New Books In Political Science

How much of US power is underground? We hear a lot about the US military assets used on land, on the sea, and in the air - but not much about what’s going on underground and on the sea bed. It turns out what goes on down there is a significant source of US power – which has been documented by Henry Farrell in his co-authored book (with Abraham Newman), Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy (Henry Holt, 2023). Listen to him describe it all with Owen Bennett-Jones. Owen Bennett-Jones is a freelance journalist and writer. A former BBC correspondent and presenter he has been a resident foreign correspondent in Bucharest, Geneva, Islamabad, Hanoi and Beirut. He is recently wrote a history of the Bhutto dynasty which was published by 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

Michael J. Diamond's book Ruptures in the American Psyche: Containing Destructive Populism in Perilous Times (Phoenix Publishing, 2022) describes Trumpism: the strong allegiance to former President Donald Trump that is in evidence among a sizable portion of the US population. How did Trump come to be elected in 2016, and who supported him during his presidential tenure - and why? How is it that he continues to hold cult-like status, exerting a strong influence not only on many individuals but also on numerous elected officials, despite his defeat in 2020? Why does his character continue to be an object of fascination even among anti-Trumpists, and why will Trumpism continue to play a major role in the American sociopolitical landscape even now he has left the presidential stage?  Diamond ponders these questions through the lenses of American history and culture, political theory, social phenomena, group dynamics, and psychoanalysis. In exploring the relationship between large-group regression, cultism, destru

The practice of international development continues to change as more is understood about what works. A shift from a deficit or problem-solving approach to a strengths-based approach is a significant reframing for international development. A strengths-based approach aims to reveal assets, strengths or what is working within an individual, group, community or organization, then uses these strengths as a way to achieve change and preferred futures. Reframing Aid: A Strengths-Based Approach for International Development (Practical Action, 2023) by Dr. Keren Winterford, Deborah Rhodes, and Christopher Dureau sets out the thinking, practical action and evidence-base to inform a sector-wide transformation. For many, this is a radical or even revolutionary shift, but for others, the writing is already on the wall. The authors set out the strong theoretical and practical basis of a strengths-based approach; explore insight through the lens on power, culture and psychology; and provide examples of how the approach is

Why do we protect free speech? What values does it serve? How has the Supreme Court interpreted the First Amendment? What has the Court gotten right and wrong? Why are current debates over free expression often so divisive? How can we do better? In this succinct but comprehensive and scholarly book, authors Len Niehoff and Thomas Sullivan tackle these pressing questions. Free Speech: From Core Values to Current Debates (Cambridge UP, 2022) traces the development and evolution of the free speech doctrine in the Supreme Court and explores how the Court - with varying levels of success - has applied that doctrinal framework to “hard cases” and current controversies, such as those involving hate speech, speech on the internet, speech on campus, and campaign finance regulation. This is the perfect volume for anyone - student, general reader, or scholar - looking for an accessible overview of this critical topic. Len Niehoff is a professor from practice at University of Michigan Thomas Sullivan President Emeritus a

Why do we always assume it was the New Right that was at the centre of constructing neoliberalism? How might corporatism have advanced neoliberalism? And, more controversially, were the trade unions only victims of neoliberal change, or did they play a more contradictory role? In How Labour Built Neoliberalism: Australia’s Accord, the Labour Movement and the Neoliberal Project (Haymarket 2019), Elizabeth Humphrys examines the role of the Labour Party and trade unions in constructing neoliberalism in Australia, and the implications of this for understanding neoliberalism's global advance. These questions are central to understanding the present condition of the labour movement and its prospects for the future. Dr Elizabeth Humphrys is a political economist and the Head Of Discipline, Social And Political Sciences at University of Technology Sydney. She is interested in the impact of economic crisis and climate change on workers, and how workplaces can be made safer and more equitable. She takes a multidiscipli

Immanuel Wallerstein's world-systems theory can help to better understand and describe developments of the 21st century. The contributors of Wallerstein 2.0: Thinking and Applying World-Systems Theory in the 21st Century (Transcript Publishing, 2023) address ways to reread Wallerstein's theoretical thoughts in the humanities and social sciences. The presented interdisciplinary approach of this anthology intends to highlight the broader value of Wallerstein's ideas, even almost five decades after the famous sociologist and economic historian first expressed them. Frank Jacob is a professor of global history at Nord Universitet, Norway. Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant 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

Both critical and mainstream scholarly work on humanitarianism have largely been framed from anthropocentric perspectives highlighting humanity as the rationale for providing care to others. In Nonhuman Humanitarians: Animal Interventions in Global Politics (University of Minnesota Press, 2023), Dr. Benjamin Meiches explores the role of animals laboring alongside humans in humanitarian operations, generating new ethical possibilities of care in humanitarian practice. Nonhuman Humanitarians examines how these animals not only improve specific practices of humanitarian aid but have started to transform the basic tenets of humanitarianism. Analyzing case studies of mine-clearance dogs, milk-producing cows and goats, and disease-identifying rats, Nonhuman Humanitarians ultimately argues that nonhuman animal contributions problematize foundational assumptions about the emotional and rational capacities of humanitarian actors as well as the ethical focus on human suffering that defines humanitarianism. Dr. Meiches

Postscript invites scholars to react to contemporary political events and today’s podcast welcomes an expert on domestic violence and firearms law to analyze a controversial Second Amendment case that the United States Supreme Court will hear this Fall, United States v. Rahimi. Kelly Roskam, JD is the Director of Law and Policy at the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Prevention and Policy. She studies the constitutional implications of, advocates for, and works to improve the implementation of firearms laws. She has been writing about the practical implications of the Rahimi case since it came up through the 5th circuit (for example, “The Fifth Circuit’s Rahimi decision protects abusers’ access to guns. The Supreme Court must act to protect survivors of domestic violence” and “A Texas Judge Is Using Originalism to Justify Arming Domestic Abusers” (co-authored with Spencer Cantrell and Natalie Nanasi). In the podcast, we discuss the specifics of this strange case (a man who assaulted a woman, shot in the

Liberal internationalism has been the West's foreign policy agenda since the Cold War, and the West has long occupied the top rung of a hierarchical system. In Dynamics Among Nations, Hilton Root argues that international relations, like other complex ecosystems, exists in a constantly shifting landscape, in which hierarchical structures are giving way to systems of networked interdependence, changing every facet of global interaction. Accordingly, policymakers will need a new way to understand the process of change. Root suggests that the science of complex systems offers an analytical framework to explain the unforeseen development failures, governance trends, and alliance shifts in today's global political economy. Root examines both the networked systems that make up modern states and the larger, interdependent landscapes they share. Using systems analysis--in which institutional change and economic development are understood as self-organizing complexities--he offers an alternative view of institutional

As the last few months of landmark Supreme Court decisions have showcased, Clarence Thomas is one of the most important men in America. To wrap up our Summer of Law series, Judge Amul Thapar discusses his recent book, The People's Justice: Clarence Thomas and the Constitutional Stories that Define Him (Regnery Publishing, 2023), digging into Justice Thomas's judicial legacy and some of his most interesting, influential, and surprising decisions. Amul Thapar is serves as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He became the first South Asian Article III judge in American history when President George W. Bush nominate him to serve on the Eastern District of Kentucky, where he then also served as the United States Attorney. In 2017, he became President Donald J. Trump’s first appellate court nominee. If you enjoyed this episode, you may also enjoy his most recent speech at the Madison Program. Annika Nordquist is the Communications Coordinator of Princeton University’s James Madiso

As television began to overtake the political landscape in the 1960s, network broadcast companies, bolstered by powerful lobbying interests, dominated screens across the nation. Yet over the next three decades, the expansion of a different technology, cable, changed all of this. 24/7 Politics: Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News (Princeton UP, 2023) tells the story of how the cable industry worked with political leaders to create an entirely new approach to television, one that tethered politics to profits and divided and distracted Americans by feeding their appetite for entertainment--frequently at the expense of fostering responsible citizenship. In this timely and provocative book, Kathryn Cramer Brownell argues that cable television itself is not to blame for today's rampant polarization and scandal politics--the intentional restructuring of television as a political institution is. She describes how cable innovations--from C-SPAN coverage of congressional debates i

Analyzing Social Narratives (Routledge, 2015) is one of the concise and informative volumes in the Routledge Series on Interpretive Methods, whose titles we have been featuring on New Books in Interpretive Political and Social Science. Its author, Shaul Shenhav, organizes the book’s contents around four concepts: story, text, narration and multiplicity, each of which we discuss in this episode. Reflecting on his early experiences of learning about narrative through the love of literature, he explains why narrative analysis matters as much for political science as it does for the humanities, and talks us through some of the operations that he sets out in the book. He considers the relevance of narrative to other types of textual and discourse analysis, and discusses how interpretive political and social scientists can contribute to research and debates on large language models. Nick Cheesman is associate professor in the Department of Political and Social Change, Australian National University where he co-conv

In the United States, the stoicism and importance of the “working class” is part of the national myth. The term is often used to conjure the contributions and challenges of the white working class – and this obscures the ways in which Black workers built institutions like the railroads and universities – but also how they transformed unions, changed public policy, and established community.  In Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class (LIveright, 2023), Dr. Blair LM Kelley restores the Black working class to the center of the American story by interrogating the lives of laundresses, Pullman porters, domestic maids, and postal workers. The book is both a personal journey and a history of Black labor in the United States from enslavement to the present day with a focus on a critical era: after Southern Emancipation to the early 20th century, when the first generations of Black working people carved out a world for themselves. Dr. Kelley captures the character of the lives of Black workers not only as la

Anchored in the principles of free-market economics, neoliberalism emerged in the 1990s as the world's most dominant economic paradigm. It has been associated with political leaders from Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Bill Clinton, to Tony Blair, Barack Obama, and Manmohan Singh. Neoliberalism even penetrated deeply into communist China's powerful economic system. However, the 2008 Global Financial Crisis and the related European Sovereign Debt Crisis triggered a decade of economic volatility and insecurity that boosted the fortunes of the 1 per cent while saddling the 99 per cent with stagnant wages and precarious work. As a result of this Great Recession, neoliberalism fortunes have waned considerably. This downward trend further accelerated with the recent surge of national populism around the world that brought to power outspoken critics of neoliberalism like Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, Jair Bolsonaro, and Narendra Modi. Is neoliberalism doomed or will it regain its former glory? And what are the

In this episode, Kenneth King (University of Edinburgh) & Meera Venkatachalam (University of Mumbai), discuss their recently co-edited volume, India's Development Diplomacy and Soft Power in Africa, published by Boydell and Brewer in 2021. India has understood its relations with Africa within the framework of South-South cooperation, where postcolonial states collaborated for scientific and technological exchanges, as well as to craft common political positions against the hegemony of 'northern' powers. However, following economic liberalisation and the rise of the political right, India's relationship with Africa has changed. Kenneth & Meera discuss some of the main themes in their book, including how the nature of Indian aid to Africa has changed over the decades; how symbols such as Gandhi have been used by the Indian government as part of its soft power strategy; how mantras of post-colonial solidarity and South-South Cooperation have been replaced by a growing sense of Indian exceptionalism in recent yea

Today I talked to Benjamin Studebaker about his new book The Chronic Crisis of American Democracy: The Way Is Shut (Palgrave MacMillan, 2023) American democracy is in crisis. The economic system is slowly subjecting Americans of nearly all income levels and backgrounds to enormous amounts of stress. The United States lacks the state capacity required to alleviate this stress, and politicians increasingly find that if they promise to solve economic problems, they are likely to disappoint voters. Instead, they encourage voters to blame each other. The crisis cannot be solved, the economy cannot be set right, and democracy cannot be saved. But American democracy cannot be killed, either. Americans can’t imagine any compelling alternative political systems. And so, American democracy continues on, in a deeply unsatisfying way. Americans invent ever-more elaborate coping mechanisms in a desperate bid to go on. But it becomes increasingly clear that the way is shut. The American political system was made by those w

In Hailing the State: Indian Democracy Between Elections (Duke UP, 2023), Lisa Mitchell explores the methods of collective assembly that people in India use to hold elected officials and government administrators accountable, demand inclusion in decision making, and stage informal referendums. Mitchell traces the colonial and postcolonial lineages of collective forms of assembly, in which—rather than rejecting state authority—participants mobilize with expectations that officials will uphold the law and fulfill electoral promises.  She shows how assembly, which ranges from sit-ins, hunger strikes, and demands for meetings with officials to massive general strikes and road and rail blockades, is fundamental to the functioning of democracy in India. These techniques are particularly useful for historically marginalized groups and others whose voices may not be easily heard. Moving beyond an exclusive focus on electoral processes, Mitchell argues that to understand democracy—both in India and beyond—we must also

The Supreme Court recently wrapped up their term – and announced that they will hear a very controversial case about domestic abuse, the power of Congress, and the right to keep and bear arms called United States v. Rahimi. The Court will decide whether a Texas man who assaulted his girlfriend in a parking lot and threatened to shoot her if she told anyone has been deprived of his Second Amendment rights. When the assaulted woman later obtained a restraining order against Mr. Zackey Rahimi, federal law made illegal for him to possess a firearm or ammunition while under that order. In 2019, Mr. Zackey Rahimi had an argument with his girlfriend in a parking lot. Mr. Rahimi knocked the woman to the ground. As he dragged her back to his car, she hit her head on the car’s dashboard. Later, in a telephone call. Mr. Rahimi threatened the woman that he would shoot her if she told anyone about the assault. Later, a Texas state court entered a domestic violence restraining order against Rahimi. The order also barred Ra

Why is Malaysia in need of electoral reform? How can we explain recent changes including the anti-party hopping law and the successful UNDI18 campaign to lower the voting age? And what does the outcome Malaysia's GE15, the November 2022 general election, mean for the health of Malaysian democracy? In this podcast, editors Helen Ting and Donald Horowitz discuss their recent volume on electoral reform in Malaysia with NIAS Director Duncan McCargo  Helen Ting  is an associate professor at IKMAS at UKM, the National University of Malaysia, while Donald L. Horowitz is James B. Duke Professor of Law and Political Science Emeritus at Duke University. This wide-ranging volumes features 11 chapters on various aspects of Malaysia's electoral system.  Big political changes in Malaysia since 2018 have raised high expectations for electoral reform but much remains to be achieved. This impressive study takes stock of the state of democracy in Malaysia by offering readers a deep but readily understandable analysis of an arr

In Paradoxes of Nostalgia: Cold War Triumphalism and Global Disorder since 1989 (Duke University Press, 2022) Dr. Penny M. Von Eschen offers a sweeping examination of the cold war’s afterlife and the lingering shadows it casts over geopolitics, journalism, and popular culture. She shows how myriad forms of nostalgia across the globe—from those that posit a mythic national past to those critical of neoliberalism that remember a time when people believed in the possibility of a collective good—indelibly shape the post-cold war era. When Western triumphalism moved into the global South and former Eastern bloc spaces, many articulated a powerful sense of loss and a longing for stability. Innovatively bringing together diplomatic archives, museums, films, and video games, Dr. Von Eschen shows that as the United States continuously sought new enemies for its unipolar world, cold war triumphalism fueled the ascendancy of xenophobic right-wing nationalism and the embrace of authoritarian sensibilities in the United S