyalties of Civil Servants Under Increasing Autocracy" (Columbia UP, 2025)

01 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Loyalty Trap: Conflicting Loyalties of Civil Servants Under Increasing Autocracy (Columbia University Press, 2025) explores how civil servants n...

Erica D. Lonergan and Shawn W. Lonergan, "Escalation Dynamics in Cyberspace" (Oxford UP, 2023)

31 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

To what extent do cyberspace operations increase the risks of escalation between nation-state rivals? Scholars and practitioners have been concerned a...

Júlia Király, "Hungary and Other Emerging EU Countries in the Financial Storm: From Minor Troubles to Global Hurricane" (Springer, 2020)

30 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Donald Trump is putting liberal democracy through its greatest test in 80 years.  None of it is original. His style of rule is straight from the de...

Book Talk 66: Political Hope, with Loren Goldman

30 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How to find hope in these times? I spoke with political scientist Loren Goldman about the principle of political hope: why we should have hope, how to...

Amit Ron and Abraham A. Singer, "Everyone's Business: What Companies Owe Society" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

29 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Amit Ron and Abraham Singer, both political theorists, examine the concept of the responsibilities that private companies and corporations have in a d...

Samuel Western, "The Spirit of 1889: Restoring the Lost Promise of the High Plains and Northern Rockies" (UP of Kansas)

28 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

When did the West lose its way? In 1889, when the US government carved five states out of the spawling Dakota Territory, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, and ...

Ryan J. Vander Wielen et al., "The House that Fox News Built?: Representation, Political Accountability, and the Rise of Partisan News" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

27 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The influence of partisan news is presumed to be powerful, but evidence for its effects on political elites is limited, often based more on anecdotes ...

Helen Thompson on Disorder and the Analysis of Contemporary Geopolitics

26 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Helen Thompson, Professor of Political Economy at Cambridge University and co-host of the great podcast,...

Quentin Skinner, "Liberty as Independence: The Making and Unmaking of a Political Ideal" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

25 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What does liberty entail? How have concepts of liberty changed over time? And what are the global consequences? Liberty as Independence: The Making a...

Dennis Ross, "Statecraft 2.0: What America Needs to Survive in a Multipolar World" (Oxford UP, 2025)

24 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In a multipolar world where America wields less relative power, the United States can no longer get away with poor statecraft. To understand how the U...

Jeffrey Wasserstrom, "Vigil: The Struggle for Hong Kong" (Brixton Ink, 2025)

24 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Given what has happened since – from a global pandemic to wars in Europe, Africa and the Middle East – events in Hong Kong in 2019-20 can seem ...

The Price of Free Speech: Politics and Power on Campus

23 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Hosts Nina Dos Santos and Owen Bennett Jones explore the mounting political and financial pressures confronting higher education on both sides of the ...

Eric Heinze, "Coming Clean: The Rise of Critical Theory and the Future of the Left" (MIT Press, 2025)

22 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What has gone wrong with the left—and what leftists must do if they want to change politics, ethics, and minds. Leftists have long taught that peopl...

Lori Jo Marso, "Feminism and the Cinema of Experience" (Duke UP, 2024)

21 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Political theorist Lori Marso has been intrigued by filmmaker Chantal Ackerman for many years and has integrated Ackerman’s work into her courses at...

Executive Power and the President Who Would Not Be King: A Conversation with Michael McConnell

21 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode of Madison’s Notes, Michael McConnell examines the gap between the Founders’ vision of a limited presidency and today’s expansi...

Nicholas Barry et al., "Constitutional Conventions: Theories, Practices and Dynamics" (Routledge, 2025)

20 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Constitutional Conventions: Theories, Practices and Dynamics (Routledge, 2025) is an excellent edited volume exploring the various ways in which go...

Postscript: Calibrating the Outrage-Democratic Erosion, Legality, and Politics

19 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

We’ve been focusing on the dynamics of democratic backsliding in the United States and beyond. In this episode of Postscript: Conversations on Poli...

Globalization's Backlash: Echoes of the Interwar Era in Today’s World

18 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This week on International Horizons, RBI Director John Torpey interviews historian Tara Zahra, author of Against the World: Anti-Globalism and Mass ...

Make Britain Great Again? The MAGA-Style Rise of Reform UK

17 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Britain's Conservative Party is one of the oldest and most successful political parties in history. Local elections in the UK have signalled that they...

Ruth Braunstein, "My Tax Dollars: The Morality of Taxpaying in America" (Princeton UP, 2025)

16 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In My Tax Dollars: The Morality of Taxpaying in America (Princeton University Press, 2025), Ruth Braunstein maps the contested moral landscape in w...

Lara Montesinos Coleman, "Struggles for the Human: Violent Legality and the Politics of Rights" (Duke UP, 2023)

15 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Struggles for the Human: Violent Legality and the Politics of Rights (Duke University Press 2024), Lara Montesinos Coleman blends ethnography, po...

What is environmental authoritarianism and why we should be mindful of its allure

14 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The argument that authoritarian governments are better at dealing with the climate emergency is gaining ground, fuelled by the idea that undemocratic ...

Katherine Stewart, "Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

13 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today, and for the past several years, many people both here and abroad have been trying to make sense of the radical right and its financial and ideo...

Threats to Universities and What We Can Do: A Conversation with Brandice Canes Wrone

12 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Universities are under attack, but what exactly are the threats? How does free speech in the last 10 years compare to today? What do we stand to lose ...

Constitutional Crisis or a Stalemate?

12 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

At the 100 day mark of Donald Trump’s second term as president, the political scientists at Bright Line Watch released their 25th report on the s...

Catching the China-Europe Express: Logistics, Local Agency & Eurasian Geopolitics in the Polish Borderlands

11 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, we focus on the often-overlooked geographies of Eurasian connectivity with Dr. Wojciech Kębłowski, whose research brings attention...

Alan Chong, "The International Politics of Communication: Representing Community in a Globalizing World" (U Michigan Press, 2025)

10 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In an era of globalization, international communication constantly takes place across borders, defying sovereign control as it influences opinion. Whi...

Democracy for Sale: Death by Dark Money

09 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

On this edition of Ctrl Alt Deceit: Democracy in Danger, we are live at the Royal United Services Institute. Nina Dos Santos and Owen Bennett Jones a...

Diana Graizbord, "Indicators of Democracy: The Politics and Promise of Evaluation Expertise in Mexico" (Stanford UP, 2024)

08 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The spread of democracy across the Global South has taken many different forms, but certain features are consistent: implementing a system of election...

Martin Thomas, "The End of Empires and a World Remade: A Global History of Decolonization" (Princeton UP, 2024)

07 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Empires, until recently, were everywhere. They shaped borders, stirred conflicts, and set the terms of international politics. With the collapse of em...

Time to Rethink Democracy: Participatory and More-Than-Human Perspectives

06 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This is a special episode that features a conversation between Sonia Bussu and Hans Asenbaum on democracy, capitalism, climate and the practices and p...

Stephen H. Legomsky, "Reimagining the American Union: The Case for Abolishing State Government" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

05 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Since American president Donald Trump was elected to a second term, it is common to hear citizens, journalists, and public officials distinguish betwe...

Jerome Powell: “We don't think you're a straight shooter"

04 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

More than any one institution, the US Federal Reserve drives global capital markets with its decisions and communications. While its interest rates ar...

Janet Yellen: “She had a view that the world was on fire”

03 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

More than any other single institution, the US Federal Reserve drives global capital markets with its decisions and communications. While its interest...

Ben Bernanke: “Like being a paleontologist”

02 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

More than any other single institution, the US Federal Reserve drives global capital markets with its decisions and communications. While its interest...

Alan Greenspan: “The man who knew”

01 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

More than any other single institution, the US Federal Reserve drives global capital markets with its decisions and communications. While its interest...

Nicholas D. Anderson, "Inadvertent Expansion: How Peripheral Agents Shape World Politics" (Cornell UP, 2025)

01 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Territorial expansion is typically understood as a centrally driven and often strategic activity. But Nicholas D. Anderson’s new book, Inadvertent ...

The Vote Gap: What’s Pulling Young Men and Women Apart?

30 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Why are young men leaning right while young women shift left? Hosts Nina dos Santos and Owen Bennett-Jones speak with NYU’s Scott Galloway, politica...

The Good Father Syndrome: Why Strongmen Still Seduce

29 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode of International Horizons, RBI director John Torpey speaks with Stephen Hanson and Jeffrey Kopstein, co-authors of The Assault on the...

Caitlin Killian, "Understanding Reproduction in Social Contexts" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

28 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In today's post-Roe v. Wade world, U.S. maternal mortality is on the rise and laws regarding contraception, involuntary sterilization, access to repr...

Ian Boyd, "Science and Politics" (Polity, 2024)

27 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The recent coronavirus pandemic proved that the time-old notion seems now truer than ever: that science and politics represent a clash of cultures. Bu...

Russell Blackford, "How We Became Post-Liberal: The Rise and Fall of Toleration" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

26 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Liberalism is in trouble. As a set of ideas, it has lost much of its historical authority in guiding public policy and personal behaviour. In this pos...

Randy Laist and Brian Dixon, "Figures of Freedom: Representations of Agency in a Time of Crisis" (Fourth Horseman, 2024)

25 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Figures of Freedom: Representations of Agency in a Time of Crisis takes on the idea and terminology of freedom, examining our understanding of this c...

Maurizio Ferrera, "Politics and Social Visions: Ideology, Conflict, and Solidarity in the EU" (Oxford UP, 2024)

24 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The starting point of this book is the 'civil war' of ideas that broke out during the early 2010s about the purpose and even the desirability of the E...

China’s Trade War Strategy: How Xi Jinping Uses Autocracy, Fear, and Innovation to Compete with the West

23 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Hosts Nina dos Santos and Owen Bennett-Jones analyze the global fallout after Donald Trump plunged America and the world into a trade war with China. ...

Marcus Kreuzer, "The Grammar of Time: A Toolbox for Comparative Historical Analysis" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

22 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In The Grammar of Time: A Toolbox for Comparative Historical Analysis (Cambridge UP, 2023), political scientist Marcus Kreuzer synthesises the dif...

Postscript: Political Scientists Ring Alarm Bell Over Trump’s Second Administration

21 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

After being sworn in as the 47th president, President Donald Trump quickly altered American government – and political discourse. He issued a slew o...

Fernanda Gallo, "Hegel and Italian Political Thought: The Practice of Ideas, 1832-1900" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

20 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Political Theorist Fernanda Gallo (Homerton College, University of Cambridge) has a fascinating new book, Hegel and Italian Political Thought: The Pr...

Agnieszka Pasieka, "Living Right: Far-Right Youth Activists in Contemporary Europe" (Princeton UP, 2024)

19 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Radical nationalism is on the rise in Europe and throughout the world. Living Right: Far-Right Youth Activists in Contemporary Europe (Princeton Uni...

Political Mythmaking in Nepal

18 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How and why do local political processes in rural Nepal become an arena for political mythmaking? And, how do political myths obscure their own histor...

Is Democracy and Peace Possible in Myanmar? A Conversation with Claire Smith

17 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

As the civil conflict in Myanmar passes its fourth anniversary, is this ethnically complex country any closer to a peaceful resolution of its internal...

Is Liberal Democracy Dying?

16 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Live from the Frontline Club in London, Ctrl Alt Deceit is back for its second season. Hosts Nina dos Santos and Owen Bennett-Jones host a fascinati...

Engage and Evade in 2025: Asad L. Asad on Latino Immigrants in America

15 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today I’m speaking with Asad L. Asad, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Stanford University. He is the author of Engage and Evade: How Latino Im...

Dána-Ain Davis and Christa Craven, "Feminist Ethnography: Thinking Through Methodologies, Challenges, and Possibilities" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022)

14 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How do we acquire knowledge about societies? Does how we acquire social knowledge shape what we know? How conscious must we be of our own experience...

David Wiles, "Democracy, Theatre and Performance: From the Greeks to Gandhi" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

13 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Democracy, argues David Wiles, is actually a form of theatre. In making his case, the author deftly investigates orators at the foundational moments o...

Pandemic Power: The Covid Response and the Erosion of Democracy - A Liberal Critique

12 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, host Andrea Talabér (CEU Press) sat down with Muriel Blaive to talk about her new book with CEU Press, Pandemic Power: The Covid Re...

James Davison Hunter, "Democracy and Solidarity: On the Cultural Roots of America's Political Crisis" (Yale UP, 2024)

11 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Liberal democracy in America has always contained contradictions—most notably, a noble but abstract commitment to freedom, justice, and equality tha...

Matthew D'Auria et al., "The Cambridge History of Nationhood and Nationalism" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

10 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The origins and nature of nationhood and nationalism continue to be topics of heated scholarly debate. This major new reference work with contribution...

Benjamin M. Studebaker, "Legitimacy in Liberal Democracies" (Edinburgh UP, 2024)

09 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Liberal democracies don’t age gracefully. Established systems of governance like those of the UK and the US which once served as blueprints are toda...

Adam J. Berinsky, "Political Rumors: Why We Accept Misinformation and How to Fight It" (Princeton UP, 2023)

08 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Political rumors and misinformation pollute the political landscape. This is not a recent phenomenon; before the currently rampant and unfounded rumor...

Eric Min, "Words of War: Negotiation as a Tool of Conflict" (Cornell UP, 2025)

07 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Of all interstate conflicts across the last two centuries, two-thirds have ended through negotiated agreement. Wartime diplomacy is thus commonly seen...

Frances Yaping Wang, "The Art of State Persuasion: China's Strategic Use of Media in Interstate Disputes" (Oxford UP, 2024)

06 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Why do nations actively publicize previously overlooked disputes? And why does this domestic mobilization sometimes fail to result in aggressive polic...

Populism, Power, and the Crisis of Globalism: A Conversation with Wolfgang Streeck

05 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What explains the growing divide between elites and the broader public in democracies across Europe and the United States? In this episode of Internat...

Colonial Origins of Democracy and Dictatorship: A Discussion with Alexander Lee and Jack Paine

04 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The debate about the impact of colonialism on the prospects for democracy and development continues to rage. Was the legacy of colonialism equally des...

We Have Never Been Woke: A Conversation with Musa al-Gharbi

03 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Why does occupation reliably predict political leanings? What is social capitalism, and how does it span income classes? If social capitalists are sin...

Postscript: Collective Action to Support Students at American Colleges and Universities

02 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A coalition of educators and allies has come together to push back against a variety of different kinds of attacks on higher education and students at...

Political Entertainment in a Post-Authoritarian Democracy

01 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Welcome to the Global Media & Communication podcast series, a multimodal project powered by the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication (...

Postscript: History, Narratives, and Political Power--An Emergency Oral History Project

31 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

President Donald Trump has threatened the federal funding and jobs of institutions and individuals that document, archive, and analyze historical mate...

Andrew Canessa and Manuela Lavinas Picq, "Savages and Citizens: How Indigeneity Shapes the State" (U Arizona Press, 2025)

30 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Although Indigenous peoples are often perceived as standing outside political modernity, Savages and Citizens: How Indigeneity Shapes the State (Uni...

Rhys Machold, "Fabricating Homeland Security: Police Entanglements Across India and Palestine/Israel" (Stanford UP, 2024)

29 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Homeland security is rarely just a matter of the homeland; it involves the circulation and multiplication of policing practices across borders. Though...

Marc Owen Jones, "Digital Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Deception, Disinformation and Social Media" (Hurst/Oxford UP, 2021)

28 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the latest episode of Unlocking Academia, host Raja Aderdor sits down with Marc Owen Jones, associate professor at Northwestern University in Qata...

Amy Adamczyk, "Fetal Positions: Understanding Cross-National Public Opinion about Abortion" (Oxford UP, 2025)

27 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Most people think about abortion in the context of the country they live in. In the U.S., abortion fuels debate, elections, and legislation. In China,...

Human Rights in the Trump Era: A Conversation with Kenneth Roth

26 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode of International Horizons, Kenneth Roth, former longtime executive director of Human Rights Watch, joins RBI director John Torpey to d...

Madhavi Devasher, "Crossing Lines: Cross-Ethnic Coalitions in India and Prospects for Minority Representation" (Routledge, 2024)

25 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Crossing Lines: Cross-Ethnic Coalitions in India and Prospects for Minority Representation (Routledge, 2024) explains why, how, and where ethnic pol...

Postscript: Not a Matter of Left or Right: Historians Fighting Censorship

24 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The executive directors of the American Historical Association and Organization of American Historians join the podcast to talk about the effects of h...

Adam K. Webb, "The World's Constitution: Spheres of Liberty in the Future Global Order" (Routledge, 2025)

23 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

“One thing I would note about the Trumpian populists and their counterparts elsewhere in the West today is that they're a very peculiarly tribal kin...

Gerald J. Postema, "Law's Rule: The Nature, Value, and Viability of the Rule of Law" (Oxford UP, 2022)

23 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Rule of law faces serious threats to its viability in many countries. It has become a recurring topic in the media and is affecting our daily lives. T...

Vuk Vuksanovic, "Serbia’s Balancing Act: Between Russia and the West" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

22 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Even before its rebirth as a nation in the 1990s, Serbia had acquired a reputation abroad as Russia’s stalwart Slavic ally in the Western Balkans. Y...

In Covid’s Wake: How our Politics Failed Us--A Conversation with Stephen Macedo (Part 2)

21 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This week on Madison’s Notes, we continue our discussion with Stephen Macedo, co-author of In COVID’s Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us (Princeto...

Marilyn Nissim-Sabat and Neil Roberts, "Creolizing Hannah Arendt" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024)

20 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Marilyn Nissim-Sabat and Neil Roberts have edited a new collection of essays, Creolizing Hannah Arendt. This edited volume dives into Hannah Arendt’...

Rahul Rao, "The Psychic Lives of Statues: Reckoning with the Rubble of Empire" (Pluto Press, 2025)

19 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

From Cape Town to Bristol and Richmond, statues have become sites of resistance and contestation of our imperial past and postcolonial present. The P...

Bryan Caplan, "Build, Baby, Build: The Science and Ethics of Housing" (Cato Institute, 2024)

18 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Economist Bryan Caplan has written—and artist Ady Branzei has illustrated—this new graphic novel about housing regulation (if ‘novel’ can be a...

Luca Trenta, "The President's Kill List: Assassination and Us Foreign Policy Since 1945" (Edinburgh UP, 2024)

17 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Investigative reporter Bob Woodward once noted that assassination was the Scarlett letter of American politics because targeted killings challenge the...

Matthew Fuhrmann, "Influence without Arms: The New Logic of Nuclear Deterrence" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

16 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How does nuclear technology influence international relations? While many books focus on countries armed with nuclear weapons, this volume puts the sp...

Martin Spychal, "Mapping the State: English Boundaries and the 1832 Reform Act" (U London Press, 2024)

15 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The 1832 Reform Act was a landmark moment in the development of modern British politics. By overhauling the country’s ancient representative system,...

Postscript: Donald Trump is Erasing History – What YOU Can Do about it

14 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

On January 20th, Donald Trump issued an executive order entitled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to t...

Postscript: How Trump’s Executive Order Contradicts Birthright Citizenship

13 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Birthright citizenship is established in the first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution – yet Donald Trump’s rec...

In Covid’s Wake: How our Politics Failed Us: A Conversation with Frances Lee

12 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the first part of our two-part conversation on Madison’s Notes, we speak with Frances Lee, Professor of Politics and Public Affairs at Princeton...

"Steadfast Democrats" Five Years Later: A Conversation with Chryl N. Laird

10 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today I’m speaking with Chryl Laird, Associate Professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland College Park. We are discussing he...

Postscript: All talk and no action? How political scientists respond to racism and authoritarianism?

10 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

After the murder of George Floyd, the United States had the largest protests in the nation’s history. Other public and private responses included co...

Cotton, Central Asia and the New Great Game

10 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

On this episode, rural sociologist Dr. Irna Hofman explores how Tajikistan’s cotton fields illuminate shifting power dynamics in Central Asia, histo...

Abby Innes, "Late Soviet Britain: Why Materialist Utopias Fail" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

09 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Why has the United Kingdom, historically one of the strongest democracies in the world, become so unstable? What changed? Late Soviet Britain: Why Ma...

Coup Attempts and Democratic Resistance: Lessons from Brazil

08 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

As Brazil moves toward trying former president Jair Bolsonaro for plotting a coup against democracy, the United States grapples with constitutional ch...

Jørgen Møller and Jonathan Doucette, "The Catholic Church and European State Formation, AD 1000-1500" (Oxford UP, 2022)

08 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Generations of social scientists and historians have argued that the escape from empire and consequent fragmentation of power - across and within poli...

Christian Gerlach, "Conditions of Violence" (de Gruyter, 2024)

06 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Mass violence comes not only from states, but also from people. By analyzing mass violence as social interaction through survivor accounts and other s...

Jeffrey A. Lenowitz, "Constitutional Ratification Without Reason" (Oxford UP, 2022)

04 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Constitutional Ratification Without Reason (Oxford UP, 2022) focuses on constitutional ratification, the procedure in which a draft constitution is ...

John Boswell et al., "The Art and Craft of Comparison" (Cambridge UP, 2019)

03 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

There are many books giving advice about research methods on the market, but The Art and Craft of Comparison (Cambridge UP, 2019) is the first mono...