New Books In Political Science

Political Scientist Steven Rogers’ new book focuses on the deceptively complex question of how it is that voters do or don’t/can and can’t hold their elected state representatives accountable. Rogers takes his jumping off point from the basic understanding of the relationship between the voter and their elected representatives: namely that the election process will, in some way, act as a means of making the elected official in state government accountable to the voters, who cast their ballots for or in opposition to that elected representative. State house elected officials across the United States are, indeed, closer in proximity to the people they are elected to represent and govern; and the legislation and regulations passed by state legislators generally impact us more directly and more frequently than do national-level laws, regulations, or decisions. And while there is a of literature focusing on state and local politics, the unique approach of Rogers’ research focuses specifically on the state legislat

Despite its extraordinary diversity, life in the People’s Republic of China is all too often viewed mainly through the lens of politics, with dynamics of top-down coercion and bottom-up resistance seen to predominate. Such a binary framing is particularly often applied to analyses of the country’s media which is understood in terms of mouthpieces of the party-state or vanishingly rare dissident voices. Yet as Maria Repnikova lucidly shows in her book Media Politics in China: Improvising Power under Authoritarianism (Cambridge University Press, 2017) there may be much more at play here than a straightforward cleavage between collaboration and resistance. Through discussion of the work of ‘critical journalists’ and their interactions with officialdom, Repnikova paints a rich and provocative picture of the flexible, creative, if nevertheless precarious, nature of state-media interactions whose implications go far beyond the media sphere. Repnikova suggests that journalistic ‘change-makers within the system’ (to

Social networks existed and shaped our lives long before Silicon Valley startups made them virtual. For over two decades economist Matthew O. Jackson, a professor at Stanford University, has studied how the shape of networks and our positions within them can affect us. In this interview, he explains how network structures can create poverty traps, exacerbate financial crises, and contribute to political polarization. He also explains how a new awareness of the role of networks has been used to improve financial regulation, promote public health knowledge, and guide vaccination strategy. Jackson also discusses how he first began to study networks, previously neglected by economists, and how economists can both learn from and contribute to the exciting cross-disciplinary dialogue among researchers from sociology, math, physics, and other fields. Professor Jackson's website provides free access to the chapter on contagion, of particular interest in this time of pandemic. For those who want to learn even more tha

Ajantha Subramanian and Lori Allen turn from hosts to interlocutors in an episode that ties a bow on our Violent Majorities conversations about Indian (episode 1) and Israeli (episode 2) ethnonationalism. The three friends discuss commonalities between Balmurli Natrajan’s charting of the "slippery slope towards a multiculturalism of caste" and Natasha Roth-Rowland's description of the "territorial maximalism" that has been central to Zionism. The role of overseas communities loomed large, as did the roots of ethnonationalism in the fascism of the 1920s, which survived, transmuted or merely masked over the subsequent bloody century, as other ideologies (Communism and perhaps cosmopolitan liberalism among them) waxed before waning. The conversation also examines the current-day shared playbook of the long-distance far-right ideologies of Zionism and Hindutva. And it concludes with a reflection on the suitability of the term fascism to describe such organizations and their historical forebears as well as other c

In his extensive body of work, Professor Abdullahi Ahmed An-Naim challenges both historical interpretations of Islamic Sharia and neo-colonial understanding of human rights. To advance the rationale of scholarship for social change, An-Naim proposes advancing the universality of human rights through internal discourse within Islamic and African societies and cross-cultural dialogue among human cultures. This book proposes a transformation from human rights organized around a state determined practice to one that is focused on a people-centric approach that empowers individuals to decide how human rights will be understood and integrated into their communities. Decolonizing Human Rights (Cambridge UP, 2021) aims to illustrate the decisive role of human agency on the subject of change, without implying that Islamic or any other society are exceptionally disposed to politically motivated violence and consequent profound political instability. Kirk Meighoo is Public Relations Officer for the United National Cong

Dr. Gary Shiffman’s book The Economics of Violence: How Behavioral Science Can Transform our View of Crime, Insurgency, and Terrorism (Cambridge UP, 2020) serves as a fantastic introduction to anyone interested in thinking critically about terrorist, insurgency, and criminal groups of all sorts. Using case studies from multiple continents, ideological contexts, and political situations, Dr. Shiffman shows how the language and tools familiar to economists can assist policy makers and security personnel to combat rival ‘firms,’ as he classifies them. Arguing strongly against essentialist labels and stories about why these groups act the way that they do, Dr. Shiffman offers us an approach to understanding ‘illicit’ groups that would be recognizable to leaders of many ‘legitimate’ organizations. Dr. Gary Shiffman is a Professor at Georgetown University, the CEO of two software companies, a former Naval Officer and Border Patrol leader, a former Fortune 200 executive, and an engaging writer. His is the author of

How are Roman political assumptions similar to versus different from our own? What did the Founding Fathers get right and wrong about the Ancients? How did Rome deal with class conflict? Is America Rome? Joining Madison's Notes to discuss is Duke Classicist Jed Atkins, a specialist in Roman political thought. The conversation convers important differences between Rome's values and ours, such as their emphasis on hierarchy and honor, the impact of great thinkers like Plutarch and Cicero, and much more. Jed Atkins is the E. Blake Byrne Associate Professor of Classical Studies at Duke University. He is the author of Roman Political Thought (Cambridge UP, 2018) as well as Cicero on Politics and the Limits of Reason (Cambridge UP, 2020). In November, he gave a lecture at the Madison Program: "Liberalism and the Christian Origins of Tolerance." Annika Nordquist is the Communications Coordinator of Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions and host of the Program’s podcast, Mad

How social scientists' disagreements about their key words and distinctions have been misconceived, and what to do about it Social scientists do research on a variety of topics--gender, capitalism, populism, and race and ethnicity, among others. They make descriptive and explanatory claims about empathy, intelligence, neoliberalism, and power. They advise policymakers on diversity, digitalization, work, and religion. And yet, as Gabriel Abend points out in Words and Distinctions for the Common Good: Practical Reason in the Logic of Social Science (Princeton UP, 2023), they can't agree on what these things are and how to identify them. How to tell if something is a religion or a cult or a sect? What is empathy? What makes this society a capitalist one? Disputes of this sort arise again and again in the social sciences. Abend argues that these disagreements have been doubly misconceived. First, they conflate two questions: how a social science community should use its most important words, and what distinctions

Scholars Stephen Engel and Timothy Lyle have a new book that dives into the thinking around power, political and cultural progress, and the LGBTQ+ communities in the United States. This book is fascinating and important in examining not only policy developments around rights and full citizenship for members of the LGBTQ+ communities, but also how these discussions and dialogues shape thinking about access to rights and dimensions of full citizenship. The overarching title of the book, Disrupting Dignity: Rethinking Power and Progress in LGBTQ Lives (NYU Press, 2021), gets to the heart of the rhetoric in the debate, specifically this concept of “dignity” and how dignity has become a particularly thorny component of defining out political, legal, and civil rights for the LGBTQ+ community.  Both Engel and Lyle note that they found the term dignity very clearly associated with the legal reasoning in judicial opinions around LGBTQ+ rights, that it was a celebrated status, and that while it was more commonly used i

In Modern Arab Kingship: Remaking the Ottoman Political Order in the Interwar Middle East (Princeton University Press, 2023), Adam Mestyan (Duke University) argues that post-Ottoman Arab political orders were not, as many historians believe, products of European colonialism. Rather, they spurred from the process of “recycling empire.” Mestyan shows that in the post–WWI Middle East, Allied Powers officials and ex-Ottoman patricians collaborated to remake imperial institutions, recycling earlier Ottoman uses of genealogy and religion in the creation of new polities, with the exception of colonized Palestine. The polities, he contends, should be understood not in terms of colonies and nation states but as subordinated sovereign local states—localized regimes of religious, ethnic, and dynastic sources of imperial authority.  Meanwhile, governance without sovereignty became the new form of Western domination. Drawing on hitherto unused Ottoman, French, Syrian, and Saudi archival sources, Mestyan explores ideas and

In her new book Yellow Star, Red Star: Holocaust Remembrance after Communism (Cornell University Press, 2019) Jelena Subotić asks why Holocaust memory continues to be so deeply troubled―ignored, appropriated, and obfuscated―throughout Eastern Europe, even though it was in those lands that most of the extermination campaign occurred. As part of accession to the European Union, Subotić shows, East European states were required to adopt, participate in, and contribute to the established Western narrative of the Holocaust. This requirement created anxiety and resentment in post-communist states: Holocaust memory replaced communist terror as the dominant narrative in Eastern Europe, focusing instead on predominantly Jewish suffering in World War II. Influencing the European Union's own memory politics and legislation in the process, post-communist states have attempted to reconcile these two memories by pursuing new strategies of Holocaust remembrance. The memory, symbols, and imagery of the Holocaust have been ap

Kathleen Klaus, Assistant Professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco has written a terrific book, Political Violence in Kenya: Land, Elections, and Claim-Making published in 2020 by Cambridge University Press. Kathleen’s book is richly researched and beautifully written. She draws on 15 months of survey and interview methods to center the politics of elites in crafting land narratives that lead—or not—to electoral violence. Kathleen’s book is a great example of mixed methods as a way to understand and explain what are the conditions in which individuals’ can be primed for physical violence. Political Violence in Kenya is a fascinating book that raises novel questions about the role of contentious politics in framing elite political outcomes, as well as how elites coordinate with ordinary people to try to instigate violence. For those wanting to dig deeper into Kenya politics or electoral violence, Dr. Klaus recommends: -The Elephant Blog. -The Journal of Peace Research: Special Issue on Electora

In the 1890s Australian and New Zealand women became the first in the world to win the vote. Buoyed by their victories, they promised to lead a global struggle for the expansion of women’s electoral rights. Charting the common trajectory of the colonial suffrage campaigns, James Keating's book Distant Sisters: Australasian Women and the International Struggle for the Vote, 1880-1914 (Manchester UP, 2020) uncovers the personal and material networks that transformed feminist organising. Considering intimate and institutional connections, well-connected elites and ordinary women, this book argues developments in Auckland, Sydney, and Adelaide―long considered the peripheries of the feminist world―cannot be separated from its glamourous metropoles. Focusing on Antipodean women, simultaneously insiders and outsiders in the emerging international women’s movement, and documenting the failures of their expansive vision alongside its successes, this book reveals a more contingent history of international organising an

The legacy of President Franklin D. Roosevelt enjoys regular acclaim from historians, politicians, and educators. Lauded for his New Deal policies, leadership as a wartime president, cozy fireside chats, and groundbreaking support of the "forgotten man," FDR, we have been told, is worthy of the same praise as men like Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln.... But is that true? Does the father of today's welfare state really deserve such generous approbation? Or is there a dark side to this golden legacy? The New Deal's War on the Bill of Rights: The Untold Story of FDR's Concentration Camps, Censorship, and Mass Surveillance (Independent Institute, 2023) unveils a much different portrait than the standard orthodoxy found in today's historical studies. Deploying an abundance of primary source evidence and well-reasoned arguments, historian and distinguished professor emeritus David T. Beito masterfully presents a complete account of the real Franklin D. Roosevelt: a man who abused power, violated human rights, ta

Over the past six decades, Henry Kissinger has been America's most consistently praised--and reviled--public figure. He was hailed as a "miracle worker" for his peacemaking in the Middle East, pursuit of détente with the Soviet Union, negotiation of an end to the Vietnam War, and secret plan to open the United States to China. He was assailed from the left and from the right for his indifference to human rights, complicity in the pointless sacrifice of American and Vietnamese lives, and reliance on deception and intrigue. Was he a brilliant master strategist--"the 20th century's greatest 19th century statesman"--or a cold-blooded monster who eroded America's moral standing for the sake of self-promotion? In Henry Kissinger and American Power: A Political Biography (Hill and Wang, 2020), the renowned diplomatic historian Thomas A. Schwartz  offers an authoritative, and fair-minded, answer to this question. While other biographers have engaged in hagiography or demonology, Schwartz takes a measured view of his

Immigration has become one of the biggest issues in all western democracies. And the debate is so charged it's hard to know who to believe. Which is why Hein de Haas has written How Migration Really Works: The Facts About the Most Divisive Issue in Politics (Basic Books, 2023). Listen to him bust some myths 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

While a positive correlation between capitalism and democracy has existed in Western Europe and North America, the example of late-industrializing nations such as Turkey has demonstrated that the two need not always go hand in hand, and sometimes the interests of business coincide more firmly with anti-democratic forces.  In Democracy and Capitalism in Turkey: The State, Power, and Big Business (Bloomsbury, 2023), Devrim Adam Yavuz explores the factors that compelled capitalists in Turkey to adopt a more pro-democratic ideology by examining a leading Turkish business lobby (TÜSIAD) which has been pushing for democratic reform since the 1990s, despite representing some of the largest corporation owners in Turkey and having supported the state's authoritarian tendencies in the past such as the military coup of 1980. Drawing on roughly 70 interviews with influential members of TÜSIAD and individuals close to them, the book reveals that business leaders were willing to break away from the state due to the conflic

What does astrology, palm-reading and fortune telling have to do with politics in Thailand, and how can we make sense of these divination practices and their use in Thai politics? Listen to Edoardo Siani and Petra Alderman in this episode of the Nordic Asia Podcast to learn more about divination and the way it was used during the recent student-led protests in Thailand. Edoardo Siani is an Assistant Professor of Southeast Asian Studies at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. Edoardo’s research concerns the relationship between Buddhist cosmology and politics in Thailand, focusing on divination, kingship, and spirit mediumship. To learn more about his research, read his article ‘Co-opting the stars: Divination and the politics of resistance in Buddhist Thailand.’ The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asi

February 2024 will mark the tenth anniversary of Russia’s seizure of Ukrainian territory in Crimea and the Donbas and two years since its full-scale invasion. While military assistance from Ukraine’s allies has been gradual and cautious, retaliatory sanctions have been impressive. "The sanctions imposed against Russia beginning in late winter 2022 were sweeping, historic and rolled out with stunning rapidity,” writes Christine Abely in The Russia Sanctions: The Economic Response to Russia's Invasion of Ukraine (Cambridge University Press, 2023). Yet, until now at least, most Russians have been insulated from their effects. As the war reaches an attritional stalemate and Putin waits for NATO's resolve to fracture, the sanctions and their lagged effects are taking on critical importance. Christine Abely is an assistant professor at New England Law in Boston. Previously, she taught at Boston University School of Law after a career at Massachusetts law firms specialising in business litigation, and international

What (and why) can and can't we say? What do empirical examples both at home and abroad tell us about how we should protect freedom of speech? How do we create an environment where speech is not only permitted but encouraged? Does freedom of speech bring people together or sow discord? Nadine Strossen, former president of the ACLU and Professor Emerita at New York Law School, brings her decades of expertise to bear explaining why freedom of speech is foundational to so many other fundamental rights. Nadine Strossen is Professor Emerita at New York Law School, and was national President of the American Civil Liberties Union from 1991-2008. She is a Senior Fellow with FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression) and a leading expert and frequent speaker/media commentator on constitutional law and civil liberties, who has testified before Congress on multiple occasions. She is the author of HATE: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship (Oxford UP, 2018) and Free Speech: What Everyo