What is political polarisation? How different is it from ‘normal’ democratic conflict? And why have we been getting it wrong? Listen to Andreas Schedler and Petra Alderman talk about the meaning of political polarisation, its actors and drivers, and the effects it has on contemporary democracy. Andreas Schedler is a Senior Research Fellow at the Democracy Institute of the Central European university (CEU) in Budapest, Hungary. He is well-known for his work on authoritarian elections, democratic ...
Nov 17, 2023•28 min•Ep 6•Transcript available on Metacast Do confusions in the West threaten a new world disorder? It’s a question asked by Professor Peter R. Neumann of Kings College, London. He is the author of The New World Disorder: How the West is Destroying Itself (Scribe, 2024). Listen to him in conversation 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...
Nov 14, 2023•35 min•Ep 86•Transcript available on Metacast What is the work ethic? Does it justify policies that promote the wealth and power of the One Percent at workers' expense? Or does it advance policies that promote workers' dignity and standing? Hijacked: How Neoliberalism Turned the Work Ethic against Workers and How Workers Can Take It Back (Cambridge UP, 2023) explores how the history of political economy has been a contest between these two ideas about whom the work ethic is supposed to serve. Today's neoliberal ideology deploys the work eth...
Nov 13, 2023•57 min•Ep 142•Transcript available on Metacast Natasha Wheatley is an Assistant Professor of History at Princeton University. Her bold and riveting debut monograph, The Life and Death of States: Central Europe and the Transformation of Modern Sovereignty (Princeton University Press, 2023), narrates the transition from empire to nation-states in the heartlands of Europe once governed by the Habsburg Empire. The book traces the modern history of sovereignty over one hundred tumultuous years, explaining how a regime of nation-states theoretical...
Nov 12, 2023•47 min•Ep 199•Transcript available on Metacast In Unlocking Scots: The Secret Life of the Scots Language (Luath, 2023), Dr. Clive Young sets out to uncover the secret life of Scots – the centuries of vibrant debate and unconscious bilingualism hidden beneath slang and touristy tea-towels. From 19th-century dictionaries to Twitter rammies, Dr. Young explores the evolution, suppression, and potential revitalisation of Scots. He not only investigates its troubled past, but also looks towards the future with hope and a practical action plan that...
Nov 12, 2023•53 min•Ep 116•Transcript available on Metacast In the wake of the Good Friday Agreement, the redevelopment of the former Girdwood Army Barracks in North Belfast was hailed as a ‘symbol of hope’ for Northern Ireland. It was a major investment in a former conflict zone and an internationally significant peacebuilding project. Instead of adhering to the tenets of the Agreement, sectarianism dominated the regeneration agenda. Throughout the process, politicians, community groups and paramilitaries wrangled over the site’s future, and territorial...
Nov 11, 2023•29 min•Ep 52•Transcript available on Metacast Well-known for his work in Critical Romani Studies, Jan Selling talks with Lavinia Stan about his latest book. Centered on Scandinavia, Romani Liberation: A Northern Perspective on Emancipatory Struggles and Progress (Central European UP, 2022) challenges the stereotype describing Romani as passive and incapable of responsibility and agency. Selling also criticizes benevolent but paternalistic attitudes that center on Romani victimhood. The interview offers an overview of the various chapters, t...
Nov 05, 2023•58 min•Ep 22•Transcript available on Metacast How do migrants make sense of migration? In Coloniality and Meritocracy in unequal EU migrations: Intersecting Inequalities in Post-2008 Italian Migration (Bristol UP, 2023), Simone Varriale, Lecturer in Sociology at Loughborough University, explores the experiences of Italian migrants to Britain to critique notions of meritocracy. Combining a rich set of interview data with a deep understanding of theories of colonialism, and inequality, the book rethinks the recent history of migration in the ...
Oct 29, 2023•38 min•Ep 421•Transcript available on Metacast An astonishing deep dive into the war in Ukraine - from the corridors of the Kremlin to the trenches of Mariupol. The Russo-Ukrainian War is the most serious geopolitical crisis since the Second World War - and yet at the heart of the conflict is a mystery. Vladimir Putin lurched from a calculating, subtle master of opportunity to a reckless gambler, putting his regime - and Russia itself - at risk of destruction. Why? Drawing on over 25 years' experience working in Moscow, journalist Owen Matth...
Oct 25, 2023•58 min•Ep 200•Transcript available on Metacast What is fascism? Is it revolutionary? Or is it reactionary? Can it be both? Fascism is notoriously hard to define. How do we make sense of an ideology that appeals to streetfighters and intellectuals alike? That calls for a return to tradition while maintaining a fascination with technology? And that preaches violence in the name of an ordered society? In Fascism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford UP, 2014), Kevin Passmore brilliantly unravels the paradoxes of one of the most important phenomena...
Oct 22, 2023•44 min•Ep 418•Transcript available on Metacast In Constitutional Culture, Independence, and Rights: Insights from Quebec, Scotland, and Catalonia (University of Toronto Press, 2023), Dr. Javier García Oliva and Dr. Helen Hall coin the term "constitutional culture" to encapsulate the collective rules and expectations that govern the collective life within a jurisdiction. Significantly, these shared norms have both legal and social elements, including matters as diverse as standards of parenting, the modus operandi of police officers, and tabo...
Oct 17, 2023•49 min•Ep 681•Transcript available on Metacast Today I talked to Tom Gallagher about his new book Europe's Leadership Famine: Portraits of Defiance and Decay 1950-2022 (Scotview, 2023). Representative democracy endured in Europe because its political leaders’ deviousness and self-advancement were balanced by altruism, fortitude and civic virtue. However, in this century, the reputation and calibre of politicians has slumped in country after country, as fads, image, process, triviality and spin are promoted over experience, prudence and long-...
Oct 16, 2023•51 min•Ep 21•Transcript available on Metacast "Within our mandate, the [European Central Bank] is ready to do whatever it takes to preserve the euro. And believe me, it will be enough". With those three words delivered in London on 26 July 2012, Mario Draghi - the ECB's president from 2011-2019 - stopped a contagious collapse of Europe's common currency after just one decade. Jana Randow and Alessandro Speciale write in Mario Draghi: The True Story of the Man Who Saved the Euro (Rizzoli, 2019): “So simple a phrase, delivered at the right ti...
Oct 14, 2023•56 min•Ep 20•Transcript available on Metacast What were the key factors shaping the 2023 Spanish general election? How did the progressive government of Pedro Sánchez defy expectations and secure enough votes that may allow it to continue in power? And how did mainstream parties engage with challenger parties such as the far-right Vox? Join Manoel Gehrke and Patricia Correa in this episode of the People, Power, Politics podcast to learn more about the strategies of political parties across the spectrum, the 2023 elections, and the dynamics ...
Oct 11, 2023•30 min•Ep 4•Transcript available on Metacast Empires are supposed to be a thing of the past but very big countries with global reach are becoming more entrenched. By 2050, almost 40 per cent of the world’s population will live in just four polities: India, China, the US and the EU. So, in what respects are these entities imperial and is there a future for small states? Listen to Owen Bennett-Jones in conversation with Alasdair Roberts, author of Superstates: Empires of the 21st Century (Polity Press, 2023). Owen Bennett-Jones is a freelan...
Oct 09, 2023•42 min•Ep 81•Transcript available on Metacast Moscow's Heavy Shadow: The Violent Collapse of the USSR (Cornell University Press, 2023) by Dr. Isaac Mckean Scarborough tells the story of the collapse of the USSR from the perspective of the many millions of Soviet citizens who experienced it as a period of abjection and violence. Mikhail Gorbachev and the leaders of the USSR saw the years of reform preceding the collapse as opportunities for rebuilding (perestroika), rejuvenation, and openness (glasnost). For those in provincial cities across...
Oct 01, 2023•1 hr 15 min•Ep 250•Transcript available on Metacast Nineteen months since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the books are coming thick and fast. Fortunately, each tells a different and compelling story. Like other recent books, Gwendolyn Sasse’s Russia's War Against Ukraine (Polity, 2023) analyses three decades of diverging Russian and Ukrainian politics and society, burgeoning Russian neo-imperialism, and Western temerity. Unique to this book, however, is the restoration of Crimea to centre-stage in the conflict. The war didn’t start i...
Sep 29, 2023•42 min•Ep 18•Transcript available on Metacast "War was always central to Putin's project," writes Alex J. Bellamy in Warmonger: Vladimir Putin's Imperial Wars (Agenda, 2023). Not just the second Chechen war that made him but the NATO-probing wars in Georgia and eastern Ukraine that emboldened him, and the Western-style war from air in Syria designed to mark Russia’s return to Great Power status. But, the project has not gone well. According to Professor Bellamy, the military and strategic disaster of Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine h...
Sep 28, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Ep 19•Transcript available on Metacast Foreign influences on elections are widespread. Although foreign interventions around elections differ markedly-in terms of when and why they occur, and whether they are even legal-they all have enormous potential to influence citizens in the countries where elections are held. Monitors and Meddlers: How Foreign Actors Influence Local Trust in Elections (Cambridge UP, 2022) explains how and why outside interventions influence local trust in elections, a critical factor for democracy and stabilit...
Sep 28, 2023•1 hr 3 min•Ep 675•Transcript available on Metacast The Russian invasion of Ukraine has already changed the world. Why did it happen? Who is winning? How will it end? Christopher Miller is the author of The War Came to Us: Life and Death in Ukraine (Bloomsbury, 2023). Hear him in conversation 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 B...
Sep 24, 2023•42 min•Ep 79•Transcript available on Metacast In this bold and provocative new book, Blackness as a Universal Claim: Holocaust Heritage, Noncitizen Futures, and Black Power in Berlin (University of California Press, 2023), Damani Partridge examines the possibilities and limits for a universalized Black politics. German youth of Turkish, Arab, and African descent use claims of Blackness to hold states and other institutions accountable for racism today. Partridge tracks how these young people take on the expressions of Black Power, acting ou...
Sep 24, 2023•44 min•Ep 65•Transcript available on Metacast Was the use of violence on January 6th Capitol attacks legitimate? Is the use of violence morally justified by members of Extinction Rebellion or Just Stop Oil campaigners? Justifying Violent Protest: Law and Morality in Democratic States (Routledge, 2023) addresses these issues head on, to make a radical, but compelling argument in favour of the legitimate use of violence in protest in liberal democracies. Grounded in theories of constitutional morality, the book makes the case that when states...
Sep 23, 2023•1 hr 13 min•Ep 198•Transcript available on Metacast When uprisings against colonial rule broke out across the world after 1945, Britain responded with overwhelming and brutal force. Although this period has conventionally been dubbed "postwar," it was punctuated by a succession of hard-fought, long-running conflicts that were geographically diffuse, morally ambiguous, and impervious to neat endings or declarations of victory. Ruthless counterinsurgencies in Malaya, Kenya, and Cyprus rippled through British society, molding a home front defined no...
Sep 18, 2023•50 min•Ep 1358•Transcript available on Metacast 50 years ago, anarchism was written off by some as a set of outdated idealistic ideas that had no contemporary relevance. Then came protests at events such as World Trade Organisation meetings – protests by people who either described themselves as anarchists or were so described by the media. It all gave rise the question "Has anarchism actually got a future?" To answer this question, Ruth Kinna has written The Government of No One: The Theory and Practice of Anarchism (Pelican Publishing, 2020...
Sep 16, 2023•36 min•Ep 78•Transcript available on Metacast Emilee Booth Chapman, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Stanford University, has a new book that examines the idea of the vote, and what this experience means for citizens, for the structure of government, and, as the title indicates, for democracy. Booth Chapman is a political theorist, so she is approaching the actual experience of voting not only as an activity that we all do “together” but also considering how this experience is part of democracy. What Election Day: How We Vote and...
Sep 14, 2023•51 min•Ep 671•Transcript available on Metacast McManus presents an intellectual history of the conservative and reactionary tradition, stretching from Aristotle and Filmer to Alexander Dugin and Patrick Deneen. Providing a comprehensive critical genealogy of the intellectual political right, McManus traces its core to a nostalgia for the hierarchical cosmos of antiquarian and scholastic thinking. The yearning for a shared vision of the universe where each part of reality has its place maps onto the conservative admiration for orderly politic...
Sep 13, 2023•31 min•Ep 411•Transcript available on Metacast Western analysts and media often assess the prospect that Moscow might use nuclear weapons as the war in Ukraine grinds on, possibly to a flailing Russia’s disadvantage. George Beebe, though, injects a less-familiar element into this grim dynamic: What are the chances that Washington might resort to nukes, should the direction in the war turn sharply against U.S.-backed Ukraine? Or enter the conflict directly with NATO air support for beleaguered Ukrainian foot soldiers? These are awkward questi...
Sep 13, 2023•1 hr 3 min•Ep 4•Transcript available on Metacast Bookshop.org is an online book retailer that donates more than 80% of its profits to independent bookstores. Launched in 2020, Bookshop.org has already raised more than $27,000,000. In this interview, Andy Hunter, founder and CEO discusses his journey to creating one of the most revolutionary new organizations in the book world. Bookshop has found a way to retain the convenience of online book shopping while also supporting independent bookstores that are the backbones of many local communities....
Sep 12, 2023•33 min•Ep 109•Transcript available on Metacast In A Vital Frontier: Water Insurgencies in Europe (Duke University Press, 2023)) Andrea Muehlebach examines the work of activists across Europe as they organize to preserve water as a commons and public good in the face of privatization. Traversing social, political, legal, and hydrological terrains, Muehlebach situates water as a political fault line at the frontiers of financialization, showing how the seemingly relentless expansion of capital into public utilities is being challenged by an eq...
Sep 08, 2023•38 min•Ep 253•Transcript available on Metacast It’s been over three years since the UK withdrew from the EU and no one – not even the most ardent Brexiter – thinks it has gone well so far. Defending the cause after yet another summertime setback, the best Matthew Lesh from the Institute of Economic Affairs could offer was: “Brexit simply means that British representatives can make … choices, not that they must point in any particular direction”. Ever since the British voted to leave the EU in 2016, millions of words have been written for and...
Sep 07, 2023•47 min•Ep 17•Transcript available on Metacast 
