New Books in Political Science

Join me for an insightful and timely conversation with historian Timothy Kneeland about his book Declaring Disaster: Buffalo's Blizzard of '77 and the Creation of FEMA (Syracuse University Press, 2021). This book masterfully bridges the gap between academic research and real-world policy implications. Hear from the author himself as he reflects on the historical roots of disaster policy, the political forces that shape emergency response, and the enduring implications for governance today. Timothy W. Kneeland is a Professor and Director of the Center for Public History at Nazareth University. He writes on American politics and disaster policy, American science, and psychiatry. ABOUT THE BOOK: On Friday, January 28, 1977, it began to snow in Buffalo. The second largest city in New York State, located directly in line with the Great Lakes' snowbelt, was no stranger to this kind of winter weather. With their city averaging ninety-four inches of snow per year, the citizens of Buffalo knew how to survive a snowstorm. But the blizzard that engulfed the city for the next four days was about to make history. Between the subzero wind chill and whiteout conditions, hundreds of people were trapped when the snow began to fall. Twenty- to thirty-foot-high snow drifts isolated residents in their offices and homes, and even in their cars on the highway. With a dependency on rubber-tire vehicles, which lost all traction in the heavily blanketed urban streets, they were cut off from food, fuel, and even electricity. This one unexpected snow disaster stranded tens of thousands of people, froze public utilities and transportation, and cost Buffalo hundreds of millions of dollars in economic losses and property damages. The destruction wrought by this snowstorm, like the destruction brought on by other natural disasters, was from a combination of weather-related hazards and the public policies meant to mitigate them. Buffalo's 1977 blizzard, the first snowstorm to be declared a disaster in US history, came after a century of automobility, suburbanization, and snow removal guidelines like the bare-pavement policy. Kneeland offers a compelling examination of whether the 1977 storm was an anomaly or the inevitable outcome of years of city planning. From the local to the state and federal levels, Kneeland discusses governmental response and disaster relief, showing how this regional event had national implications for environmental policy and how its effects have resounded through the complexities of disaster politics long after the snow fell. 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 Law and Politics of International Legitimacy (Cambridge University Press, 2025) examines the significance of the issue of political legitimacy at the international level, focusing on international law. It adopts a descriptive, critical, and reconstructive approach. In order to do so, the book clarifies what political legitimacy is in general and in the context of international law. The book analyzes how international law contributes to a sense of legitimacy through notions such as international membership, international rights holding, fundamental principles and hierarchy of rights holding, rightful conduct, and international authority. In addition, the book stresses the severe limitations of the legitimacy of international law and of the current international order that it contributes to regulate and manage. This leads the book to identify the conditions under which international order and international law could overcome their problems of legitimacy and become more legitimate. The book is interdisciplinary in nature, mobilizing international law, political and legal theory, philosophy, history, and political science. Jean-Marc Coicaud is Distinguished Professor of Law and Global Affairs, Rutgers School of Law, New Jersey, USA and Fellow, Academia Europaea. He is also Fudan Distinguished Chair Professor at Fudan Institute for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (Shanghai, China). Leo Bader is a senior at Wesleyan University studying political theory and 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

While media pundits continually speculate over the future leanings of the so-called “Latino vote,” Benjamin Francis-Fallon historicizes how Latinos were imagined into a national electoral constituency in his new book The Rise of the Latino Vote: A History (Harvard University Press, 2019). Francis-Fallon, Assistant Professor of History at Western Carolina University, examines the rhetorical construction of a national voting bloc by politicians, parties, and a national network of Latino political elites. This interview explores some of the major themes in the book, including the essential role of Latino congressmen, the ideological struggles between Latino elected officials and radical activists, and the ongoing appeals to a panethnic Latino voting bloc from presidential campaigns. Of course Democratic Party politics is only half of the story, with the efforts of the Republican Party featuring prominently in the text as well. By discussing the parallel Latino engagement strategies of both parties, Francis-Fallon underscores the fact that the “rise of the Latino vote was a multiparty phenomenon.” Building upon existing studies that detail how panethnic Latinidad was constructed in the twentieth-century United States, Francis-Fallon adds national and presidential politics to the list of forces that continue to define what it means to be Latino. Jaime Sánchez, Jr. is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of History at Princeton University and a scholar of U.S. politics and Latino studies. He is currently writing an institutional history of the Democratic National Committee and partisan coalition politics in the twentieth century. You can follow him on Twitter @Jaime_SanchezJr. 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 do states advance their national security interests? Conventional wisdom holds that states must court the risk of catastrophic war by “tying their hands” to credibly protect their interests. Dan Reiter overturns this perspective with the compelling argument that states craft flexible foreign policies to avoid unwanted wars. Through a comprehensive analysis of key international crises, including the Berlin, Taiwan Straits, and Cuban Missile Crises, and the Korean and Vietnam Wars, Reiter provides new perspectives on the causes of wars, the role of international alliances, foreign troop deployments, leader madness, and the impact of AI on international relations. With critical insights into contemporary foreign policy challenges, such as America's role in NATO, the risks of war with China, containing a resurgent Russia, and the dangers of nuclear war, Untied Hands: How States Avoid the Wrong Wars (Cambridge University Press, 2025) is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding how states can effectively manage international crises while avoiding the wrong wars. Dan Reiter is Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Political Science at Emory University. Leo Bader is a senior at Wesleyan University studying political theory and 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

Globalization is over. With US president Donald Trump pursuing an 'America First' agenda in trade and foreign policy, everyone now recognises the urgency of defending their own country's national interest. But what is the national interest and why did it disappear from the political agenda? Will Trump restore American national interests, or will he betray them? How might we know the difference? The National Interest: Politics After Globalization (Polity Press, 2025) answers these questions. It explains how and why globalist political leaders and bureaucrats abandoned the national interest over the past thirty years. Even today, many of our elites still sneer at the concept as an anachronism in an age of global environmental collapse and 'polycrisis'. But without it, there can be no political representation, and without representation there can be no democratic accountability. The national interest can be revived as part of a strategy of nation-building and national rebirth. This book makes the case for such a revival, heralding a new era of democratic renewal and international cooperation. Philip Cunliffe is Associate Professor of International Relations at the Department of Risk and Disaster Reduction, University College London. Caleb Zakarin is editor 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

Suruchi Mazumdar's book addresses the complex relationship between India's evolving, emerging media landscape, the political and economic interests of diverse media actors, and movements opposing contentious issues such as market-based economic reforms and religious nationalism. In the mid-2000s, Singur and Nandigram, nondescript semi-urban and rural areas in the east Indian state of West Bengal, suddenly became the center of national and international media attention and debates on state-led neoliberal agenda. The point of controversy were local agitations provoked by the then state government's plans to acquire agricultural land for large scale corporate industrial projects. The movements by farmers to protect their agricultural land were described variously as challenges to neoliberal initiatives and widespread social tension that put a temporary brake to state-led market reforms. In traditional liberal narratives, the triumph of economic reforms was expected to replace value-based ideology with global economic principles, perceived as objective and neutral.  But the forces of neoliberalism became strongly entrenched in India alongside religious nationalism. Such political economic developments paralleled with the simultaneous expansion of India's digital and traditional media sectors, consolidation of market forces, the co-option of both old and new media by powerful actors, and opportunities of mediated democratization and activism. While narratives of economic liberalization and global trends of commercialized journalism have been amply documented, this book addresses the tension between mainstream media's political and commercial logic, movements and citizen-led activisms questioning dominant development and religious nationalist agenda, and the possibilities of political diversity and democratic participation in the Indian city of Kolkata. By focusing on the hybridities, commonalities, differences, and complexities in Kolkata's mainstream news media and emerging digital space, this book captures the regional and linguistic variations in the studies of media, movements, and politics in India. Dr Suruchi Mazumdar is an Associate Professor at Jindal School of Journalism and Communication, O.P. Jindal Global University in India. Dr Priyam Sinha is an Alexander Von Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for Asian and African Studies, Humboldt University in Berlin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

For a long time many (although by no means all) scholars saw the relationship between capitalism and democracy as mutually reinforcing: economic competition and growth were expected to sustain democratic competition and improve governance and public good delivery for citizens, in turn creating a better environment for capitalist competition to flourish. But as capitalism has changed and has in many respects freed itself from the constraints of the state and of democratic processes, it has unleashed a new era of extreme wealth accumulation, deregulated markets, weak states, unresponsive political elites, and choiceless democracies. In this episode, CEDAR host Licia Cianetti talks to Rachel Riedl about her recent essay on “Neoliberalism and the Third Wave” to better understand why and how this happened and what we can do about it. This episode is part of PPP's ongoing collaboration with the Journal of Democracy. Rachel Beatty Riedl is Professor of public policy and government at Cornell University and the Peggy J. Koenig '78 Director of the Brooks Center on Global Democracy. Her latest co-edited book is entitled Global Challenges to Democracy: Comparative Perspectives on Backsliding, Autocracy, and Resilience (CUP 2025). Licia Cianetti is Lecturer in Political Science and International Studies at the University of Birmingham and Deputy Founding Director of CEDAR. Her latest publication is “What is a “regime”? Three definitions and their implications for the future of regime studies” (Democratization, 2025). 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. 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 sweeping new history of humanity, told through the prism of our ever-changing moral norms and values, Hanno Sauer shows how modern society is just the latest step in the long evolution of good and evil and everything in between. What makes us moral beings? How do we decide what is good and what is evil? And has it always been that way? Hanno Sauer's sweeping new history of humanity, covering five million years of our universal moral values, comes at a crucial moment of crisis for those values, and helps to explain how they arose -- and why we need them. We humans were born to cooperate, but everywhere we find ourselves in conflict. The way we live together has changed fundamentally in recent decades: global mobility, demographic upheaval, migration movements, and digital networking, have all called the moral foundations of human communities into question. Modern societies are in crisis: a shared universal morality seems to be a thing of the past. Hanno Sauer explains why this appearance is deceptive: in fact, there are universal values that all people share. If we understand the origin of our morality, we can understand its future too. With philosophical expertise and empirical data, Sauer explains how processes of biological, cultural, social, and historical evolution shaped the moral grammar that defines our present. Seven chapters recount the crucial moral upheavals of human history showing how the emergence of humankind five million years ago, the rise of first civilizations 5,000 years ago, and the dynamics of moral progress in the last fifty years are interrelated. This genealogical perspective allows us, on the one hand, to see the contradictions and potential conflicts of our moral identities; on the other, it makes clear that we share fundamental values that apply to all human beings at all times. Sauer's elegant prose, translated into English by Jo Heinrich, brings the history of humanity to vivid new life. Hanno Sauer is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy & Religious Studies at Utrecht University. He teaches ethics, metaethics and political philosophy. 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. Twitter. 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 The Frontier Effect: State Formation and Violence in Colombia (Cornell UP, 2020), Teo Ballvé challenges the notion that in Urabá, Colombia, the cause of the region's violent history and unruly contemporary condition is the absence of the state. Although he takes this locally oft-repeated claim seriously, he demonstrates that Urabá is more than a case of Hobbesian political disorder. Through his insightful exploration of war, paramilitary organizations, grassroots support and resistance, and drug-related violence, Ballvé argues that Urabá, rather than existing in statelessness, has actually been an intense and persistent site of state-building projects. Indeed, these projects have thrust together an unlikely gathering of guerilla groups, drug-trafficking paramilitaries, military strategists, technocratic planners, local politicians, and development experts each seeking to give concrete coherence to the inherently unwieldy abstraction of "the state" in a space in which it supposedly does not exist. By untangling this odd mix, Ballvé reveals how Colombia's violent conflicts have produced surprisingly coherent and resilient, if not at all benevolent, regimes of rule. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Joseph Gfroerer spent nearly 40 years working as a statistician for the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). Starting in 1988, when the American drug war was taking its current shape, he led the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), one of the federal government's largest and most important ongoing health surveys that tracks Americans' use of illegal drugs, prescription drugs, alcohol and tobacco. War Stories from the Drug Survey: How Culture, Politics, and Statistics Shaped the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (Cambridge UP, 2018), written after he retired, shows where the survey came from, details how it gathers information, and tracks the impact that the shifting cultural and political climate surrounding drug use played on how these statistics were understood. Gfroerer provides necessary insight on what drug use statistics have meant, how they've been used (and misused), and what this means for our understanding of drug use in America today. Emily Dufton is the author of Grass Roots: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Marijuana in America (Basic Books, 2017). A drug historian and writer, her second book, on the development of the opioid addiction medication industry, is under contract with the University of Chicago 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

Sanctions have become the go-to foreign policy tool for the United States. Coercive economic measures such as trade tariffs, financial penalties, and export controls affect large numbers of companies and states across the globe. Some of these penalties target nonstate actors, such as Colombian drug cartels and Islamist terror groups; others apply to entire countries, including North Korea, Iran, and Russia. U.S. policy makers see sanctions as a low-cost tactic, but in reality these measures often fail to achieve their intended goals--and their potent side effects can even harm American interests.  Backfire: How Sanctions Reshape the World Against U.S. Interests (Columbia UP, 2022) explores the surprising ways sanctions affect multinational companies, governments, and ultimately millions of people around the world. Drawing on interviews with experts, policy makers, and people in sanctioned countries, Agathe Demarais examines the unintended consequences of the use of sanctions as a diplomatic weapon. The proliferation of sanctions spurs efforts to evade them, as states and firms seek ways to circumvent U.S. penalties. This is only part of the story. Sanctions also reshape relations between countries, pushing governments that are at odds with the U.S. closer to each other--or, increasingly, to Russia and China.  Full of counterintuitive insights spanning a wide range of topics, from commodities markets in Russia to Iran's COVID response and China's cryptocurrency ambitions, Backfire reveals how sanctions are transforming geopolitics and the global economy--as well as diminishing U.S. influence. This insider's account is an eye-opening, accessible, and timely book that sheds light on the future of sanctions in an increasingly multipolar world. Mathias Fuelling is a doctoral candidate in History at Temple University, working on a political history of Czechoslovakia in the immediate post-WWII years. He can be found on Twitter at https://twitter.com/bucephalus424 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 sitting Democratic president who chooses not to run for re-election, a vice president running out of the president's shadow, and a Republican nominee trying to make a political comeback amidst accusations of collusion – welcome to the 2024 1968 presidential election. What we think we know about the election has been challenged, however, by a new book by Luke A. Nichter, a professor of history and presidential studies at Chapman University. In The Year That Broke Politics: Collusion and Chaos in the Presidential Election of 1968 (Yale UP, 2024) Nichter reexamines the campaign and shows how the ‘68 election foreshadowed our current political landscape. The 1968 presidential race was a contentious battle between vice president Hubert Humphrey, Republican Richard Nixon, and former Alabama governor George Wallace. The United States was reeling from the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy and was bitterly divided on the Vietnam War and domestic issues, including civil rights and rising crime. Drawing on previously unexamined archives and numerous interviews, Luke A. Nichter upends the conventional understanding of the campaign. Nichter chronicles how the evangelist Billy Graham met with Johnson after the president's attempt to reenter the race was stymied by his own party, and offered him a deal: Nixon, if elected, would continue Johnson's Vietnam War policy and also not oppose his Great Society, if Johnson would soften his support for Humphrey. Johnson agreed. Nichter also shows that Johnson was far more active in the campaign than has previously been described; that Humphrey's resurgence in October had nothing to do with his changing his position on the war; that Nixon's “Southern Strategy” has been misunderstood, since he hardly even campaigned there; and that Wallace's appeal went far beyond the South and anticipated today's Republican populism. This eye-opening account of the political calculations and maneuvering that decided this fiercely fought election reshapes our understanding of a key moment in twentieth-century American history. Dr. Andrew O. Pace is a historian of the US in the world who specializes in the moral fog of war. He is currently a DPAA Research Partner Fellow at the University of Southern Mississippi and a co-host of the Diplomatic History Channel on the New Books Network. He is also working on a book about the reversal in US grand strategy from victory at all costs in World War II to peace at any price in the Vietnam War. He can be reached at andrew.pace@usm.edu or via https://www.andrewopace.com/. Andrew is not an employee of DPAA, he supports DPAA through a partnership. The views presented are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of DPAA, DoD or its components.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Emerging from an award-winning article in International Security, China's Gambit examines when, why, and how China attempts to coerce states over perceived threats to its national security. Since 1990, China has used coercion for territorial disputes and issues related to Taiwan and Tibet, yet China is curiously selective in the timing, target, and tools of coercion. This book offers a new and generalizable cost-balancing theory to explain states' coercion decisions. It demonstrates that China does not coerce frequently and uses military coercion less when it becomes stronger, resorting primarily to non-militarized tools. Leveraging rich empirical evidence, including primary Chinese documents and interviews with Chinese and foreign officials, this book explains how contemporary rising powers translate their power into influence and offers a new framework for explaining states' coercion decisions in an era of economic interdependence, particularly how contemporary global economic interdependence affects rising powers' foreign security policies. Nomeh Anthony Kanayo, Ph.D. Candidate in International Relations at Florida International University, with research interest in Africa's diaspora relations, African-China relations, great power rivalry and IR theories. Check out my new article https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sciaf.2025.e02699 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 a 2012 opinion piece bemoaning the state of the US Senate, Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank cited a “leading theory: There are no giants in the chamber today.” Among the respected members who once walked the Senate floor, admired for their expertise and with a stature that went beyond party, Milbank counted Sam Nunn (D-GA). Nunn served in the Senate for four terms beginning in 1972, at a moment when domestic politics and foreign policy were undergoing far-reaching changes. As a member and then chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, he had a vital impact on most of the crucial national security and defense issues of the Cold War era and the “new world order” that followed—issues that included the revitalization of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's military capability, US-Soviet relations, national defense reorganization and reform, the Persian Gulf conflict, and nuclear arms control. In this first full account of Nunn's senatorial career, Frank Leith Jones reveals how, as a congressional leader and “shadow secretary of defense,” Nunn helped win the Cold War, constructing the foundation for the defense and foreign policies of the 1970s and 1980s that secured the United States and its allies from the Soviet threat. At a time of bitter political polarization and partisanship, Nunn's reputation remains that of a statesman with a record of bipartisanship and a dedication to US national interests above all. His career, as recounted in Sam Nunn: Statesman of the Nuclear Age (University Press of Kansas, 2020), provides both a valuable lesson in the relationships among the US government, foreign powers, and societies and a welcome reminder of the capacity of Congress, even a lone senator, to promote and enact policies that can make the country, and the world, a better and safer place. Frank Leith Jones is professor of security studies and the General C. Marshall Chair of Military Studies in the Department of National Security and Strategy at the US Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. His published work includes Blowtorch: Robert Komer, Vietnam, and American Cold War Strategy. Arya Hariharan is a lawyer in politics. She spends much of her time working on congressional investigations and addressing challenges to the rule of law. You can reach her at arya.hariharan@gmail.com or Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Notre Dame University Political Scientists Dave Campbell and Christina Wolbrecht have a new book that focuses on the impression that female candidates make on young people, specifically on young people in the United States. This is a fascinating analysis since it fleshes out, with a sizeable study, the idea that candidates running for office, particularly female candidates, leave a lasting impact on younger people, even if they do not win. Studying role models has not been a focus in political science per se, but Campbell and Wolbrecht have brought together work from social psychology, democratic theory, political science, and gender studies to craft an understanding of role models within the context of campaigns and elections.See Jane Run: How Women Politicians Matter for Young People⁠ (U of Chicago Press, 2025) is an important exploration of the connection between those who run for office, particularly those who may look different than the expected “norm”, and how that very action has long-term impacts on younger voters, particularly adolescents and teenagers. One of the unique perspectives of the research in See Jane Run is the focus on younger people and their engagement with politics. As the authors note, there is not that much political science research that explores the interactions between young people and politics—especially before those young people can vote. The authors also explain that teenagers generally identify with a partisan affiliation, which means that Campbell and Wolbrecht were able to sort the individuals into partisan groups and track the impact of women candidates within these partisan contexts. They found that female candidates clearly influenced two distinct groups within the study: Democratic young women and Republican young men. Young women saw these female candidates (both Republican and Democratic) as reflecting a more inclusive political environment, and the analysis suggests that this has a long-term impact, making these young women more engaged with the political process and democracy over time. The Republican young men responded as well, seeing female candidates as pursuing something—political activity—that they determined they were also qualified to pursue. The outcomes of the research in See Jane Run: How Women Politicians Matter for Young People also had racial dimensions, including exploring the impact on young Black men, who became less engaged in politics when a woman of color was running for office. See Jane Run: How Women Politicians Matter for Young People explores what has been essentially folklore about the impact of political role models on young people by pulling together data and research to flesh out an understanding of these notions that we all have about candidates for political office, role models, and the impacts on younger people. Please check out Brain Lair Books (in South Bend, Indiana or online) to purchase a copy of See Jane Run. 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 (University Press of Kansas, 2022), 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

Body Count: The War on Terror and Civilian Deaths in Iraq (Bristol University Press, 2021), Lily Hamourtziadou's investigation into civilian victims during the conflicts that followed the US-led coalition's 2003 invasion of Iraq provides important new perspectives on the human cost of the War on Terror. From early fighting to the withdrawal and return of coalition troops, the Arab Spring and the rise of ISIS, the book explores the scale and causes of deaths and places them in the contexts of power struggles, US foreign policy and radicalisation. Casting fresh light on not just the conflict but international geopolitics and the history of Iraq, it constructs a unique and insightful human security approach to war. Lily Hamourtziadou is Senior Lecturer in Criminology with Security Studies and Deputy Course Director at Birmingham City University, and Principal Researcher of Iraq Body Count, which maintains the largest public database of violent civilian deaths. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Indonesia's judicial system has long been described as dysfunctional. Many of its problems developed out of decades of authoritarian rule, which began in the last few years of the reign of Indonesia's first president, Soekarno. By the time President Soeharto's regime fell in 1998, the judiciary had virtually collapsed. Judicial dependence on government, inefficiency and corruption were commonly seen as the main indicators of poor performance, resulting in very low levels of public trust in the courts. To address these problems, reformists focused on improving judicial independence. Yet while independence is a basic prerequisite for adequate judicial performance, much depends on how this independence is exercised. Judicial Dysfunction in Indonesia (Melbourne UP, 2023) demonstrates that Indonesian courts have tended to act without accountability and offers detailed analysis of highly controversial decisions by Indonesian courts, many of which have been of major political significance, both domestically and internationally. It sets out in concrete terms, for the first time, how bribes are negotiated and paid to judges and demonstrates that judges have issued poor decisions and engaged in corruption and other misconduct, largely without fear of retribution. Further, it explores unsafe convictions and public pressure as a threat to judicial independence. Judicial Dysfunction in Indonesia shines a sorely needed empirical light on the Indonesian judicial system, and is an essential resource for readers, scholars and students of Indonesian law and society. Simon Butt is Professor of Indonesian Law and Director of the Centre for Asian and Pacific Law at the University of Sydney. Professor Michele Ford is Professor of Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Sydney, Australia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

My village, my kampung. The term kampung is a Malay word, referring to a "village hamlet" or "urban informal settlement." As rapid urbanization takes place both regionally and globally, the designation of kampung accrued a negative connotation associated with impoverishment and obsolescence. However, commencing in the mid-2010s, a countermovement aimed at the revitalization of kampung emerged in Indonesia, involving locals, activists, and scholars. In this episode of the Nordic Asia Podcast, Prof. Julie Yu-Wen Chen from the University of Helsinki talks to Prof. Melani Budianta from the Cultural Commission of the Indonesian Academy of Sciences about the practice of cultural studies within the Asian context, with a specific emphasis on her native Indonesia, where her dual role as an academic and activist in Kampung “commoning” has constituted a significant odyssey in the construction of knowledge. The term “commoning” refers to a collective reservoir of resources intended for community sharing in the kampung context. Professor Budianta has shared her experiences in her works titled Smart Kampung: Doing Cultural Studies in the Global South and Lumbung Commoning: Reflections on Kampung Network Research/Activism. Julie Yu-Wen Chen is Professor of Chinese Studies and Asian studies coordinator at the Department of Cultures at the University of Helsinki (Finland). Since 2023, she has been involved in the EUVIP: The EU in the Volatile Indo-Pacific Region, a project funded by the European Union's Horizon Europe coordination and support action 10107906 (HORIZON-WIDERA-2021-ACCESS-03). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

For decades, Democratic politicians have frustrated progressives by tinkering around the margins of policy while shying away from truly ambitious change. What happened to bold political vision on the left, and what shrunk the very horizons of possibility? In Thinking like an Economist, Elizabeth Popp Berman tells the story of how a distinctive way of thinking—an “economic style of reasoning”—became dominant in Washington between the 1960s and the 1980s and how it continues to dramatically narrow debates over public policy today. Introduced by liberal technocrats who hoped to improve government, this way of thinking was grounded in economics but also transformed law and policy. At its core was an economic understanding of efficiency, and its advocates often found themselves allied with Republicans and in conflict with liberal Democrats who argued for rights, equality, and limits on corporate power. By the Carter administration, economic reasoning had spread throughout government policy and laws affecting poverty, healthcare, antitrust, transportation, and the environment. Fearing waste and overspending, liberals reined in their ambitions for decades to come, even as Reagan and his Republican successors argued for economic efficiency only when it helped their own goals.A compelling account that illuminates what brought American politics to its current state, Thinking like an Economist also offers critical lessons for the future. With the political left resurgent today, Democrats seem poised to break with the past—but doing so will require abandoning the shibboleth of economic efficiency and successfully advocating new ways of thinking about policy. Elizabeth Popp Berman is Director and Richard H. Price Professor of Organizational Studies at the University of Michigan and the author of Creating the Market University: How Academic Science Became an Economic Engine (Princeton). 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. Twitter. 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 wargaming renaissance has been underway in the US military. Having proven to be the most effective recruitment tool of the 21st century, games have proliferated across all levels of the military's strategic, operational, training, and rehabilitation architecture. From board games to high-tech digital and virtual reality platforms, wargames enable milarites to learn lessons from the past, play out possible responses to current crises, and explore the effectiveness of future operations and strategies. From the Russian invasion of Ukraine to the Covid 19 pandemic, today wargames are a key means by which the US military--and many other militaries--make plans and fight wars. Politics of Play is the first academic book dedicated to the US military wargaming renaissance. Grounded in 100 hours of interviews undertaken by the author during fieldwork with US military wargamers, it explores how games intervene in players' cognitive and affective registers using immersion and the drive to win. In addition, Politics of Play develops a new theory of play grounded in the thought of Jacques Derrida which seeks to expose and disrupt the politics and power relations at work in the use of games to produce warfighters in the digital age. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Along with the rise of Mussolini's fascist regime, the interwar years in Italy also saw the widespread development of its modernist interior design and furnishing practices. While the regime's politics were overtly manifest in monumental government architecture, Furnishing Fascism: Modernist Design and Politics in Italy (University of Minnesota Press, 2025) by Dr. Ignacio G. Galán examines the subtler yet effective role of household goods and decor in the cultivation of Italy's exclusionary sense of national identity. Presenting a fresh look at the work of various architects and designers, including iconic figures such as Gio Ponti and Carlo Enrico Rava, Dr. Galán explores how seemingly neutral products of everyday life contributed to the propagation of fascist ideology. Through extensive promotion in popular magazines and department stores, on the film sets of Cinecittà Studios, and throughout the country's colonial territories, Italy's modernist design practices were part of a larger political project that aimed to produce a totalizing image of cultural hegemony. Interweaving design theory, architectural history, and media scholarship, Furnishing Fascism reexamines the period's so-called minor arts to reveal the political entanglement of modernism in early twentieth-century Italy and offers valuable insight into the complications of cultural production under the auspices of authoritarian power. 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 we're continuing our series on philosopher Harry Frankfurt's seminal work, On Bullshit. Our guest is Michael Patrick Lynch, Provost Professor of the Humanities and Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut. Michael is the author of the recently published book, On Truth in Politics: Why Democracy Demands It (Princeton University Press, 2025). The topic of our discussion today will be on bullshit in politics, and how we might think about ways to combat it. Caleb Zakarin is editor 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

In his classic essay on the fear of breakdown, Donald Winnicott famously conveys to a patient that the disaster powerfully feared has, in fact, already happened. Taking her cue from Winnicott, Noëlle McAfee's Fear of Breakdown: Psychoanalysis and Politics (Columbia University Press, 2019), explores the implications of breakdown fears for the practice of democracy. Democracy, as you may dimly recall, demands the capacity to bear difference, tolerate loss, and to speak into the unknown. Meanwhile we have come to live in a world where, if my clinical practice and personal life are any indication, people often prefer writing to speaking. Patients who want to make a schedule change--never a neutral event in psychoanalysis—write me. I say, addressing the resistance, “This is a talking cure. Get your money's worth. Speak!” Among intimates, bad news is something I too often read about. I surmise that in speaking desire or conveying pain, a fantasized recipient is sought, an ideal listener, who, like a blow up doll lover can be invoked, controlled and then deflated at will. Circling back to difference and loss, ideas that do not mirror our already existing thoughts find themselves batted out of the park to an elsewhere not worth enunciating. Cultivating a protective bubble—such a heartbreak right?  It seems there is something about democracy that frightens the shit out of us. Deploying the work of Winnicott, Klein, Green and Kristeva, Mcafee reminds us of our original loss—what she calls “plenum”. That loss, to the degree it is recognized, initiates our undoing. Mother's other—be it her lover, her piano lessons, a visit to the dentist for a cavity—tears a hole in our emotional shield. In her wake, we cling to seemingly strong leaders, a father, or failing that potent ideologies reeking of misogyny, all the while hoping for compensation for an unfathomable loss. Embedded within democracy lies the demand that we see other than ourselves. This demand challenges the thin-skinned among us. And all of us are thin-skinned from time to time. How to manage? Mcafee adds her voice to the popular chorus of those practicing applied psychoanalysis and suggests we embrace mourning. It is an inarguable position yet also nice work if you can get it! Of course, with the original disaster elided, like sleepwalkers in our night fog, we will helplessly seek it out; worse, we will make it manifest, with a vengeance. What is not remembered gets repeated. Trapped in America, as I am, one wonders about democracy. What might lure us to revisit the sight of the disaster, “the thing itself',” to quote Adrienne Rich, “and not the myth?” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Ecological crises threaten all forms of life on earth. Democracy too is endangered, as popular discontent, elite malfeasance, and unresponsive institutions imperil its survival. Present political concepts have proven inadequate to meeting these challenges, and their inadequacies are themselves symptoms of the failures of prevailing political, cultural, and ecological stories and practices.This book offers a new vision of ecological and participatory democratic life for a time of crisis. Identifying myth and ritual as key resources for contemporary politics, Earthborn Democracy excavates practices and narratives that illustrate the interdependence necessary to inspire ecological renewal. It tells stories of multispecies agency and egalitarian political organization across history, from ancient Mesopotamia and the precolonial Americas to contemporary social movements, emphasizing Indigenous traditions and resistance. Resonating across these practices and stories past and present is a belief that we are all―human as well as nonhuman―earthborn, and this can serve as the basis for reimagining democracy. Allying visionary political theory with environmental activism, Earthborn Democracy: A Political Theory of Entangled Life (Columbia UP, 2024) provides a foundation and a guide for collective action in pursuit of earthly flourishing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Two juxtaposed years frame the subject matter of Moving Memory: Remembering Palestine in Postdictatorship Chile. In one, 1973, General Augusto Pinochet's troops stormed Chile's presidential palace. In the other, 1948, Zionist militias expelled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homeland. That 1973 should move memories in Chile is obvious. That 1948 does is because Chile is home to the largest number of Palestinians outside the Middle East. Yet, while most are descended from people who migrated prior to the expulsion, 1948 and its consequences are what move Chilean Palestinians to act together politically, whereas 1973 divides them. In this episode of New Books in Interpretive Political and Social Science, Siri Shwabe discusses how her ethnographic research in Santiago explored the paradoxical relationship between the movement of two collective memories of violence and dispossession: an ambivalent one in the recent lived past, and the other residing in a distant land and the struggle for survival of an expelled and relentlessly attacked people whose trauma the diaspora adopts and differently experiences. Like this episode? Why not check out others on the New Books Network, including Kevin Funk talking about Rooted Globalism: Arab–Latin American Business Elites and the Politics of Global Imaginaries, or Tahrir Hamdi on Imagining Palestine: Cultures of Exile and National Identity. Looking for something to read? Siri recommendsVibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things by Jane Bennett. 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 does the 'rule of law' really mean in China? How does it shape the country's politics, both at home and on the world stage? And why should it matter to the rest of us when universal norms are being challenged? Dr. Tabita Rosendal from the Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies at Lund University, talks to Dr. Martin Lavicka, a scholar of Chinese studies, about his latest project on the rule of law in the Chinese context. Dr. Martin Lavicka is a visiting research fellow at the Department of History and the Centre of East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University. Martin is the PI of the project CLAW: Chinese Conceptualisation of the Rule of Law: Challenges for the International Legal Order. Martin's research has been supported by the OP JAC Project “MSCA Fellowships at Palacký University II.” CZ.02.01.01/00/22_010/0006945 at Palacký University Olomouc, Czech Republic. Episode producer: Julia Olsson Links: ResearchGate profile AcademiaEdu profile Martin's latest article “Rule of Law with Chinese Characteristics: A Contested Landscape” The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the following academic partners: Asia Centre, University of Tartu (Estonia) Asian studies, University of Helsinki (Finland) Centre for Asian Studies, Vytautas Magnus University (Lithuania) Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University (Sweden) Centre for East Asian Studies, University of Turku (Finland) Norwegian Network for Asian Studies This podcast was recorded in May 2025 in the wonderful podcast studio at Altitude, Collab Arena in The Loop. 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'm thrilled to announce a new partnership with Genocide Studies International. GSI is one of the preeminent journals in the field of Genocide Studies. Published by the University of Toronto Press and housed in the Zoryan Institute, GSI is dedicated to “to raising knowledge and awareness among scholars, policy makers, and civil society actors by providing a forum for the critical analysis of genocide, human rights, crimes against humanity, and related mass atrocities.” With this new partnership, I'll be bringing you interviews with the editors and authors of cutting-edge articles and special editions on the journal. This isn't new—we've done this with several other journals before. But by formalizing our partnership, we hope you'll have more access to the best recent research and analysis on the causes, course and consequences of mass atrocity violence. It's a partnership that enriches both organizations. In a few weeks, you'll hear from Alex Alvarez, the editor of a new special issue on genocide education. But first I got a chance to talk with Henry Thierault, one of the editors of the journal, and Megan Reid, Deputy Executive Director of the Zoryan Institute. We discuss the editorial vision of the journal, the Zoryan Institute's role in genocide education and prevention, and the reasons we're so excited about the partnership. I hope you enjoy our discussion. Kelly McFall is Professor of History and Director of the Honors Program at Newman University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

As the crisis of democratic capitalism sweeps the globe, The Great Retreat: How Political Parties Should Behave and Why They Don't (Oxford University Press, 2025) makes the controversial argument that what democracies require most are stronger political parties that serve as intermediaries between citizens and governments. Once a centralizing force of the democratic process, political parties have eroded over the past fifty years. Parties now rank among the most unpopular institutions in society--less trusted than business, the police, and the media. Identification with parties has plummeted, and even those who are loyal to a party report feeling that parties care more about special interests than about regular citizens. What does a "good" political party look like? Why do we urgently need them? And how do we get them? The Great Retreat explores the development of political parties as democracy expanded across the West in the nineteenth century. It focuses in particular on mass parties, and the ways they served as intermediaries that fostered ties between citizens and governments. While parties have become professionalized and nationalized, they have lost the robust organizational density that made them effective representatives. After the Cold War, a neoliberal economic consensus, changes to campaign finance, and shifting party priorities weakened the party systems of Western democracies. As Didi Kuo argues, this erosion of political parties has contributed to the recent crisis of democratic capitalism, as weak parties have ceded governance to the private sector. For democracy to adapt to a new era of global capitalism, Kuo makes the case that we need strong intermediaries like mass parties--socially embedded institutions with deep connections to communities and citizens. Parties are essential to long-term democratic stability and economic growth, while the breakdown of party systems, on the other hand, has historically led to democratic collapse. As trust in political parties has plummeted, The Great Retreat provides a powerful defense of political parties--for without parties, democratic representation is impossible. Didi Kuo is Center Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. Caleb Zakarin is editor 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

In this episode of the CEU Review of Books Podcast I sat down with Dr Doina Anca Cretu to talk about her first book, Foreign Aid and State Building in Interwar Romania: In Quest of an Ideal, published by Stanford University Press. In the podcast we talk about Anca's academic background, how she came to research foreign aid in Romania, any surprises she encountered during her research, the nature of foreign aid in interwar Romania, and how to approach publishing a first monograph. The CEU Review of Books Podcast Series explores the questions that affect us all through in-depth talks with researchers, policy makers, journalists, academics and others. We bring the most current research linked to Central Europe through these discussions. At the CEU Review of Books, we encourage an open discussion that challenges conventional assumptions to foster a vibrant debate. Visit our website to read our latest reviews, long reads and interviews. 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 Angela K. Lewis-Maddox has pulled together an important and useful edited volume focusing on black women political scientists and their experiences in the discipline itself and in studying topics that include race and gender. Political Science, as a discipline, is a bit more than 100 years old, and studies politics, power, institutions, policy, methodology, and theory. These are the over-arching umbrellas within the discipline and many of the specific areas within political science take up questions that are connected to these broad concepts. As with many dimensions of our society, race and gender play a role in the discipline itself and in what we study as political scientists. But race and gender have also been considered tertiary issues within the discipline in terms of research. Disrupting Political Science: Black Women Reimagining the Discipline (SUNY Press, 2025) is both autobiographical for some of the contributors as well as a rigorous interrogation of political science as a discipline. Lewis-Maddox has assembled a group of scholars across rank and position, region and geography, kinds of institutions, and scholarly emphasis. This diverse assembly of contributors have reflected on their particular experience within political science and have written about that experience from a variety of perspectives and approaches. This is a rich and deep study of those who have found themselves to be “space invaders”—black women in spaces and places that are not designed for them. These women all bring the experience of interposing themselves in a place or in places where they are not accepted. And yet they have also persevered in these spaces, in institutions, and within the discipline, and they have considered how they operate professionally and personally in “hostile” territory. Part of the thrust of Disrupting Political Science is to encourage the reimagining of political science as a discipline, to challenge the norms and expectations that have remained in place for over a century. Angela K. Lewis-Maddox and her assembly of contributing authors have done a great service to the discipline of Political Science in publishing these analyses and considerations. Disrupting Political Science: Black Women Reimagining the Discipline is shining a light on those who have often been obscured within the boundaries of the academic discipline—either because of who they are or because of what they study. Political Science is truly an expansive discipline, and to understand the world in which we live, individuals or groups should not be marginalized or erased, but re-centered and engaged. This book goes far in helping to refocus and consider otherwise obscured dimensions of political science and political scientists. 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 (University Press of Kansas, 2022), 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

Examining the conditions that not only blocked attempts to make America great again, but actively made the country worse, Why America Didn't Become Great Again (Routledge, 2025) identifies those organizations, institutions, politicians and prominent characters in the forefront of the economic and social policies - ultimately asking who is responsible. While the period from the late 1970s to 2020s became the best of times for America's corporate class, as profits grew along with the wealth and income that they delivered for their stockholders and management, their goal was to set new rules for the rest of us to live by, not as special interests but with a clear class agenda - for which institutions have been organized, government policies reoriented, economists, journalists and politicians recruited, funded and promoted. And so it has not been the best of times for working families as inequality, stagnant wages, debt, and ever longer working hours became their fate. This book critically analyses those who very deliberately set out to implement policies enacted at the state and federal level in order to redistribute wealth and income upwards and change the balance of power in the United States in response to the class, gender and racial challenges that resulted in compressed income and wealth differentials. An essential book on contemporary inequality in America, Why America Didn't Become Great Again surveys the past near half century that have resulted in American economic instability and inequality, environmental crisis, a crumbling physical and harmful social infrastructure, among the very worst health outcomes, child poverty, food insecurity and social mobility of the industrialized countries culminating in a Trump regime and the road to further ruin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Saving Liberalism from Itself: The Spirit of Political Participation Bristol UP, 2022) By Timothy Stacey In the wake of populism, Timothy Stacey's book critically reflects on what is missing from the liberal project with the aim of saving liberalism. It explains that populists have harnessed myth, ritual, magic and tradition to advance their ambitions, and why opponents need to embrace rather than eschew them. Using examples of liberally oriented activists in Vancouver, it presents an accessible theorization of these quasi-religious concepts in secular life. The result is to provide both a new theoretical understanding of why liberalism fails to engage people, and a toolkit for campaigners, policymakers and academics seeking to bridge the gap between liberal aspirations and lived experiences, in order to promote political engagement and to create unity out of division. Timothy Stacey is Researcher in the Urban Future Studio at Utrecht University. 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

Rising prosperity was supposed to bring democracy to China, yet the Communist Party's political monopoly endures. How? Minxin Pei looks to the surveillance state. Though renowned for high-tech repression, China's surveillance system is above all a labor-intensive project. Pei delves into the human sources of coercion at the foundation of CCP power, examining the historical development of China's surveillance state, its relationship to economic modernization and political liberalization, and what might destabilize it in the future. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Human rights are among our most pressing issues today. But rights promoters have reached an impasse in their effort to achieve rights for all. Human Rights for Pragmatists (Princeton University Press, 2022) explains why: activists prioritize universal legal and moral norms, backed by the public shaming of violators, but in fact, rights prevail only when they serve the interests of powerful local constituencies. Jack Snyder demonstrates that where local power and politics lead, rights follow. He presents an innovative roadmap for addressing a broad agenda of human rights concerns: impunity for atrocities, dilemmas of free speech in the age of social media, entrenched abuses of women's rights, and more.Exploring the historical development of human rights around the globe, Snyder shows that liberal rights–based states have experienced a competitive edge over authoritarian regimes in the modern era. He focuses on the role of power, the interests of individuals and the groups they form, and the dynamics of bargaining and coalitions among those groups. The path to human rights entails transitioning from a social order grounded in patronage and favoritism to one dedicated to equal treatment under impersonal rules. Rights flourish when they benefit dominant local actors with the clout to persuade ambivalent peers. Activists, policymakers, and others attempting to advance rights should embrace a tailored strategy, one that acknowledges local power structures and cultural practices.Constructively turning the mainstream framework of human rights advocacy on its head, Human Rights for Pragmatists offers tangible steps that all advocates can take to move the rights project forward. Our guest is Jack Snyder, the Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International Relations in the Department of Political Science and the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia. 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

About the Book Over the last decade, election campaigns in India have undergone a dramatic shift. Political parties increasingly rely on political consulting firms, social media volunteers, pollsters, data-driven insights, and hashtag wars to mobilize voters. What is driving these changes in the landscape of electioneering? The Backstage of Democracy: India's Election Campaigns and the People Who Manage Them (Cambridge UP, 2024) takes readers to the hidden arena of strategizing and deliberations that takes place between politicians and a new cabal of political professionals as they organize election campaigns in India. The book argues that this change is not reducible to a story of technological innovations alone. Rather, it is indicative of a new political culture where ideas of political expertise, the distribution of power within parties, and citizens' attitudes towards political participation have undergone a profound change. Marshalling an eclectic range of data sources, the book breaks new ground on how we understand the workings of India's electoral and party politics. About the Author Amogh Dhar Sharma is Departmental Lecturer in the Oxford Department of International Development, University of Oxford. After receiving his PhD from the University of Oxford, he was awarded an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) postdoctoral fellowship. His research explores the interface between politics and technology, political communication and histories of science and technology. 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 Southern Fault Line: How Race, Class, and Region Shaped One Family's History (Oxford University Press, 2025) explores the under-appreciated division in the South between the oligarchic rule of plantation owners and industrialists on the one hand, and the more democratic mindset of the mountain-dwelling small farmers on the other. These two mindsets were in continual tension from the 1800s to the 1960s, when the adherents of the more democratic side of the struggle capitulated to the oligarchical side in response to the Civil Rights movement. Bryan Jones draws from his own family's centuries-old history in the region to explore the rise and fall of the "two minds" of the South. Through a comparison of the experiences of a slaveholding line in his family with three non-slaveholding lines, Jones provides a rich history of the politics of both class and race in the region from the Founding era to the present. The slaveholding side of his family settled in Black Belt Alabama, while ancestral members of the other side of his family were poorer uplanders. In the 1890s, the latter supported the burgeoning populist movement, which for a short window of time tried to unite poor Blacks and poor whites against the patrician planter class and industrialists. After a series of close elections, the planter class was able to stanch the populist tide. They did this in large part by sowing racial division among populism's supporters. Indeed, one of Jones' ancestors helped draft the 1901 Alabama constitution that made Jim Crow the law of the state. Throughout, Jones shows how deep the political differences were between the two regions, with oligarchy characterizing the slaveholding region and a more democratic ethos shaping the non-slaveholding areas. Jones serves as the final observer, a white boy observing not only the demise of the Jim Crow South, but--in the wake of the Civil Rights movement--the demise of the mountain democratic South as well. Today, the vast majority of Southern whites regardless of class support an oligarchical Republican Party. Bryan Jones is J.J."Jake" Pickle Regents' Chair in Congressional Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Caleb Zakarin is editor 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

Globally, the liberal international order has been under pressure for quite some time, but we often tend to discuss this in relation to big international players such as the United States and China. But how do small states like Singapore navigate and shape this increasingly contested space? Join Petra Alderman as she talks to Dylan Loh about Singapore's understanding of the liberal international order, its position on liberal democratic values and human rights, its relations with big international players, and the ways in which this small city state seeks to uphold and modify the liberal international order, so it better aligns with its own interests. Read Dylan's article ‘Singapore's conception of the liberal international order as a small state' in International Affairs. *** This episode was originally recorded in November 2024. *** Dylan Loh is an Assistant Professor at the Public Policy and Global Affairs programme, at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He studies China's foreign policy, international diplomacy, and ASEAN regionalism. He is the author of a recently published book ‘China's Rising Foreign Ministry: Practices and Representations of Assertive Diplomacy' which was published by Stanford University Press (2024). Petra Alderman is a researcher, CEDAR affiliate, and a manager of the LSE Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the world witnessed the “creative, freewheeling, darkly humorous, and deeply resilient society” that is contemporary Ukraine. In this timely and original history, a bestseller in Ukraine, the historian Yaroslav Hrytsak tells the sweeping story of his nation through a meticulous examination of the major events, conflicts, and developments that have shaped it over the course of centuries. Hrytsak, is a Ukrainian historian and public intellectual. Professor of the Ukrainian Catholic University and Honorary Professor of the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, Hrytsak has taught at Columbia and Harvard Universities and was a guest lecturer at the Central European University in Budapest. He is the author of many historical books, including several bestsellers and the recipient of numerous national and international awards. weaves a rich and detailed tapestry of a country in continual transformation. Ukraine: The Forging of a Nation (PublicAffairs, 2024) is essential reading for anyone who wants to better understand Ukraine's dramatic past and its global significance--from the 17th-century Cossack uprising to the collapse of the USSR in 1991 and Ukrainian independence, and from the evolution of the Ukrainian language to the warning signs that anticipated Russia's 2022 invasion. This book is the definitive story of Ukraine and its people, as told by one of its most celebrated voices. Sidney Michelini is a post-doctoral researcher working on Ecology, Climate, and Violence at the Peace Research Institute of Frankfurt (PRIF). 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 episode focuses on the mid-term elections in the Philippines which were held in May of this year, including all local elected positions, all seats in the House of Representatives, and twelve of the twenty-four seats in the Senate. The elections have been viewed as a reflection on the administration of President Ferdinand ‘Bongbong' Marcos, Jr. and as especially consequential for the future of Vice-President Sara Duterte. She was impeached by the House of Representatives in February 2025, setting the stage for a trial by the Senate, but with her continuing popularity making her a serious contender for the presidency in 2028. To interpret the mid-term elections, Dialogues on Southeast Asia has turned to Dr. Sharmila Parmanand, an Assistant Professor in Gender, Development and Globalisation in the Department of Gender Studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and also an Associate and member of the Management Committee of the LSE's Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre. Dr. Parmanand's research focuses on the intersection of gender and politics in the Philippines, ranging from sex work and migration policies to the connections between gender, nationalism, and democracy. She is currently working on her first book, titled Saving Our Sisters: The Politics of Anti-Trafficking and Sex Work in the Philippines, but she is also busy conducting research, writing, and publishing on other fronts, including a new collaborative project on queer activism across Southeast Asia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Nicole F. Watts's Republic of Dreams: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Struggles, and the Future of Iraqi Kurdistan (NYU Press, 2025) is a harrowing portrait of Iraqi Kurdistan and its history, as it weathers Hussein's genocidal campaign against the Kurds, a civil war, the US invasion of Iraq, the Arab Spring, and the sustained neglect of the city of Halabja. Watts, a former journalist and now professor of political science, has spent over a decade researching the struggles of the Kurdish people in Iraq, and in vivid, lyrical prose, she tells their story through the eyes of Peshawa, a young Muslim Kurd whose family barely survived the bombing and then fled for their lives.Throughout the book, the thread of Peshawa's story immerses readers in the everyday and extraordinary world of Iraqi Kurds between the late 1980s and 2022, exploring the meaning of home and dislocation in the wake of war and genocide.Based on over a hundred in-depth interviews with Iraqi Kurdish activists, journalists, elected officials, and community organizers, and hundreds of hours of conversations with Peshawa and his family, Republic of Dreams brings to vivid life the story of modern Kurdistan, and the Kurdish national dream to have their own homeland. 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'm thrilled to launch a brand new series for the Princeton UP Ideas Podcast. 20 years ago, Princeton University Press published a short volume with an excellent title: On Bullshit (Princeton UP, 2025). Written by philosopher Harry Frankfurt, On Bullshit was adapted from an essay that explored the meaning, uses, and consequences of bullshit. At just 80 pages, On Bullshit became a favorite of readers, selling over 1 million copies and spending 27 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. It's not often that a work of philosophy breaks through to the mainstream, but readers of On Bullshit quickly discover why. Harry's meditation on the meaning of bullshit can be read in one sitting, but the ideas have staying power. After you read Harry's book, you start to see bullshit everywhere and recognize it's uniquely pernicious effects on whatever's left of the public square. Harry wrote his book long before modern social media and AI-generated slop. He was unbelievably prescient, making On Bullshit required reading for today. Harry sadly passed in 2023 at 94 years old, but his ideas live on. In this series, we'll speak with scholars whose lives and work have been influenced by Harry and his seminal book. To kick things off, I'll be speaking with Pamela Hieronymi, one of Harry's former students. Pamela is Professor of Philosophy at UCLA and a leading scholar in the field of moral philosophy. Like Harry, her work has resonated outside the academy. She served as an advisor on the sitcom, The Good Place, which brought philosophical concepts like the trolley problem to a mainstream audience. For the first episode in the series, Pamela will introduce readers to both the book and the man who wrote it. In subsequent episodes, I'll speak with other scholars who explore Harry's notion of bullshit in politics, science, and more. If you haven't read On Bullshit, you should preorder the anniversary edition, which is set to release on August 5th. Now, let's have ourselves a bull session. Pamela Hieronymi is Professor of Philosophy at UCLA. Watch her lecture on the blame game. Caleb Zakarin is editor 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

This podcast episode, hosted by Kikee Doma Bhutia from the University of Tartu, features Nitasha Kaul, Professor of Politics, International Relations, and Critical Interdisciplinary Studies and Director of Centre for the Study of Democracy (CSD), University of Westminster, London, UK. The episode focuses on the Kashmir conflict between India and Pakistan. The discussion shows how the issue is shaped more by political narratives than by verified facts. Militant attacks, such as the one in Pahalgam, raise questions about accountability, but the governments of both countries often avoid proper investigation and turn instead to blame games and international lobbying. The episode also explores political shifts in India since 2014. It highlights the decline of democratic freedoms, the rise of Islamophobia, and increasing control over dissent. It points out how narratives about women's empowerment are often used for political purposes rather than real change. The conversation underlines the human cost of the conflict, including displacement, violence, and deepening religious divides. Also, about the potential role of international actors, including European and Nordic countries, in supporting human rights and democratic values. It suggests that greater attention to the situation in Kashmir, and the broader democratic developments in the region, could help encourage more inclusive and constructive approaches to long-standing conflicts. Kikee Doma Bhutia is a Research Fellow and India Coordinator at the Asia Centre, University of Tartu, Estonia. Her current research combines folkloristics, international relations and Asian studies, focusing on the role of religion and culture in times of crisis, national and regional identities, and geopolitics conflict between India and China Nitasha Kaul is a Professor of Politics, International Relations, and Critical Interdisciplinary Studies and Director of the Centre for the Study of Democracy (CSD) at the University of Westminster, London. With a background that spans economics, philosophy, creative writing, and international relations, her work explores the intersections of politics, identity, gender, and global justice Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science