This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science
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Sep 29, 2026 · 34:30
From the dawn of the modern era to the end of the Cold War, global history was defined by rivalries between Great Powers. In the West, this meant the struggle for supremacy in…
Sep 29, 2026 · 29:23
When an election turns violent and neither side will concede, why is the usual answer to put both sides in the same government? Alex Noyes has spent nearly two decades asking…
Sep 29, 2026 · 1:00:37
The Kurdish-populated Wan/Van Province is a major smuggling hub between Turkey and Iran. Kurdish smugglers cross this 180-mile-long land border, transporting everyday consumer…
Sep 29, 2026 · 55:52
Great Power Diplomacy. The Skill of Statecraft from Attila the Hun to Kissinger (Princeton UP, 2025) is a captivating history of diplomacy—and an urgent reminder of why we need…
Sep 26, 2026 · 52:56
In Democracy on the Edge , leading political scientists John Kenneth White and Matthew R. Kerbel unravel the elections of 2020, 2022, and 2024 to show how each represented a…
Sep 25, 2026 · 56:32
Humiliation pervades our politics, from images of stripped Palestinian men in Gaza to mocking chants at MAGA rallies. It suffuses pictures and videos, speaks through bodies as…
Sep 24, 2026 · 1:16:21
In Iconic Fascism: The Excess of Destruction and Creation in Interwar Radical Right-wing Politics (Bloomsbury, 2026) Aristotle Kallis uncovers the paradox at the heart of fascist…
Sep 23, 2026 · 57:36
What is freedom? Benjamin Constant and Isaiah Berlin divided the answers to that question into two categories: the positive conception of the ancients (freedom to participate in…
Sep 21, 2026 · 55:41
Even as Donald J. Trump keeps his tight grip on the Republican Party, conservative ranks are rife with sharpening tensions on both domestic and foreign-policy matters. I discuss…
Sep 20, 2026 · 51:10
When powerful states go to war, why do they bother asking permission? In Strategies for Approval: Building Support for Military Intervention at the UN Security Council (Yale…
Sep 19, 2026 · 35:59
At first glance, New Hampshire and Vermont seem like mirror images. Separated only by the Connecticut River, the oft-termed "Twin States" share a common history, relatively small…
Sep 16, 2026 · 1:23:45
In this episode, hosts Lee Vinsel and Ben Waterhouse, along with producer Joe Forte, chat with historian Lily Geismer. Their conversation covers the evolution of the Democratic…
Sep 14, 2026 · 34:26
Why do so many citizens continue to support politicians who undermine democracy? And why have nationalist appeals become such a powerful tool for democratic backsliding? In this…
Sep 14, 2026 · 1:08:24
Contesting Pluralism(s): Islamism, Liberalism and Nationalism in Turkey and Beyond (Cambridge UP, 2024) challenges a widespread tendency to limit studies of Turkish - and Muslim…
Sep 10, 2026 · 49:35
Political Scientists William Howell and Terry Moe have a new book out that explores how the United States constitutional system has given way to the establishment of a kind of…
Sep 8, 2026 · 39:32
n this podcast, North Korean refugees who visited the University of Bradford share their harrowing experiences of life in North Korea, escape, and the challenges of building new…
Sep 5, 2026 · 25:38
Democracy or Carbon Oligarchy?: Climate and Energy Politics between Crisis and Decarbonization (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026) tackles a critical question. Why has the world struggled…
Sep 5, 2026 · 40:39
Since the beginning of the twentieth century, governments around the world have expelled, en masse, more than 30 million people. Yet despite its prevalence, mass expulsion…
Sep 4, 2026 · 50:02
What do the people closest to power really think about the system they serve? That’s perhaps one of the most important questions one could ask about North Korea, still one of the…
Sep 4, 2026 · 29:35
In Legal Weapons of the Wealthy: The Offshoring of Elite Conflict in Emerging Markets (Cornell University Press, 2026), Dr. Nikhil Kalyanpur examines a striking feature of…
Sep 3, 2026 · 58:39
The idea of civility goes back to classical Rome and the ways in which citizens engaged one another within the republic. The term itself is often used in a number of different…
Sep 3, 2026 · 1:00:07
Can laws be unjust and yet remain, in some sense, morally legitimate? In Political Philosophy: The Puzzle of Legitimate Injustice (Princeton UP, 2026), Jonathan Quong considers…
Sep 2, 2026 · 1:02:04
While many know that Mark Twain created some of the most famous characters in literature—Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, Jim and Puddn’head Wilson—too few have understood that…
Aug 30, 2026 · 1:10:49
Drawing on an original data set of interventions and wars from 1945 to the current day, as well as numerous short case studies, Richard Ned Lebow offers a novel account of their…
Aug 28, 2026 · 52:09
Defying the dire predictions that attended its birth as an independent nation-state in 1947, the Indian republic is more than seventy-five years old. And yet, it is a place where…
Aug 28, 2026 · 55:50
Between 1990 and 2020, women candidates won only 6% of the world’s presidential races. How Women Win Presidential Elections in Latin America (Temple University Press, 2026)…
Aug 26, 2026 · 50:37
There is a widespread sense throughout the developed world that progress towards a better society has stalled. Many countries, including the UK, have experienced persistent…
Aug 25, 2026 · 51:15
Russian leader Vladimir Putin, at 73 years old, is still very much alive, yet the “After Putin” conversation is an active one inside and outside of Russia. What could come next…
Aug 24, 2026 · 37:03
Purges: How Dictators Fight to Survive (Cornell University Press, 2026) by Dr. Edward Goldring delves into one of the key tactics that autocrats deploy to maintain power: the…
Aug 22, 2026 · 1:00:03
"Expansive visions. Universal institutions. Ideas of progress. It was on the back of these that the West surged ahead and built a global order. I was born into that world. But my…
Aug 20, 2026 · 45:17
Political Scientist Seth Masket’s new book, The Elephants in the Room: How Trump Voters Seized the Party from Republican Leaders (Cambridge UP, 2026) is a companion book to his…
Aug 18, 2026 · 1:05:39
There has never been a more promising time for genocide prevention. More resources and research are being focused on prevention than ever before. Yet we still lack vital…
Aug 16, 2026 · 57:36
Nuclear Archipelago: Secrets, Power and the Biggest Atomic Blast in Australia (NewSouth, 2026) tells the shocking story of the two British atomic weapons test series held at…
Aug 15, 2026 · 50:08
Shadow Negotiators: How UN Organizations Shape the Rules of World Trade for Food Security (Stanford University Press, 2023) by Dr. Matias E. Margulis is the first book to…
Aug 14, 2026 · 1:35:23
Counterrevolution in Egypt: Sisi's New Republic ( Verso Books, 2026) is a rare and comprehensive examination of the structures, hierarchies, and methods of the military, police,…
Aug 14, 2026 · 29:28
A stevedore on the San Francisco docks in the 1940s, who eventually taught at the University of California at Berkeley, Eric Hoffer wrote philosophical treatises in his spare…
Aug 13, 2026 · 1:01:05
This is a really good book. Really good . Liberalism and the Reinvention of the Modern Corporation (Oxford UP, 2025) takes the reader on a fascinating, and perhaps unexpected,…
Aug 10, 2026 · 1:06:07
This episode featured a conversation with Ramnarayan Rawat, K. Satyanarayana, and Sanal Mohan, three scholars in the burgeoning field of Dalit Studies. We began with the…
Aug 9, 2026 · 56:19
Are we driving our technology, or is it starting to drive us? In this thought-provoking conversation, Eli Karetny sits down with researcher and author Eduardo Albrecht to explore…
Aug 9, 2026 · 53:43
Infrastructural Urbanism in Contemporary China: Volunteering, Infrastructures and Civic Imaginations (Leiden University Press, 2026) examines how Chinese citizens negotiate their…
Aug 7, 2026 · 1:20:46
Republicanism is arguably the most powerful political idea in history, an extraordinary feat of human imagination that balances individual liberty with collective responsibility.…
Aug 6, 2026 · 48:03
Inside Parties: How Party Rules Shape Membership and Responsiveness (Cambridge UP, 2025) by Georgia Kernell examines how party rules determine how parties select candidates,…
Aug 2, 2026 · 1:00:56
In A Post-Liberal Peace: How Emergent Powers Are Reshaping Global Conflict Management (Cornell UP, 2026), Dr. Monalisa Adhikari shows how rising powers like India and China are…
Aug 2, 2026 · 58:55
Pandemic Politics in Central Asia: Authoritarian Contagion (Routledge, 2026) examines how the authoritarian regimes of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan exploited the…
Jul 31, 2026 · 32:25
How the nuclear guardrails were dismantled. What arms control actually did (risk management, predictability, geography), how it unravelled from the 2000s onward, and why its…
Jul 30, 2026 · 47:26
Kathleen W. Taylor Kollman has a new book out that focuses on the reality of women running for president in the United States, and the fictional representations of this idea that…
Jul 30, 2026 · 31:20
How do authoritarian regimes silence critics across borders? And what are the repressive tools and strategies that authoritarian regimes use transnationally? In this episode we…
Jul 28, 2026 · 58:40
Authoritarian Markets explores the political foundations of China's banking boom and its far-reaching impact on the Chinese economy. In 1978 China had no commercial banks. Today…
Jul 25, 2026 · 35:52
Casting War As Love: Russian Colonialism in Familial Terms (Palgrave Macillan, 2026) by Dr. Galina Bogatova unpacks the hidden imperial logic behind Russia’s dominance over its…
Jul 23, 2026 · 34:23
Host Licia Cianetti talks to Venezuelan democracy activist and co-founder of the World Liberty Congress Leopoldo López. As part of PPP’s ongoing collaboration with the Journal of…
Jul 23, 2026 · 52:45
Why do some international courts wield broad authority while others face pushback or fade into irrelevance? The Authority of International Courts: A Behavioural Framework (Hart…
Jul 23, 2026 · 39:50
Julia Azari, Professor of Political Science at Marquette University, has a new, award-winning [*] book centering on the connection between race and the American presidency,…
Jul 22, 2026 · 52:52
In his final days in office in 1909, Theodore Roosevelt invited dozens of friends to the White House for lunch. They had never met as a group, but they had one thing in common:…
Jul 21, 2026 · 38:18
False Idols: How Diversion is Destroying Democracy (Vernon Press, 2024) examines how modern forms of diversion shape civic life and weaken democratic responsibility. Drawing on…
Jul 18, 2026 · 51:41
This week on Democracy Dialogues , Rachel Beatty Riedl speaks with Peter John Loewen to reflect on the 250th anniversary of US independence. They discuss the ways in which…
Jul 18, 2026 · 1:01:56
It's a shadowy, ornate world of cover-ups and hidden motives. In Flirting with Evil: The Catholic Church in the Age of Total War and Globalisation (Apollo, 2026), Ambrogio Caiani…
Jul 17, 2026 · 49:37
This book is available open access. For more than six decades, the public has been promised that computers will revolutionize politics, both nationally and internationally. In…
Jul 16, 2026 · 55:37
Political Scientists Christopher Federico, Stanley Feldman, and Christopher Weber have an important and fascinating new book from Oxford University Press focusing on…
Jul 16, 2026 · 34:12
Fascism swept the world in the 1920s and 1930s, but not only because of the seductive rhetoric of Mussolini, Hitler, and their collaborators. In India as well, a distinctive…
Jul 12, 2026 · 57:15
In this episode of International Horizons , RBI Acting Director Eli Karetny sits down with Alexis Cruz, founder of Enough Consulting and former strategic advisor for governance…
Jul 12, 2026 · 1:06:40
This week on Democracy Dialogues , Frances Cayton speaks with four experts on Polish politics about the success of Poland’s opposition coalition in 2023, and the headwinds that…
Jul 12, 2026 · 29:56
Taking Territory: The Persistence of Conquest Since 1945 (Cornell University Press, 2026) is an eye-opening account of why territorial conquest persists today. The end of World…
Jul 11, 2026 · 53:43
In early 2022, protests rocked Kazakhstan. Initially peaceful demonstrations turned violent after brutal government crackdowns, leaving at least 238 dead during "Bloody January."…
Jul 10, 2026 · 51:57
In the rich political landscape of Tamil Nadu, few movements have had as profound and enduring an impact as the Dravidian movement. Vignesh Rajahmani’s The Dravidian Pathway…
Jul 10, 2026 · 1:13:23
A New Approach to Political Speech: Democratic Theory, Constitutional Law, and Public Liberty After January 6 (de Gruyter, 2026) challenges conventional understandings of…
Jul 8, 2026 · 52:06
Politics, parties and campaigning are all changing. AI, digital tools and the rapid spread of messages all mean that the conduct and content of politics are changing. In many…
Jul 5, 2026 · 1:00:19
Once dominant and institutionalised, the Yakuza, one of Japan's best known criminal organisations, is now shrinking under the combined pressure of legal exclusion, social…
Jul 4, 2026 · 56:37
Participation in official governmental institutions and activities has declined dramatically. Americans are less inclined to express trust in, or cooperate with, political…
Jul 2, 2026 · 48:52
Punishment makes nobody safer, imprisonment only impoverishes us as a society. And yet, we lock up our own, more and more for worse and worse reasons. What might finally inspire…
Jul 1, 2026 · 56:56
Thomas Paine: Collected Writings (Princeton University Press, 2026) is the first major new edition of Paine’s works, bringing together all his writings in six breathtaking…
Jul 1, 2026 · 1:19:15
In preparation for the 250th anniversary of America’s founding, it would be wise to look back at the ancient thinkers and writers who helped inspire its early leaders. Perhaps…
Jul 1, 2026 · 1:15:30
In May, 1926, nearly three million British workers downed tools to support nearly one million of their countrymen, miners whose employers meant to lengthen their working day and…
Jun 30, 2026 · 27:04
The United States has traditionally been a great promoter of international justice – forging the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals after World War II and leading the way in creating…
Jun 24, 2026 · 27:07
Now more than ever, the international community plays a central role in pressing governments to hold themselves to account. Despite pressure to adhere to global human rights…
Jun 24, 2026 · 40:55
Indonesia is often framed as a key arena of China-Japan-US competition in the Second Cold War. In this episode, we talk with Trissia Wijaya about her book on the political…
Jun 23, 2026 · 26:23
Why have so many democracies become more polarized, unstable, and vulnerable to authoritarianism? And why did so many political observers fail to see it coming? In this episode…
Jun 21, 2026 · 58:48
Landscape architecture is at a crossroads. The ability to draw upon interdisciplinary perspectives and generate insights from the combined vantage points of design, environmental…
Jun 21, 2026 · 30:42
The Political Worldviews of American Social Movements: Partisan Politics and the Future of Democracy (Routledge, 2026) explores the political worldviews of progressive American…
Jun 21, 2026 · 1:11:43
He’s been called the man academics love to hate. One time, when the author disclosed that he worked with Pipes, the colleague responded, “I will forgive you.” Love him or hate…
Jun 20, 2026 · 1:15:13
Alena Ledeneva is Professor of Politics and Society at the University College London and a founder of the Global Informality Project. Her research focuses on informal practices,…
Jun 20, 2026 · 49:00
In 1975, Kuwaiti workers orchestrated arguably the most powerful citizen-led movement for noncitizen rights in the history of the Persian Gulf. Their efforts built on decades of…
Jun 18, 2026 · 44:19
Anna O. Law, the Herbert Kurz Chair in Constitutional Rights in the Department of Political Science at City University of New York-Brooklyn Campus, has a deeply researched and…
Jun 17, 2026 · 1:14:01
American democracy is in a period of crisis, so it seems natural to look back to its origins. So here in Episode 10 of Season 5, I interview Professor Josiah Ober . Having…
Jun 12, 2026 · 32:55
An in-depth examination of how the United States can build more effective partner militaries. Military assistance has a bad reputation. Large-scale attempts to build partner…
Jun 12, 2026 · 45:54
Like many people, I've been following the developments of AI, testing out new models and following the deluge of news stories about the fight for supremacy. Much has been written…
Jun 11, 2026 · 38:51
Karine Premont and Christopher Devine have a new edited volume focusing on the American Vice Presidency and analyzing not just the office and the officeholders, but also the role…
Jun 11, 2026 · 42:28
In 1971, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi threw a party to celebrate the 2,500-year anniversary of the Persian Empire. It was planned to be a massive party, with tents set up in the…
Jun 10, 2026 · 56:18
Athenian Democracy provides innovative readings of ancient theorists to reveal both the complexity of democracy's achievements and its limits. In Athenian Democracy: Modern…
Jun 9, 2026 · 53:25
Anniversaries provide opportunities to take stock and reflect. It is now ten years since voters in the United Kingdom cast their ballots in a referendum on whether the UK should…
Jun 8, 2026 · 1:14:00
This episode features a conversation with Prachi and Ram, organizers with Savera, a multiracial, interfaith, anti-caste coalition of Indian Americans and partners standing…
Jun 8, 2026 · 1:07:54
We were joined by Professor Margaret O’Mara of the University of Washington, who had a front row seat to the Clinton campaign and went on to become an expert in the history of…
Jun 5, 2026 · 1:04:58
How should executives position a company for growth when the geopolitical future is so uncertain? Recent events in Ukraine and the Middle East and tightening restrictions on…
Jun 2, 2026 · 1:28:26
The thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment have often been claimed for sociology. But, what does it mean to say these thinkers were sociologists, or at the very least precursors…
Jun 1, 2026 · 30:17
Was Brexit really a sudden, populist shock, or was the writing on the wall for decades? This week on International Horizons , Eli Karetny sits down with award-winning cultural…
May 30, 2026 · 1:11:34
In Ladder or Lottery: Economic Promises and the Reality of Who Gets Ahead (University of California Press, 2026) , Gary Hoover asks the reader a simple question: Is our economy a…
May 29, 2026 · 38:52
This week on Democracy Dialogues , Maya Tudor speaks with two keen observers of Indian politics, Gilles Verniers and Yamini Aiyar, about what India’s 2026 state elections reveal…
May 28, 2026 · 1:33:21
The Wisdom of the Ancients: Four Ideas That Changed the World (Oxford UP, 2025) is about four cornerstones of modern thought that were put in place by people living in the…
May 28, 2026 · 51:57
Black women have always been the most relentless instigators for change—building a democracy for all. In The Instigators: How Black Women Have Been Essential to American…
May 27, 2026 · 35:59
When we think about threats to democracy, we often imagine dramatic breakdowns—military coups, constitutional crises, or sudden collapses. But today, a common danger is slower…
May 26, 2026 · 44:40
This week on Democracy Dialogues , host Maya Tudor speaks with her colleague and fellow political scientist Pepper Culpepper about his new book Billionaire Backlash: The Age of…
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