New Books in Political Science

Does good democratic government require intelligent, moral, and productive citizens? Can our political institutions educate the kind of citizens we wish or need to have? With recent arguments "against democracy" and fears about the rise of populism, there is growing scepticism about whether liberalism and democracy can continue to survive together. Some even question whether democracy is worth saving. In Democracy Tamed: French Liberalism and the Politics of Suffrage (Oxford UP, 2024), Gianna Englert argues that the dilemmas facing liberal democracy are not unique to our present moment, but have existed since the birth of liberal political thought in nineteenth-century France. Combining political theory and intellectual history, Englert shows how nineteenth-century French liberals championed the idea of "political capacity" as an alternative to democratic political rights and argued that voting rights should be limited to capable citizens who would preserve free, stable institutions against revolutionary passions and democratic demands. Liberals also redefined democracy itself, from its ancient meaning as political rule by the people to something that, counterintuitively, demanded the guidance of a capable few rather than the rule of all.Understandably, scholarly treatments of political capacity have criticized the idea as exclusionary and potentially dangerous. Englert argues instead that political capacity was a flexible standard that developed alongside a changing society and economy, allowing liberals to embrace democracy without abandoning their first principles. She reveals a forgotten, uncharted path of liberalism in France that remained open to political democracy while aiming to foster citizen capacity. Overall, Democracy Tamed tells the story of how the earliest liberals deployed their notion of the "new democracy" to resist universal suffrage. But it also reveals how later liberals would appropriate their predecessors' antidemocratic arguments to safeguard liberal democracies as we have come to know them. Gianna Englert is Associate Professor of Humanities in The Hamilton School for Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida. 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: here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Suggested additional channels: Political Science, National Security, American Politics, Middle Eastern Studies, Eastern European Studies, New Books with Miranda Melcher NB: I don't think this needs to go on General History The no-fly zone is a frequently used instrument in the US foreign policy arsenal, despite detrimental, or even catastrophic, results. This book examines why the instrument has such a hold on leaders' imaginations and rhetoric despite its patchy record in practice. Examining detailed historical case studies from conflicts in Iraq, Bosnia, Kosovo, South Sudan/Darfur, Libya and Syria, The No-Fly Zone in US Foreign Policy: The Curious Persistence of a Flawed Instrument (Bristol University Press, 2025) by Dr. Gustav Meibauer shows how debates about, and actual use of, no-fly zones in US foreign policy have not been primarily about managing conflict or protecting civilians. Instead, the focus is often on navigating contradictory international and domestic political incentives and constraints, leading to US intervention in an ill-considered and incremental manner. 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

Naomi R Williams is associate professor of Labor Studies and Employment Relations at Rutgers University. Their primary research interests include labor and working-class history, urban history and politics, gender and women, race and politics, and more broadly, social and economic movements of working people. Naomi focuses on worker voice and late-capitalism at the end of the 20th century. Naomi's research also examines the ways working people impact local and national political economies and the ways workers participate in collaborative social justice movements. Naomi engages working-class history in urban settings, looking at low-wage service work, industrial employment, and workers in higher education. 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 bracing, accessible history of white American liberals—and why it's time to change the conversation about them.If there's one thing most Americans can agree on, it's that everyone hates white liberals. Conservatives hate them for being culturally tolerant and threatening to usher in communism. Libertarians hate them for believing in the power of the state. Socialists hate them for serving as capitalism's beard. Even liberals hate liberals—either because they can't manage to overcome their own prejudices, or precisely because they're so self-hating.This is the starting point for Kevin M. Schultz's lively new history of white liberals in the United States. He efficiently lays out the array of objections to liberals—ineffective, spineless, judgmental, authoritarian, and more—in a historical frame that shows how protean the concept has been throughout the past hundred years. It turns out, he declares, that how you define a “white liberal” is less a reflection of reality and more a Rorschach test revealing your own anxieties.Sharply assessing how decades of attacks on liberals and liberalism have steadily hollowed out the center of American political life, Schultz also explains precisely what needs to be done to avoid digging ourselves even further into the hole of polarization. The ultimate goal, he argues, is to achieve political fragmentation that will fuel the rise of a true multiparty system, where ideology will matter more, not less.With a tight command of postwar American history and a spirited voice, Why Everyone Hates White Liberals (Including White Liberals): A Critical History (University of Chicago Press, 2025) is a must-read for anyone wishing to understand—and envision a way forward in—the complicated landscape of American politics. Kevin M. Schultz is professor and chair of history at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC). He is the author of Buckley and Mailer and Tri-Faith America. 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

Since Xi Jinping's accession to power in 2012, nearly every aspect of China's relations with Africa has grown dramatically. Beijing has increased the share of resources it devotes to African countries, expanding military cooperation, technological investment, and educational and cultural programs as well as extending its political influence. China's Relations with Africa: A New Era of Strategic Engagement (Columbia University Press, 2023) examines the full scope of contemporary political and security relations between China and Africa. David H. Shinn and Joshua Eisenman not only explain the specific tactics and methods that Beijing uses to build its strategic relations with African political and military elites but also contextualize and interpret them within China's larger geostrategy. They argue that the priorities of Chinese leaders―including the conflation of threats to the Communist Party with threats to the country, a growing emphasis on relations in the Global South, and a focus on countering U.S. hegemony―have combined to elevate Africa's importance among policy makers in Beijing. Ranging from diplomacy and propaganda to arms sales and space cooperation, from increasingly frequent People's Liberation Army Navy port calls in Africa to the rising number of African students studying in China, this book marshals extensive and compelling qualitative and quantitative evidence of the deepening ties between China and Africa. Drawing on two decades of systematic data and hundreds of surveys and in-person interviews, Shinn and Eisenman shed new light on the state of China-Africa relations today and consider what the future may hold. Byline 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

Why do states start conflicts that they ultimately lose? Why do leaders possess inaccurate expectations of their prospects for victory? Bureaucracies at War (Cambridge UP, 2024) examines how national security institutions shape the quality of bureaucratic information upon which leaders base their choice for conflict – which institutional designs provide the best counsel, why those institutions perform better, and why many leaders fail to adopt them. Author Tyler Jost argues that the same institutions that provide the best information also empower the bureaucracy to punish the leader. Thus, miscalculation on the road to war is often the tragic consequence of how leaders resolve the trade-off between good information and political security. Employing an original cross-national data set and detailed explorations of the origins and consequences of institutions inside China, India, Pakistan, and the United States, this book explores why bureaucracy helps to avoid disaster, how bureaucratic competition produces better information, and why institutional design is fundamentally political. Our guest is Tyler Jost, an assistant professor of political science and the Watson Institute Assistant Professor of China Studies at Brown University. Our host is Eleonora Mattiacci, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Amherst College. She is the author of "Volatile States in International Politics" (Oxford University Press, 2023). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

How and why did the Chinese Communist Party rise to power in the 1940s at the expense of its Nationalist (KMT) rival? In his new book, Domination and Mobilization: The Rise and Fall of Political Parties in China's Republican Era (Cambridge University Press, 2025), Professor Xiaobo Lü (UC Berkeley) adopts a new model for thinking about this question. Using new qualitative and quantitative evidence, Lü shows how CCP success was built on dominant leadership and its interaction with a strategy of mass-centric mobilization to harness resources. By contrast, the contested factional leadership of the KMT and its elite-centric mobilization held back the party's power, particularly after it lost its geographical and fiscal base during China's war with Japan. In this interview, Professor Lü draws out the comparison between the two parties going back to the 1920s. He discusses how both parties adapted to the challenges of the Nanjing Decade and the 1937-45 wartime period – and how the legacies of party-building before 1949 still affect China today. Domination and Mobilization is strongly recommended for anyone interested in modern Chinese history, comparative revolutions, and party mobilization in authoritarian systems. Mark Baker is lecturer (assistant professor) in East Asian history at the University of Manchester, UK. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

The global wave of democratic backsliding has undermined the ascendancy of democracy in the twenty-first century. So what do democracies need to do to insulate themselves against this trend? Join Nic Cheeseman as he talks to Francis Fukuyama, one of the world's best-known political scientists, about why democracies need to show they can make progress without sacrificing accountability in order to restore and sustain citizen's confidence. Drawing on his new article in the Journal of Democracy with Chris Dann and Beatriz Magaloni, he argues that delivery for citizens is crucial to rebuilding the social contract and hence support for democracy – and warns about the dire consequences of failing this challenge. This episode is based on Francis Fukuyama, Chris Dann and Beatriz Magaloni's article “Delivering for Democracy: Why Results Matter” that was published in the April 2025 issue of the Journal of Democracy, and is part of an ongoing partnership between the Journal of Democracy and the People, Power, Politics podcast. Guest: Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow, director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and professor (by courtesy) of political science at Stanford University. He is the author of some of the best-known book published on politics in the last thirty years, including The End of History and the Last Man (1992), Trust (1995), The Origins of Political Order (2011), Political Order and Political Decay (2014), and Identity (2018). His books have won numerous awards, including the Lionel Gelber Prize and the Arthur Ross Book Award, and the Fred Riggs Award for Lifetime Achievement in International and Comparative Public Administration (2024). Presenter: Nic Cheeseman is the Professor of Democracy and International Development at the University of Birmingham and Founding Director of CEDAR. The People, Power, Politics podcast brings you the latest insights into the factors that are shaping and re-shaping our political world. It is brought to you by the Centre for Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation (CEDAR) based at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. Join us to better understand the factors that promote and undermine democratic government around the world and follow us on Twitter at @CEDAR_Bham! Transcript here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

A fresh, concise roadmap for U.S. grand strategy in a multipolar world For the past thirty years, post-Cold War triumphalism and a desire to reshape the world have defined U.S. foreign policy. But the failures of the global war on terror, the return of conflict to Europe, and growing tensions with China all suggest that this approach to the world is flawed. For the United States--the country that has ruled the international system largely alone since 1991--this moment is particularly perilous. Can policymakers adapt American foreign policy to better fit the twenty-first century, and in doing so avoid the pitfalls and excesses of the past three decades? In this book, Emma Ashford proposes a return to a more pragmatic, realist set of strategic principles, ones better suited for the emerging multipolar world, that would pursue narrower U.S. interests, cultivate the capabilities of friendly states, and emphasize room for maneuver over rigid alliances. In this she provides a valuable counterpoint to today's liberal internationalist consensus, as well as a road map for policymakers who seek to change the course of U.S. foreign policy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

One of Abraham Lincoln's staunchest and most effective allies, Judge David Davis masterminded the floor fight that gave Lincoln the presidential nomination at the 1860 Republican National Convention. This history-changing event emerged from a long friendship between the two men. It also altered the course of Davis's career, as Lincoln named him to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1862. In David Davis, Abraham Lincoln's Favorite Judge (University of Illinois Press, 2025), Raymond J. McKoski offers a biography of Davis's public life, his impact on the presidency and judiciary, and his personal, professional, and political relationships with Lincoln. Davis lent his vast network of connections, organizational and leadership abilities, and personal persuasiveness to help Lincoln's political rise. When Davis became a judge, he honed an ability to hear each case with complete impartiality, a practice that endeared him to Lincoln but one day put him at odds with the president over important Civil War-era rulings. McKoski details these cases while providing an in-depth account of Davis's role in Lincoln's two unsuccessful campaigns for U.S. Senate and the fateful run for the presidency. Raymond J. McKoski is a retired Illinois Circuit Judge and adjunct professor at the University of Illinois Chicago School of Law. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Over the course of the last century, there has been an outsized incidence of conflict between democracies and personalist regimes—political systems where a single individual has undisputed executive power and prominence. In most cases, it has been the democratic side that has chosen to employ military force.  Why Democracies Fight Dictators (Oxford UP, 2025) takes up the question of why liberal democracies are so inclined to engage in conflict with personalist dictators. Building on research in political science, history, sociology, and psychology and marshalling evidence from statistical analysis of conflict, multi-archival research of American and British perceptions during the Suez Crisis and Gulf War, and non-democracies' understanding of the threat from Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, Madison V. Schramm offers a novel and nuanced explanation for patterns in escalation and hostility between liberal democracies and personalist regimes. When conflicts of interest arise between the two types of states, Schramm argues, cognitive biases and social narratives predispose leaders in liberal democracies to perceive personalist dictators as particularly threatening and to respond with anger—an emotional response that elicits more risk acceptance and aggressive behavior. She also locates this tendency in the escalatory dynamics that precede open military conflict: coercion, covert action, and crisis bargaining. At all of these stages, the tendency toward anger and risk acceptance contributes to explosive outcomes between democratic and personalist regimes. Madison Schramm, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Toronto 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: here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Bringing War Back In: Victory, Defeat, and the State in Nineteenth-Century Latin America (Cambridge UP, 2025) provides a fresh theory connecting war and state formation that incorporates the contingency of warfare and the effects of war outcomes in the long run. The book demonstrates that international wars in nineteenth-century Latin America triggered state-building, that the outcomes of those wars affected the legitimacy and continuity of such efforts, and that the relative capacity of states in this region today continues to reflect those distant processes. Combining comparative historical analysis with cutting edge social science methods, the book provides a comprehensive picture of state formation in nineteenth-century Latin America that is compelling for readers across disciplines, breathes new life into bellicist approaches to state formation, and offers a novel framework to explain variation in state capacity across Latin America and 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

Researching Street-level Bureaucracy: Bringing Out the Interpretive Dimensions (Routledge, 2024) is the first among a number of new titles in the Routledge Series on Interpretive Methods that we'll be featuring on New Books in Interpretive Political and Social Science. In it, Mike Rowe discusses the continued relevance of the idea of street level bureaucracy, and the merits of adopting interpretive methodologies for studying frontline discretionary workers. He reflects on his own ethnographic and interview-based research among social welfare officers and police culture in the United Kingdom, and comparatively, in places where bureaucracy may be noteworthy more for its absence than its presence.  Like this episode? You might also be interested in Sarah Ball talking about Behavioural Public Policy in Australia Looking for something to read? Mike recommends In Praise of Floods by James C. Scott, and Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris.  This interview summary was not synthesised by a machine. Unlike the makers and owners of those machines, the author accepts responsibility for its contents. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

A practical call to action against oppression. Across the globe, millions of people have participated in protests and marches, donated to political groups, or lobbied their representatives with the aim of creating lasting social change, overturning repressive laws, or limiting environmental destruction. Yet very little seems to improve for those affected by rapacious governments. Replace the State: How to Change the World When Elections and Protests Fail (U Minnesota Press, 2025) brings new hope for social justice movements by looking to progressive campaigns that have found success by unconventional, and more direct, means. Sasha Davis, an activist and scholar of radical environmental advocacy, focuses on the strategies of movements, many of them Indigenous, that have occupied contested sites and demonstrated their effectiveness at managing or governing them. Including case studies of resistance to development on Indigenous lands in Hawai'i, nuclear testing in the Nevada desert, and the U.S. military occupation of Okinawa, he offers insight and direction for activists, students, academics, and others dedicated to protecting and improving the well-being of their communities and beyond. It would be easy to succumb to pessimism and political apathy in the face of governing institutions that are increasingly unresponsive to calls for change and repressive in response to protest, even as they violate human rights, ignore existential climate catastrophes, and concentrate power into fewer and fewer hands. Instead, Davis finds inspiration for genuine political change through social movements that are successfully "replacing the state" and taking over the day-to-day governance of threatened places. From contesting environmental abuse to reasserting Indigenous sovereignty, these social movements demonstrate how people can collectively wrest control over their communities from oppressive governments and manage them with a more egalitarian ethics of care. 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 Ordinary Rebels: Rank-And-File Militants Between War and Peace (Oxford University Press, 2025), Kolby Hanson argues that these periods of state toleration do not simply change armed groups' behavior, but fundamentally transform the organizations themselves by shaping who takes up arms and which leaders they follow. This book draws on a set of innovative experimental surveys and 75 in-depth interviews tracing four armed movements over time in Northeast India and Sri Lanka. A powerful new theory of how conditions shape the trajectory of non-state armed groups, this book reshapes our understanding of why such organizations become more moderate over time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Memory Politics After Mass Violence: Attributing Roles in the Memoryscape (Bristol UP, 2025) explores how political actors draw on memories of violent pasts to generate political power and legitimacy in the present. Drawing on fieldwork in post-violence Cambodia, Rwanda and Indonesia, the book demonstrates in what way power is derived from how roles are assigned, exploring who is deemed a perpetrator, victim or hero, as well as ambivalences in this memory. In the book, Williams interrogates the ways in which these roles are attributed and ambivalences created in each society's political discourses, transitional justice processes and cultural heritage. The comparative empirical analysis illustrates the importance of memory for political power and legitimacy today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Plato is a key figure from the beginnings of Western philosophy, yet the impact of his lived experience on his thought has rarely been explored. Born during a war that would lead to Athens' decline, Plato lived in turbulent times. In Plato: A Civic Life (Reaktion, 2025), Carol Atack explores how Plato's life in Athens influenced his thought, how he developed the Socratic dialogue into a powerful philosophical tool, and how he used the institutions of Athenian society to create a compelling imaginative world. Accessibly written, this book shows how Plato made Athens the place where diverse ideas were integrated into a new way of approaching the big questions about our lives, then and now. Carol Atack teaches classical Greek and ancient philosophy at the University of Cambridge. She is the author and coauthor of two books, most recently Anachronism and Antiquity. 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

In early September 2025, Nepal witnessed an extraordinary week of upheaval that many now refer to as the ‘five-day revolution'. Within the span of a single week, youth-led ‘Gen Z' protests spread across Kathmandu and other major cities, the prime minister and his government resigned, the army intervened, parliament was dissolved, and Nepal's new (and first female) interim prime minister was sworn in. The events revealed deep frustrations among young Nepalis with corruption, socioeconomic exclusion, and a lack of political accountability. In this episode of the Nordic Asia Podcast, Dr. Jeevan Baniya joins host Hanna Geschewski to explore the deeper forces behind this moment. They discuss the grievances that brought young Nepalis to the streets, why these long-standing frustrations erupted now, and how the ‘Gen Z' protests should be understood in relation to questions of representation and political change. The conversation also considers the diversity within Nepal's youth movement and the pathways through which young people may shape politics in the aftermath of the uprising. Jeevan Baniya is a political scientist and Deputy Director of the research institute Social Science Baha in Kathmandu, Nepal. Hanna Geschewski is a PhD researcher in Human Geography at the Chr. Michelsen Institute and the University of Bergen in Norway. Her work focuses on migration, displacement and socio-environmental change in the Himalayan region and South 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

Nick Bromell is the author of By the Sweat of the Brow: Labor and Literature in Antebellum American Culture and Tomorrow Never Knows: Rock and Psychedelics in the Sixties, both published by the University of Chicago Press. His articles and essays on African American literature and political thought have appeared in American Literature, American Literary History, Political Theory, Raritan, and The Sewanee Review. He teaches at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and he blogs at thetimeisalwaysnow.org. Nick Bromell's book is a work of intellectual history and political theory that places Black thinkers—writers, activists, and artists—at the center of American democratic thought. He argues that African American intellectual traditions have continually reshaped the meaning of democracy in the U.S., offering critiques and visions that go beyond the frameworks typically emphasized in mainstream political philosophy. The title, taken from James Baldwin's writings, reflectsthe idea that democracy is never finished—it is always urgent and ongoing.The Time is Always Now: Black Political Thought and the Transformation of U.S. Democracy (Oxford UP, 2013) posits that Black thought epitomizes the crucible of American Democratic theory Bromell contends that African American thinkers are not simply responding to oppression but actively producing political theory—ideasabout freedom, justice, equality, and collective life. Their insights emerge from lived experiences of slavery, segregation,and racial inequality, which provide a unique vantage point for critiquing American democracy.Secondly, Democracy is an ongoing and incomplete project of reconstruction, renewal, and revival. Building on Baldwin's phrase “the time is always now,” Bromell argues that democracy must be constantly reimagined and fought for. Black intellectual traditions highlight democracy's fragility and incompleteness, challenging myths of American exceptionalism.Third, American Democracy exists beyond what are known to be traditional American institutions. While mainstream American political theory often places focus on constitutions, governments, or laws, Black thinkers and citizens emphasize affective, relational, and cultural dimensions of democracy—dimensions that exhibit and feature American virtues and values of community, solidarity, and recognition.Fourth, Professor Bromell calls for a vibrant relational empathy and mutual recognition. In this sense, Bromell highlights Black thought's insistence on recognition of shared humanity and mutual vulnerability as the foundation for democraticpractice. Thinkers as varied as James Baldwin, Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King Jr, Toni Morrison, and Ralph Ellison stress the necessity of empathy as a civic virtue. Bromell reframes African American intellectual history as politicaltheory, not just cultural or social commentary. He challenges readers to recognize that the deepest resources fordemocratic renewal in America come from traditions forged under conditions of racial oppression.  Ultimately The Time is Always Now insists that democracy is less about stable American institutions and more about the practice of bettering and refining incipient features of American institutions-facing each other honestly, acknowledging and shouldering of collective pain, and being committed to a shared mutual recognition of the totality of our collective experience. 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 scholars of social and political movements tend to analyze tactics in terms of their effectiveness in achieving specific outcomes, Robert F. Carley argues by contrast that tactics are, above all, what social movements do. They are not mere means to an end so much as they are a public form of expression pointing out injustices and making just demands. Rooted in a highly original analysis of the tactically mediated relationship between race and mobilization in the work of Italian philosopher and revolutionary Antonio Gramsci, Culture and Tactics: Gramsci, Race, and the Politics of Practice (SUNY Press, 2019) demonstrates how tactics impact the organizational structures of social movements and expand the affinities of political communities. Carley looks at how Gramsci used innovative tactics to bridge perceptions of racial differences between factory workers and subaltern groups, the latter having been denigrated to the point of subhumanity by a complex Italian national racial economy. Newly envisioning Gramsci as a theorist of race within a broader context of social struggle, Carley connects Gramsci's insights into the political mobilizations of racialized subaltern groups to contemporary critical race theory and cultural studies of racialization and racism. Speaking across disciplines and drawing on a number of empirical examples, Carley offers a battery of original concepts to assist scholars and activists in analyzing the tactical practices of protests in which race is a central factor. Author info - Robert F. Carley is Associate Professor of International Studies at Texas A&M University, College Station. Host info – Michael L. Rosino is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Molloy University, whose work focuses on racial politics, media, and democracy. He recently published the book Democracy is Awkward: Grappling with Racism inside Grassroots Political Organizing and an essay in Time on the importance of cross-racial coalitions in social movements. 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 2007, Tim Weiner published the book Legacy of Ashes. It was a history of the CIA from its founding to the early 2000s. As a university student in Italy, I bought the book as soon as it came out. The second non-fiction book I ever bought in English. The book was riveting. It kickstarted my interest in the CIA and covert operations. Now, Tim Weiner has published a sequel to Legacy of Ashes. His new book is called The Mission: the CIA in the 21st Century (Mariner Books, 2025). It is a gripping and revelatory history of the from the late 1990s to the present. It ranges from 9/11 through the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to today's battles with Russia and China--and with the President of the United States.  At the turn of the century, the Central Intelligence Agency was in crisis. The end of the Cold War had robbed the agency of its mission. More than thirty overseas stations and bases had been shuttered, and scores that remained had been severely cut back. Many countries where surveillance was once deemed crucial went uncovered. Essential intelligence wasn't being collected. At the dawn of the information age, the CIA's officers and analysts worked with outmoded technology, struggling to distinguish the clear signals of significant facts from the cacophony of background noise.  Then came September 11th, 2001. After the attacks, the CIA transformed itself into a lethal paramilitary force, running secret prisons and brutal interrogations, mounting deadly drone attacks, and all but abandoning its core missions of espionage and counterespionage. The consequences were grave: the deaths of scores of its recruited foreign agents, the theft of its personnel files by Chinese spies, the penetration of its computer networks by Russian intelligence and American hackers, and the tragedies of Afghanistan and Iraq. A new generation of spies now must fight the hardest targets--Moscow, Beijing, Tehran--while confronting a president who has attacked the CIA as a subversive force.  The book reveals how the agency fought to rebuild the espionage powers it lost during the war on terror--and finally succeeded in penetrating the Kremlin. The key message of the book is that the CIA must reclaim its original mission: know thy enemies. This is made even more difficult by the attacks on the intelligence community deployed by the second Trump presidency, from unqualified senior officials to loyalty tests. The fate of the free world hangs in the balance. The Mission includes exclusive on-the-record interviews with six former CIA directors, the top spymaster, thirteen station chiefs, and scores of top operations officers who served undercover for decades and have never spoken to a journalist before. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Academics and popular commentors have expressed common sentiments about the Black Power movement of the 1960s and 1970s—that it was male dominated and overrun with autocratic leaders. Yet women's strategizing, management, and sustained work were integral to movement organizations' functioning, and female advocates of cultural nationalism often exhibited a unique service-oriented, collaborative leadership style.Essential Soldiers: Women Activists and Black Power Movement Leadership (New York University Press, 2025) documents a variety of women Pan-African nationalists' experiences, considering the ways they produced a distinctive kind of leadership through their devotion and service to the struggle for freedom and equality. Relying on oral histories, textual archival material, and scholarly literature, this book delves into women's organizing and resistance efforts, investigating how they challenged the one-dimensional notions of gender roles within cultural nationalist organizations. Revealing a form of Black Power leadership that has never been highlighted, author Kenja McCray explores how women articulated and used their power to transform themselves and their environments. Through her examination, McCray argues that women's Pan-Africanist cultural nationalist activism embodied a work-centered, people-centered, and African-centered form of service leadership. A dynamic and fascinating narrative of African American women activists, Essential Soldiers provides a new vantage point for considering Black Power leadership legacies. This episode includes a reference to the book Prose to the People: A Celebration of Black Bookstores by Katie Mitchell (Random House, 2025). Listen to Mitchell discuss her book at New Books in African American Studies, hosted by N'Kosi Oates. Dr. Kenja McCray is Assistant Professor of History in the Department of Humanities at Clayton State University and coauthor of Atlanta Metropolitan State College: A Campus History (Arcadia Publishing, 2023). You can find Dr. McCray at her website, on Facebook, and on Instagram. Find host Sullivan Summer at her website, on Instagram, and on Substack, where she and Dr. McCray continued their conversation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Nicholas Jacobs (Colby College) and Sidney Milkis (University of Virginia) have a new book, Subverting the Republic: Donald J. Trump and the Perils of Presidentialism (UP of Kansas, 2025), focusing on the idea of presidentialism, which is a way to think of political systems that include a dominant president or executive. In the United States, with the original constitutional system of separate co-equal branches of government, presidentialism disrupts the structure that was initially constructed under the U.S. Constitution. Over the course of more than two centuries, the United States has contended with the waxing and waning of presidential power within the multi-branch system. But Jacobs and Milkis maintain that since the 1990s we have seen an expansion of presidentialism, with a collective tendency to invest greater responsibilities and power in the presidential office itself as well as in the person who is serving in that capacity. Part of this thesis is also about how different, competing forces and ideologies have pushed for the use of presidential power to solve cultural struggles, which are not necessarily the institutional or structural role of the presidency. While the growth of American presidentialism may be more contemporary, it has origins in the struggles and ruptures of the 1960s and the 1970s—which were never fully resolved, especially in regard to who belongs within the American community. Subverting The Republic spends time examining this historical framework to help us think about the current structural, political, and cultural contexts, and especially the place of President Donald J. Trump within our understanding of presidentialism. This book is a careful and deeply researched historical and political analysis of the shifts and changes in how the American presidency has operated over the past 75 years, and grounds many of the actions we have seen within both Trump Administrations, as well as much of the pushback against some of these actions and assertions of power. In weaving together the historical background with the structural form of the presidency and the various tools that a president has at his command, Jacobs and Milkis lay out both the precedents relied upon by presidents of the 21st century, especially Donald Trump, but also the anomalies of the Trump Administration and actions. While Subverting the Republic: Donald J. Trump and the Perils of Presidentialism went to press before President Trump was re-elected in 2024 (and there is a brief postscript that is included, noting the results and considering what the second Trump Administration might look like), the authors noted in our conversation that much of what they discuss about the first Trump Administration in the book has only grown and expanded in the second Trump Administration. This is an important analysis of the office of the American presidency and how that office, as conceived of by the Founders and situated within a constitutional system that includes other centers of power and responsibility, has evolved rather dramatically from that initial form and structure. 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

Causal Inquiry in International Relations (Oxford UP, 2024) by Adam R. C. Humphreys and Hidemi Suganami defends a new, philosophically informed account of the principles which must underpin any causal research in a discipline such as International Relations. Its central claim is that there is an underlying logic to all causal inquiry, at the core of which is the search for empirical evidence capable of ruling out competing accounts of how specific events were brought about. Although this crucial fact is obscured by the ‘culture of generalization' which predominates in contemporary social science, all causal knowledge ultimately depends on the provision of empirical support for concrete claims about specific events, located in space and time.  Causal Inquiry in International Relations not only explores existing philosophical debates around causation; it also provides a detailed study of some of the most fundamental methodological questions which arise in the course of causal inquiry. Using examples drawn from philosophy and from the study of international relations, it demonstrates what is problematic about established ways of thinking, brings new clarity to both philosophical and methodological questions, and seeks to enhance collective understanding of the contribution that causal inquiry can make to empirically rich and critically aware scholarship about world politics. It concludes by situating ‘causal inquiry' in relation to other forms of inquiry employed in the study of world politics, emphasizing especially the often unnoticed dependence of causal inquiry on precisely the kind of knowledge of specific events which historians are well placed to provide. Adam Humphreys is Associate Professor and Head of Department in the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Reading. He joined the University of Reading in 2013, having previously been a British Academy Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Oxford (2007-10) and Fellow in Politics at Brasenose College, Oxford (2010-13). His principal research interests are in International Relations theory and meta-theory, especially causation and causal explanation, realism and neo-realism, the English School, and the relationship between theory and history. He also has research interests in British foreign and defence policy, strategy, and the ethics of war.Hidemi Suganami studied International Relations at Tokyo, Aberystwyth, and London Universities. His first academic appointment was at Keele in 1975, where he later became Professor of the Philosophy of International Relations. In 2004, he moved to Aberystwyth, where currently he is Emeritus Professor of International Politics. His publications include: The Domestic Analogy and World Order Proposals (1989); On the Causes of War (1996); and, with Andrew Linklater, The English School of International Relations (2006). Over a number of years, he has been studying philosophical issues surrounding causation and explanation in International Relations. Stephen Satkiewicz is an independent scholar with research areas spanning Civilizational Sciences, Social Complexity, Big History, Historical Sociology, Military History, War Studies, International Relations, Geopolitics, and Russian and East European history. 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 is the second episode of Cited Podcast's new season, Green Dreams. Green Dreams tells stories of radical environmental thinkers and their dreams for our green future. Should we make those dreams reality, or are they actually nightmares? For the rest of the episodes, visit the series page, and subscribe today (Apple, Spotify, RSS). An Albertan oil man and a socialist policy wonk from Saskatchewan banded together to think up “eco-development,” a precursor to today's sustainable development. This unlikely duo forged a global consensus at the United Nations, effectively codifying the reigning orthodoxy of liberal environmental governance. They told us that capitalism and sustainability are indeed compatible. Might that be the most utopian of all green dreams? 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 international system is made up of states: Territorial entities with defined borders, with exclusive control within those borders, diplomatic recognition by other states outside of them and usually (though not always) tied to some idea of the “nation.” But how many states have existed throughout history, such as during the nineteenth century? Some early counts put the number at just a few dozen–a measure that international relations professors Charles R. Butcher and Ryan D. Griffiths thought was far too low, missing polities throughout the non-Western world. Together, they put together their own count of independent states in the nineteenth century, as published in their latest work Before Colonization: Non-Western States and Systems in the Nineteenth Century (Columbia UP, 2025). Charles joins us today to talk about his work. He is a professor in the Department of Sociology and Political Science at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. His research focuses on the legacies of historical states and state systems, democratization, and civil resistance. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Before Colonization. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. 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 need for collective action has never been greater, but geopolitics, structural changes and diverging preferences mean that existing global governance arrangements, devised at Bretton Woods in the 1940s, are either unravelling or outmoded. Reconciling this contradiction is today's pressing global policy challenge.In New World New Rules: Global Cooperation in a World of Geopolitical Rivalries (Agenda, 2024), two of Europe's most-experienced policymakers and analysts outline a new agenda for global governance. They examine governance practices across several key policy areas - climate, health, trade and competition, banking and finance, taxation, migration and the digital economy - and consider what works and what doesn't, and why. The global governance solutions they put forward are ambitious but pragmatic. They require complexity, flexibility and compromise. Attributes that global governments are demonstrably short of, but today's global crises urgently demand. 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 wake of World War II, the United States leveraged its hegemonic position in the international political system to gradually build a new global order centered around democracy, the expansion of free market capitalism, and the containment of communism. Named in retrospect the "liberal international order" (LIO), the system took decades to build and is still largely with us today even as the US's relative power within it has diminished. In Great Power, Great Responsibility: How the Liberal International Order Shapes US Foreign Policy (Oxford UP, 2025), Michael Poznansky explores how the LIO has influenced US foreign policy from its founding to the present. Proponents argue that its impact has been profound, producing a system that has been more rule-bound and beneficial than any previous order. Critics charge that it has failed to prevent the US itself from consistently violating rules and norms. Poznansky contends that the answer lies in between. While rule-breaking has been a constant feature of the postwar order, the nature of violations varies in surprising and poorly understood ways. America's approach to compliance with the LIO, including whether leaders feel the need to conceal rule violations at all, is a function of two primary factors: the intensity of competition over international order, and the burden of complying with the liberal order's core tenets in a given case. Drawing on nine case studies, including the Korean War and Iraq War, Great Power, Great Responsibility sheds important light on the future of US foreign policy in an era where American unipolarity has ended and great power rivalry has returned. Our guest is Michael Poznansky, an Associate Professor in the Strategic and Operational Research Department and a core faculty member in the Cyber & Innovation Policy Institute at the U.S. Naval War College. 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

When do limits on majorities enhance democratic rule, and when do they undermine it? Join Nic Cheeseman as he talks to Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, well-known as authors of the best-selling book How Democracies Die, about their new framework for understanding when the best way to protect democracy is to constrain the wishes of the majority, and when we need to empower them. Lumping all majoritarian measures into the same category, they argue, can lead us to preserve and prescribe outdated and undemocratic institutions that distort political competition and may undermine democratic legitimacy. So does saving democracy actually depend on the recognition that while special protections for powerful minorities may have helped to secure the historical passage to democracy, today the healthiest democracies empower majorities? This episode is based on Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt's article “When Should the Majority Rule?” that was published in the January 2025 issue of the Journal of Democracy, and is part of an ongoing partnership between the Journal of Democracy and the People, Power, Politics podcast. A transcript is available for download here. Steven Levitsky is Professor of Government at Harvard University and the co-author of How Democracies Die (2018), which won the Lionel Gelber Prize and the Arthur Ross Book Award. A leading scholar of authoritarianism and democratic backsliding, his earlier works include Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes After the Cold War (2010). Levitsky directs Harvard's David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies and served as Vice Provost for International Affairs. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Karl Deutsch Award for his contributions to comparative politics. His research spans Latin American politics, party systems, and informal institutions, influencing both academic debate and public discourse on democracy's challenges. Daniel Ziblatt is Eaton Professor of the Science of Government at Harvard University and co-author of How Democracies Die (2018), which won the Lionel Gelber Prize and the Arthur Ross Book Award. His book Conservative Advantage (2017) received the Luebbert Prize for the Best Book on Comparative Politics. Ziblatt's research explores democratic durability and party systems, especially in Europe. He serves as Co-Director of Harvard's Center for European Studies and holds a Guggenheim Fellowship. His work has significantly influenced understandings of conservative parties' roles in sustaining democracy and the threats posed by their erosion. Nic Cheeseman is the Professor of Democracy and International Development at the University of Birmingham and Founding Director of CEDAR. The People, Power, Politics podcast brings you the latest insights into the factors that are shaping and re-shaping our political world. It is brought to you by the Centre for Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation (CEDAR) based at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. Join us to better understand the factors that promote and undermine democratic government around the world and follow us on Twitter at @CEDAR_Bham! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Are we already living in some kind of fascist or technocratic dystopia? How do we avert the AI dystopia? These are the types of things that you'll see thrown about in op-eds and analysis pieces all over the net and the press. Dystopia is doing some kind of work in our political vocabulary that goes beyond a reference to those iconic dystopian novels or their sort of contemporary successors. … Sometimes politics seems to be so absorbed in the train of fantasy and the imaginary that it becomes worrying. But like it or not, or like specific expressions of the political imagination or not, the political arena is an arena of the imagination. Habermas once said that people don't fight for abstractions, but they do battle with images.                                                                                                                    – Matthew Benjamin Cole, NBN interview 2025 After centuries of contemplating utopias, late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century writers began to warn of dystopian futures. Yet these fears extended beyond the canonical texts of dystopian fiction into post-war discourses on totalitarianism, mass society, and technology, as well as subsequent political theories of freedom and domination. Fear the Future: Dystopia and Political Imagination in the Twentieth Century (U of Michigan Press, 2025) demonstrates the centrality of dystopian thinking to twentieth century political thought, showing the pervasiveness of dystopian images, themes, and anxieties. Offering a novel reading of major themes and thinkers, Fear the Future explores visions of the future from literary figures such as Yevgeny Zamyatin, Aldous Huxley, and George Orwell; political theorists such as Max Weber, Hannah Arendt, Herbert Marcuse, Jürgen Habermas, and Michel Foucault; and mid-century social scientists such as Erich Fromm, Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, David Reisman, C. Wright Mills, and Jacques Ellul. It offers a comparative analysis of distinct intellectual and literary traditions, including modern utopianism and anti-utopianism, mid-century social science, Frankfurt School critical theory, and continental political philosophy. With detailed case studies of key thinkers from the Enlightenment to the late twentieth century, the book synthesizes secondary literature and research from a range of disciplinary areas, including in political theory, intellectual history, literary studies, and utopian studies. This wide-ranging reconstruction shows that while dystopian thinking has illustrated the dangers of domination and dehumanization, it has also illuminated new possibilities for freedom. Professor Cole published his book with the University of Michigan Press as Open Access: find the detailed insights and arguments that Matthew discusses in our interview here as an online publication with downloadable options. 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 388 BCE, Plato, at the age of about forty and in the midst of writing The Republic, visited for the first time the then-Greek city state of Syracuse, on the eastern shores of Sicily. Syracuse was ruled by a tyrant, Dionysius, who on death was followed by his son, also a tyrant. Over the course of his three separate visits to Syracuse over the years, encountering both father and son, Plato arrived at the model for tyranny laid out in The Republic. That's the argument of James Romm's splendid book, Plato and the Tyrant: The Fall of Greece's Greatest Dynasty and the Making of a Philosophic Masterpiece (W.W. Norton, 2025). In our conversation, Romm renders, not the familiar “marble Plato” of his God-like dialogues, but an altogether human figure grappling with his own personal vulnerabilities. We discuss, too, the parallels to today's times, in which tyrants and would-be tyrants continue to plague the world. The tyrant, as Romm ably shows, is an archetype for all time. James Romm is the James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Classics at Bard College and editor of the Ancient Lives biography series from Yale University Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Fluid Russia: Between the Global and the National in the Post-Soviet Era (Cornell UP, 2021) offers a new framework for understanding Russian national identity by focusing on the impact of globalization on its formation, something which has been largely overlooked. This approach sheds new light on the Russian case, revealing a dynamic Russian identity that is developing along the lines of other countries exposed to globalization. Vera Michlin-Shapir shows how along with the freedoms afforded when Russia joined the globalizing world in the 1990s came globalization's disruptions. Michlin-Shapir describes Putin's rise to power and his project to reaffirm a stronger identity not as a uniquely Russian diversion from liberal democracy, but as part of a broader phenomenon of challenges to globalization. She underlines the limits of Putin's regime to shape Russian politics and society, which is still very much impacted by global trends. As well, Michlin-Shapir questions a prevalent approach in Russia studies that views Russia's experience with national identity as abnormal or defective, either being too weak or too aggressive. What is offered is a novel explanation for the so-called Russian identity crisis. As the liberal postwar order faces growing challenges, Russia's experience can be an instructive example of how these processes unfold. This study ties Russia's authoritarian politics and nationalist rallying to the shortcomings of globalization and neoliberal economics, potentially making Russia "patient zero" of the anti-globalist populist wave and rise of neo-authoritarian regimes. In this way, Fluid Russia contributes to the broader understanding of national identity in the current age and the complexities of identity formation in the global world. Guest: Vera Michlin-Shapir (she/her), is a Visiting Research Fellow at King's Russia Institute, King's College London. Host: Jenna Pittman (she/her) is a Ph.D. student in the Department of History at Duke University. She studies modern European history, political economy, and Germany from 1945-1990. Scholars@Duke here Linktree here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

“I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia,” Winston Churchill once said. “It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.” That saying sounds as true now as ever in the midst of Russia's war in Ukraine. In Getting Russia Right (Polity Press, 2023), however, Thomas Graham provides an expert perspective on Russian history and statecraft and offers timely keys to Russian national interests which can help the United States get Russia right. As US-Russian relations scrape the depths of Cold-War antagonism, the promise of partnership that beguiled American administrations during the first post-Soviet decades increasingly appears to have been false from the start. Why did American leaders persist in pursuing it? Was there another path that would have produced more constructive relations or better prepared Washington to face the challenge Russia poses today? With a practitioner's eye honed during decades of work on Russian affairs, Graham, a distinguished fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations, deftly traces the evolution of opposing ideas of national purpose that created an inherent tension in relations. Getting Russia Right (Polity Press, 2023) identifies the blind spots that prevented Washington from seeing Russia as it really is and crafting a policy to advance American interests without provoking an aggressive Russian response. Distilling the Putin factor to reveal the contours of the Russia challenge facing the United States whenever he departs the scene, Graham lays out a compelling way to deal with it so that the United States can continue to advance its interests in a rapidly changing world. 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 by email here or via his website. 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

Why Americans favor progressive taxation in principle but not in practice Most Americans support progressive taxation in principle, and want the rich to pay more. But the specific tax policies that most favor are more regressive than progressive. What is behind such a disconnect? In Taxation and Resentment: Race, Party, and Class in American Tax Attitudes (Princeton UP, 2025), Andrea Louise Campbell examines public opinion on taxation, exploring why what Americans favor in principle differs from what they accept in practice. Campbell shows that since the federal income tax began a century ago, the rich have fought for lower taxes through reduced rates and a complicated system of tax breaks. The resulting complexity leaves the public confused about who benefits from the convoluted tax code, and leads to tax preferences that are driven by factors other than principles or interests. Campbell argues that tax attitudes vary little by income, or by party, as some Democrats, more Republicans, and even more independents want most taxes decreased. Instead, white opinion on nearly every tax is racialized. Many do not realize the rich benefit the most from tax breaks, attitudes toward which are racialized, too. And among Black and Hispanic Americans, long subject to government coercion, greater support for government spending is not matched by greater support for taxation. Everyone has a reason to dislike taxes, which helps antitax Republicans win votes--and helps the rich in their long campaign to get their own taxes reduced and undermine progressivity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Pricing Lives: The Political Art of Measurement (Oxford UP, 2023) discusses how human lives are equated with the material, and argues that pricing lives lies at the core of the political; in fact, as in Plato or Hobbes, and in the Weberian ethics of responsibility, measurement is considered to be one of its central features. Ariel Colonomos argues that this measure relies primarily on human lives and interests, and that the material equivalence to lives is twofold. The equivalence is a double equation, as we pay for lives and we pay with lives. This double equation constitutes the measurement upon which the political equilibrium of a society depends and is thus a key constitutive part of the political. The book adopts two approaches, both with an interdisciplinary perspective: one explanatory and the other normative. First, it explains the nexus between existential goods and material goods, drawing on a detailed analysis of several case studies from contemporary politics, both domestic and international. Second, it discusses normatively the material valuation of human lives and the human value of material goods. Value attribution and the question of the material equivalent to lives are of relevance not only for political theory and philosophy, but also for sociology, history, international relations, and legal studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

We begin the new season of International Horizons by asking a crucial question: is the U.S. helping speed up its own decline? RBI Deputy Director, Eli Karetny talks with political writer and scholar Damon Linker about how Trump's movement sees presidential power, why it challenges long-standing rules and institutions, and what it means for America's role in the world. They explore whether U.S. influence has shifted from leading a global order after World War II to carving out its own “sphere of influence” alongside other major powers. The discussion looks at attacks on government expertise, the idea of “restraint” in foreign policy, and how fringe thinkers on the right are shaping real political choices. What happens when leaders value absolute freedom of action over laws, expertise, or alliances? Tune in for a clear look at the ideas driving today's high-stakes political battles. 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 Poland between 2015 and 2023, Jarosław Kaczyński and his Law and Justice Party (PiS) attempted a novel experiment. Could a governing party sustain a coalition committed religiously inspired social conservatism, old-school left-wing welfarism, and antipathy to Moscow and Brussels while also unravelling democratic institutions? It was, write Stanley Bill and Ben Stanley in Good Change: The Rise and Fall of Poland's Illiberal Revolution (Stanford University Press, 2025), an experiment in "how much illiberalism the electorate would bear". With Kaczyński and PiS now in opposition but threatening a return in 2027, Donald Tusk's liberal administration is road-testing how effectively illiberalism can be unpicked without antagonising the voters it needs to stay in office. Stanley Bill is Professor of Polish Studies at the University of Cambridge, and Ben Stanley is an associate professor at the Centre for the Study of Democracy at the SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Warsaw. Tim Gwynn Jones is policy analyst at Medley Advisors and a writer/podcaster at 242.news. 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 an era of globalized education, where ideals of freedom and inquiry should thrive, an alarming trend has emerged: foreign authoritarian regimes infiltrating American academia. In Authoritarians in the Academy, Sarah McLaughlin exposes how higher education institutions, long considered bastions of free thought, are compromising their values for financial gain and global partnerships. This groundbreaking investigation reveals the subtle yet sweeping influence of authoritarian governments. University leaders are allowing censorship to flourish on campus, putting pressure on faculty, and silencing international student voices, all in the name of appeasing foreign powers. McLaughlin exposes the troubling reality where university leaders prioritize expansion and profit over the principles of free expression. The book describes incidents in classrooms where professors hesitate to discuss controversial topics and in boardrooms where administrators weigh the costs of offending oppressive regimes. McLaughlin offers a sobering look at how the compromises made in American academia reflect broader societal patterns seen in industries like tech, sports, and entertainment. Meticulously researched and unapologetically candid, Authoritarians in the Academy: How the Internationalization of Higher Education and Borderless Censorship Threaten Free Speech (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2025) is an essential read for anyone who believes in the transformative power of education and the necessity of safeguarding it from the creeping tide of authoritarianism. Sarah McLaughlin is a senior scholar of global expression at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. 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

Everyone feels it. Cultural and political life in America has become unrecognizable and strange. Firebrands and would-be sages have taken the place of reasonable and responsible leaders. Nuanced debates have given way to the smug confidence of yard signs. How did we get here?In Spellbound: How Charisma Shaped American History from the Puritans to Donald Trump" (Random House, 2025)Context (Random House, 2025), historian Molly Worthen argues that we will understand our present moment if we learn the story of charisma in America. From the Puritans and Andrew Jackson to Black nationalists and Donald Trump, the saga of American charisma, Worthen argues, stars figures who possess a dangerous and alluring power to move crowds. They invite followers into a cosmic drama where hopes are fulfilled and grievances are put right—and these charismatic leaders insist that they alone plot the way.The story of charisma in America reveals that when traditional religious institutions fail to deliver on their promise of a meaningful life, people will get their spiritual needs met in a warped cultural and political landscape dominated by those who appear to have the power to bring order and meaning out of chaos. Charismatic leaders address spiritual needs, offering an alternate reality where people have knowledge, power, and heroic status, whether as divinely chosen instruments of God or those who will restore national glory.Through Worthen's centuries-spanning historical research, Spellbound places a crucial religious lens on the cultural, economic, and political upheavals facing Americans today. Molly Worthen is a professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a freelance journalist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

An Arendt expert has arrived at Arendt-obsessed Recall This Book. Lyndsey Stonebridge discusses her widely praised 2024 We Are Free to Change the World: Hannah Arendt's Lessons in Love and Disobedience. Lesley sees both radical evil and the banality of evil at work in Nazi Germany and in the causes of suffering and death in Gaza today. She compares the moral idiocy of authoritarians (like the murderous Nazis and those who are starving Gaza) to that of philosophers who cannot hear the echoes of what they are doing. Lesley and John discuss Arendt's belief in the fragile ethics of the Founding Fathers, with its checks and balances and its politics based not on emotion but cool deliberation. Arendt could say that “The fundamental contradiction of [America] is political freedom coupled with social slavery,”” but why was she too easy on the legacy of imperial racism in America, missing its settler-colonial logic? Arendt read W. E. B. DuBois (who saw and said this) but perhaps, says Lesley, not attentively enough. Lyndsey is not a fan of Jonathan Glazer's Zone of Interest, because it makes the evil banality of extermination monstrous all over again (cf. her"Mythic Banality: Jonathan Glazer and Hannah Arendt.") Responsibility is crucial: She praises Arendt for distinguishing between temptation and coercion. Mentioned in the episode: Carnation Revolution in Portugal in 1974 one of the last great historical events in Arendt's lifetime. Lesley praises “reading while walking” and the unpacking of the totalitarian in Anna Burns's marvelous Norther Ireland novel, Milkman. Hannah Pitkin's wonderful 1998 The Attack of the Blob: Hannah Arendt's Concept of the Social, emphasizes Arendt's idea that although we are free, we can forfeit that freedom by assuming we are rule-bound. Arendt on the challenge of identity: “When one is attacked as a Jew, one must respond not as a German or a Frenchman or a world citizen, but as a Jew.” The Holocaust is a crime agains humanity a crime against the human status, a crime "perpetrated on the body of the Jewish people".” Various books by Hannah Arendt come up: Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on teh Banality of Evil. (1963). Judgement in Arendt is crucial from earliest days studying Kant and in her final works (among The Life of the Mind) she speaks of the moments when "the mind goes visiting.” Her earliest ideas about love and natality are in Love and Saint Augustine (1929, not published in English until 1996). Hannah Arendt is buried at Bard, near her husband Heinrich Blucher and opposite Philip Roth, who reportedly wanted to capture some of the spillover Arendt traffic. James Baldwin's essay “The Fire Next Time” (1963) caused Arendt to write Baldwin about the difference between pariah love and the love of those in power, who think that love can justify lashing out with power. Recallable Books Lyndsey praises Leah Ypi's (Free) forthcoming memoir about her Albanian family, Indignity. John recalls E. M Forster, Howard's End a novel that thinks philosophically (in a novelistic vein) about how to continue being an individual in a new Imperial Britain. Listen and Read here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

In Containing Decolonization: British Imperialism and the Politics of Race in Late Colonial Burma (Manchester University Press, 2025), historian Matthew Bowser examines British imperialism in late colonial Burma (from roughly 1929 to 1948) to study how imperialists attempted to protect their strategic and economic interests after decolonization: they did so by supporting ethnonationalism. This process resembles the Cold War tactic of “containment,” and the book makes a crucial contribution to the study of modern imperialism by demonstrating the continuity between “containment's” late- and “neo”-colonial manifestations. For Burma/Myanmar, it also explores the origin of the present-day military junta's racial regime: it emphasizes the protection of the ethnoreligious majority from ethnic minority insurgency. The Rohingya people are currently suffering a genocide because of this racial regime. As the country endures civil war against the junta, this book highlights how ethnonationalists in the late colonial period first promoted this racial regime to seize power and prevent revolution, a process supported by British imperialists for their own ends. Matthew Bowser is Assistant Professor of Asian History at Alabama A&M University. Brad H. Wright is a historian of Latin America specializing in postrevolutionary Mexico. PhD in Public History. Asst. Prof. of Latin American History at Alabama A&M 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

Michel Foucault's thought, Maddalena Cerrato writes, may be understood as practical philosophy. In this perspective, political analysis, philosophy of history, epistemology, and ethics appear as necessarily cast together in a philosophical project that aims to rethink freedom and emancipation from domination of all kinds. The idea of practical philosophy accounts for Foucault's specific approach to the object, as well as to the task of philosophy, and it identifies the perspective that led him to consider the question of subjectivity as the guiding thread of his work. Overall, in Michel Foucault's Practical Philosophy: A Critique of Subjectivation Processes (SUNY Press, 2025) Cerrato shows the deep consistency underlying Foucault's reflection and the substantial coherence of his philosophical itinerary, setting aside all the conventional interpretations that pivot on the idea that his thought underwent a radical "turn" from the political engagement of the question of power toward an ethical retrieval of the question of subjectivity. Maddalena Cerrato is an assistant professor in the Department of International Affairs. 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 here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science