New Books In Political Science

Political Scientists Dan Mallinson and Lee Hannah, both experts on state-level politics and the policy making process, have a new book that focuses on the state-level process of legalization of medical cannabis across the United States. Green Rush: The Rise of Medical Marijuana in the United States (NYU Press, 2024) is a book that needed to be written, since it is an important exploration not only of the continuing policy conflicts and tensions around marijuana in the United States, but it specifically focuses on how states have taken up this issue and what they each did in moving towards medical marijuana’s accessibility. The marijuana question in in the United States remains a fascinating federalism dynamic, with national laws in conflict with state laws, and state laws operating in different ways, around both medical marijuana and legalized recreational use of cannabis. Mallinson and Hannah provide the reader with an excellent overview of policymaking designs and theories since their analysis takes up so m

Kitty Calavita, Chancellor’s Professor Emerita of Criminology, Law and Society at the University of California, Irvine, discuss the historical context and implications of Operation Wetback, a 1954 U.S. mass deportation of Mexican immigrants, and its relevance to President-elect Donald Trump's proposed mass deportation plans. Calavita explains that Operation Wetback aimed to address the economic utility of undocumented workers and political backlash against them, particularly during a recession and Cold War rhetoric. She highlights the logistical challenges of such operations, including the integration of immigrants into various industries and the legal protections against random stops. Calavita suggests that while high-profile roundups may occur, a massive deportation campaign is unlikely due to economic and logistical obstacles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

In this podcast, Nick Butler explores humour's complex and often controversial role in shaping modern political discourse, examining how jokes can challenge and reinforce power structures. Whether you're interested in the intersection of humour and politics or curious about the cultural implications of what’s considered "offensive," this conversation promises to be both insightful and engaging. Tune in to hear Nick’s thoughts on the dangers and potential of humour in a politically polarized world and much more! Don’t miss this fascinating dive into The Trouble with Jokes: Humour and Offensiveness in Contemporary Culture and Politics (Policy Press, 2023) There is an enjoyable piece in The Conversation about this book and the 2024 US elections  here Butler's blog on academic writing called First Draft 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

Anticolonial movements of the twentieth century generated audacious ideas of freedom. Following decolonization, the challenge was to give an institutional form to those ideas. Through an original account of India's constitution making, Legalizing the Revolution explores the promises, challenges, and contradictions of that task.  In contrast to derived templates, Dasgupta theorizes the distinctively postcolonial constitution through an innovative synthesis of the history of decolonization and constitutional theory. Legalizing the Revolution: India and the Constitution of the Postcolony (Cambridge UP, 2024) traces the contentious transition from the tumult of popular anticolonial politics to the ordered calculus of postcolonial governance; and then explains how major institutions – parliament, judiciary, rights, property – were formed by that foundational tension. A major contribution to postcolonial political theory, the book excavates the unrealized futures of decolonization. At the same time, through a criti

Football is the national game in the United States – and many families and friends bond over their love of the sport. While few people play professional football, many participate in tackle football as children and adolescents. In the last decades, more attention has been paid to the dangers of playing tackle football, including traumatic brain injury and the degenerative brain disease, CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy). As more former players donated their brains, the rate of CTE surprised even those already concerned with traumatic brain injury. If the risks are so great, why do more than two million American children under the age of 18 continue to play tackle football? Is it the opportunity to contribute to a team? Overcome adversity? Test personal limits? In Tackle Football and Traumatic Brain Injuries: Law, Ethics, and Public Health (Johns Hopkins UP, 2024), Dr. Daniel S. Goldberg asks readers to think about American tackle football as an industry – like the American tobacco industry – that sells a

In Reproductive Labor and Innovation: Against the Tech Fix in an Era of Hype (Duke UP, 2024), Jennifer Denbow examines how the push toward technoscientific innovation in contemporary American life often comes at the expense of the care work and reproductive labor that is necessary for society to function. Noting that the gutting of social welfare programs has shifted the burden of solving problems to individuals, Denbow argues that the aggrandizement of innovation and the degradation of reproductive labor are intertwined facets of neoliberalism. She shows that the construction of innovation as a panacea to social ills justifies the accumulation of wealth for corporate innovators and the impoverishment of those feminized and racialized people who do the bulk of reproductive labor. Moreover, even innovative technology aimed at reproduction—such as digital care work platforms and noninvasive prenatal testing—obscure structural injustices and further devalue reproductive labor.  By drawing connections between inn

Recent developments in the Middle East have raised concern about the potential for a wider regional war. What do escalating tensions in Gaza, Lebanon, and beyond mean for the future? Join RBI Director John Torpey as he discusses the complexities of the contemporary Middle East with Win Dayton, a retired senior member of the U.S. Foreign Service and former Deputy Chief of Mission at the US Embassy in Beirut. Mr. Dayton shares insights from his decades of diplomatic experience, exploring the shifting dynamics of U.S. foreign policy, the challenges of intervention, and the prospects for stability amid growing regional and global pressures. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Today’s episode focuses on the policy challenges and politics of public healthcare in Southeast Asia, a topic which has become increasingly visible and important in Southeast Asia and in the study of the region over the past decades in the context of expanding public healthcare programs in many countries across the region and the recent experience of the global pandemic. To discuss these issues, we are joined by Professor Sarah Shair-Rosenfield, who has been conducting research on public healthcare in Indonesia and the Philippines over the past several years. Sarah Shair-Rosenfield is a Professor of Comparative Politics in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of York here in the UK. She received her PhD from the University of North Carolina and then taught at Arizona State University and the University of Essex before taking up a professorial chair at the University of York. She is the author of Electoral Reform and the Fate of New Democracies: Lessons from the Indonesian C

International development projects supported by governments of wealthy countries, international financial institutions, and influential NGOs like the Gates Foundation purport to uplift poor or disadvantaged populations through political, economic, and social interventions in these communities. However, practices, policies, and discourses of development also have a darker side: they are both premised on and perpetuate the translation of social difference into deficit, ranking groups according to their perceived ‘stage’ of historical development. My guest today, the political theorist Begüm Adalet, has explored how discourses and practices of development have interacted with political processes of racialization. She also examines how anti-colonial movements can resist racialized development practices by envisioning alternative means of recrafting built environments and the creation of selves. Our interview today focuses on three recent articles that she has published in academic journals: “Agricultural infrast

How far does geopolitics relate to domestic political leanings? Are politically progressive Thais more likely to be pro-US, and more politically conservative Thais likely to favour China? A recent article by Petra Alderman, Duncan McCargo, Alfred Gerstl and James Icovocci drawing on a 2022 survey finds some relationship between liberal domestic political leanings and sympathy for the United States, but also shows that conservative domestic political leanings do not automatically translate into support for China. To view election outcomes in a country such as Thailand as “wins” for one or other great power would be highly misleading. Article details: Petra Alderman, Duncan McCargo, Alfred Gerstl and James Icovocci, ‘All About China? (Mis)Reading Domestic Politics through a Great Power Lens’, Asian Survey, 2024, 64 (5): 877–911. Petra Alderman is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in Leadership for Inclusive and Democratic Politics at the University of Birmingham, and a Research Fellow at Birmingham’s Centre for E

An internet search of the phrase "this is what democracy looks like" returns thousands of images of people assembled in public for the purpose of collective action. But is group collaboration truly the defining feature of effective democracy? In Civic Solitude: Why Democracy Needs Distance (Oxford UP, 2024), Robert B. Talisse suggests that while group action is essential to democracy, action without reflection can present insidious challenges, as individuals' perspectives can be distorted by group dynamics. The culprit is a cognitive dynamic called belief polarization. As we interact with our political allies, we are exposed to forces that render us more radical in our beliefs and increasingly hostile to those who do not share them. What's more, the social environments we inhabit in our day-to-day lives are sorted along partisan lines. We are surrounded by triggers of political extremity and animosity. Thus, our ordinary activities encourage the attitude that democracy is possible only when everyone agrees--a

Democracy is a living, breathing thing and Dr. Erica Benner has spent a lifetime thinking about the role ordinary citizens play in keeping it alive: from her childhood in post-war Japan, where democracy was imposed on a defeated country, to working in post-communist Poland, with its sudden gaps of wealth and security. Adventures in Democracy: The Turbulent World of People Power (Penguin, 2024) draws on her experiences and the deep history of self-ruling peoples – going back to ancient Greece, the French revolution and Renaissance Florence – to rethink some of the toughest questions that we face today. What do democratic ideals of equality mean in a world obsessed with competition, wealth, and greatness? How can we hold the powerful to account? Can we find enough common ground to keep sharing democratic power in the future? Challenging well-worn myths of heroic triumph over tyranny, Dr. Benner reveals the inescapable vulnerabilities of people power, inviting us to consider why democracy is worth fighting for a

How do states build vital institutions for market development? Too often, governments confront technical or political barriers to providing the rule of law, contract enforcement, and loan access. In From Click to Boom: The Political Economy of E-Commerce in China (Princeton, 2024) Lizhi Liu suggests a digital solution: governments strategically outsourcing tasks of institutional development and enforcement to digital platforms—a process she calls “institutional outsourcing.” China’s e-commerce boom showcases this digital path to development. In merely two decades, China built from scratch a two-trillion-dollar e-commerce market, with 800 million users, seventy million jobs, and nearly fifty percent of global online retail sales. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Liu argues, this market boom occurred because of weak government institutions, not despite them. Gaps in government institutions compelled e-commerce platforms to build powerful private institutions for contract enforcement, fraud detection, and disput

In Soldier's Paradise: Militarism in Africa After Empire (Duke UP, 2024), Samuel Fury Childs Daly tells the story of how Africa’s military dictators tried and failed to transform their societies into martial utopias. Across the continent, independence was followed by a wave of military coups and revolutions. The soldiers who led them had a vision. In Nigeria and other former British colonies, officers governed like they fought battles—to them, politics was war by other means. Civilians were subjected to military-style discipline, which was indistinguishable from tyranny. Soldiers promised law and order, and they saw judges as allies in their mission to make society more like an army. But law was not the disciplinary tool soldiers thought it was. Using legal records, archival documents, and memoirs, Daly shows how law both enabled militarism and worked against it. For Daly, the law is a place to see decolonization’s tensions and ironies—independence did not always mean liberty, and freedom had a militaristic s

The European Union has a big problem—a potentially fatal one. How should it deal with a member state or states that reject democracy and the rule of law? So far, not even Viktor Orbán’s Hungary has turned full-blown authoritarian. However, his 14 unbroken years of “illiberal democracy”, his constitution rewriting, creeping media control, challenges to judicial independence, and calls for popular resistance against the EU are becoming less easy to ignore or accommodate. Yet, the EU’s tools to address democratic backsliding are blunt and its institutions are reluctant to use them. Above all, while a member state can leave the union, the union itself has no power to expel a club member that breaks its core democratic rules. In Protecting Democracy in Europe: Pluralism, Autocracy and the Future of the EU (Hurst, 2024), Tom Theuns looks back at the history of this design fault and how to put it right. He writes: "EU member states cannot both permit a frankly autocratic state to continue to be a member state of the

Why do efforts to build effective states and deliver services to citizens so often go wrong? And how can understanding the inside of the political mind empower us to achieve better results? In this podcast, Nic Cheeseman talks to Greg Power about his important new book, based on the experience of working with hundreds of politicians in more than sixty countries. In Inside the Political Mind: The Human Side of Politics and How It Shapes Development (Oxford UP, 2024), Greg explains why individual politicians and norms of behaviour and more powerful than formal rules and institutions, and why practical challenges so often encourage citizens and politicians to go around the state rather than working through it. This leads to a radical new way of thinking about state-building and development that works from the bottom-up on the basis of what leaders and their people want, rather than what the international community assumes they need. Guest: Greg Power is the founder and Board Chair of Global Partners Governance P

Many pundits are rushing to judgement – claiming to identify the “one” reason that Donald Trump won or Kamala Harris lost the 2024 Presidential Election. Today’s Postscript offers a nuanced conversation among four political scientists to gather some key take-aways and interpretive tools for looking forward to the second Trump presidency, midterms, 2028 presidential election, and 2030 redistricting. Julia Azari is Professor of Political Science at Marquette University and a prolific media commentator on politics. Jonathan Bernstein is a political scientist who focuses on political parties, Congress, the presidency, elections, and democracy. Political Parties, Congress the Presid, Elections, and Democracy. Meena Bose is the Executive Dean for Public Policy and Public Service Programs at the Peter S. Kalikow School of Government, Public Policy and International Affairs and director of the Peter S. Kalikow Center for the Study of the American Presidency, both at Hofstra University. Daniel E. Ponder is the L.E. Me

Tribe-state relations are a foundational element of authoritarian bargains in the Middle East, and in particular in the Gulf States. However, the structures of governance built upon that foundation exhibit wide differences. What explains this variation in the salience of kinship authority?  Through a case comparison of Kuwait, Qatar and Oman, in Kinship, State Formation and Governance in the Arab Gulf States (Edinburgh University Press, 2022) Dr. Scott Weiner shows that variation in tribal access to limited resources before state building can account for these differences. Its conclusions are based on seven months of archival research and interviews in Arabic and English, and reveal new details about state formation on the Arabian Peninsula. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new 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. Learn more abou

The United States incarcerates its citizens for property crime, drug use, and violent crime at a rate that exceeds any other developed nation – and disproportionately affects the poor and racial minorities. Yet the U.S. has never developed the capacity to consistently prosecute corporate wrongdoing. This disjuncture between the treatment of street and corporate crime is often narrated as hypocrisy. Others suggest that the disparity is rooted in a conservative backlash after the civil rights movement and the Great Society or a legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, and the racialization of crime. In Dual Justice: America's Divergent Approaches to Street and Corporate Crime (U Chicago Press, 2024), Dr. Anthony Grasso interrogates the intertwined histories of street and corporate crime to find that the differences in punishment are more than modern hypocrisy. Examining the carceral and regulatory states' evolutions from 1870 through today, Grasso argues that divergent approaches to street and corporate crime share common,

In the wake of the twentieth anniversary of the dreadful Tak Bai massacre, what are the prospects for a resolution of the long-standing insurgency in Thailand Malay-Muslim majority southern border provinces? Why has the Paetongtarn Shinawatra government failed to support justice for the families of the 85 men who died in the incident? Why do absurd conspiracy theories often loom larger than evidence-based analyses of the root causes underling the violence? And why does the Thai state struggle to embrace narratives of local identity that offer space for diversity, disagreement and pluralism? Don Pathan is a senior journalist and security analyst, well known for his expertise on the Southern insurgency. Duncan McCargo is President’s Chair in Global Affairs at Nanyang Technological University. He has published extensively on the southern conflict, including the award-winning book Tearing Apart the Land: Islam and Legitimacy in Southern Thailand (Cornell 2008). Chayata Sripanich is a research associate with the G