Soaring levels of political, legal, economic, and social inequality have been documented by social scientists – but the public conversation and scholarship on inequality has not examined the role of state law and state courts in establishing policies that significantly affect inequality. Political scientists James L. Gibson and Michael J. Nelson analyze their original database of nearly 6,000 decisions made by over 900 judges on 50 state supreme courts over a quarter century to demonstrate how s...
Feb 12, 2024•59 min•Ep 104•Transcript available on Metacast It is hard to overestimate the influence of John Rawls on political philosophy and theory over the last half-century. His books have sold millions of copies worldwide, and he is one of the few philosophers whose work is known in the corridors of power as well as in the halls of academe. Rawls is most famous for the development of his view of “justice as fairness,” articulated most forcefully in his best-known work, A Theory of Justice. In it he develops a liberalism focused on improving the fate...
Feb 12, 2024•1 hr 15 min•Ep 563•Transcript available on Metacast Containing research conducted and published over a half century, Negotiation, Identity and Justice: Pathways to Agreement (Routledge, 2023) by Dr. Daniel Druckman is divided into seven thematic parts that cover: the multifaceted career, flexibility in negotiation, values and interests, turning points, national identity, and process and outcome justice. It rounds off with a reflective and forward-looking conclusion. Each part is prefaced with an introduction that highlights the chapters to follow...
Feb 11, 2024•1 hr 15 min•Ep 703•Transcript available on Metacast “Is America an Empire?” is a popular question for pundits and historians, likely because it sets off such a provocative debate. All too often, however, people use empire simply because the United States is a hegemon, ignoring the country’s imperial traits to focus simply on its power. Dr. Daniel Immerwahr’s book How to Hide an Empire: The History of the Greater United States (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019) corrects this by explicitly focusing on the country’s territories and territories overse...
Feb 11, 2024•1 hr 19 min•Ep 478•Transcript available on Metacast Ever since World War II, the United Nations and other international actors have created laws, treaties, and institutions to punish perpetrators of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. These efforts have established universally recognized norms and have resulted in several high-profile convictions in egregious cases. But international criminal justice now seems to be a declining force—its energy sapped by long delays in prosecutions, lagging public attention, and a globally rising a...
Feb 09, 2024•55 min•Ep 179•Transcript available on Metacast Never have policy initiatives been so important than in today’s society. Neoliberal manifestations, climate change, civil rights movements, and governmental reactions to these issues have created a backdrop where greater education in policy analysis and development is vital. Listen to this informative interview with one of the authors, Dr. David Young, a Fellow of the Brian Mulroney Institute of government at St. Francis Xavier University, to find out how policy is implemented and shaped by stud...
Feb 09, 2024•56 min•Ep 23•Transcript available on Metacast "An air of finality pervades today’s world." That is the opening sentence of Jonathan White’s book In the Long Run: The Future as a Political Idea (Profile, 2024). What role, the book asks, has the idea of "the future" played in past politics? What role does it play in contemporary politics? Listen to White in discussion 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 Buchar...
Feb 07, 2024•40 min•Ep 96•Transcript available on Metacast In Among the Braves Hope, Struggle, and Exile in the Battles for Hong Kong and the Future of Global Democracy (Hachette, 2023) Shibani Mahtani and Timothy McLaughlin tell the story of Hong Kong's demise from Two Systems to One Country through the eyes of some of its key actors in the 2019 Anti-Extradition protests. In their richly evocative narrative, Mahtani and McLaughlin draw on their on-the-ground reporting, and weave this through a historical account to foreground the fight of the frontline...
Feb 02, 2024•58 min•Ep 209•Transcript available on Metacast Most accounts of post-1950s political history tell the story of of the war on drugs as part of a racial system of social control of urban minority populations, an extension of the federal war on black street crime and the foundation for the "new Jim Crow" of mass incarceration as key characteristics of the U.S. in this period. But as the Nixon White House understood, and as the Carter and Reagan administrations also learned, there were not nearly enough urban heroin addicts in America to sustain...
Feb 02, 2024•1 hr•Ep 59•Transcript available on Metacast What's the best way to determine what most voters want when multiple candidates are running? What's the fairest way to allocate legislative seats to different constituencies? What's the least distorted way to draw voting districts? Not the way we do things now. Democracy is mathematical to its very foundations. Yet most of the methods in use are a historical grab bag of the shortsighted, the cynical, the innumerate, and the outright discriminatory. Making Democracy Count: How Mathematics Improve...
Feb 01, 2024•40 min•Ep 81•Transcript available on Metacast For better or worse, democracy and epistemology are intertwined. For one thing, politics is partly a matter of gathering, assessing, and applying information. And this can be done responsibly or incompetently. At least since Plato, a leading critique of democracy has focused on the ignorance of ordinary citizens. Historically, this kind of critique has supplied the basis for several nondemocratic proposals. Yet it has also worked in the background of a range of views within democratic theory. Am...
Feb 01, 2024•1 hr 8 min•Ep 333•Transcript available on Metacast Nisrin Elamin is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Toronto whose work investigates the connections between land, race, belonging, and empire-making in Sudan and the broader Sahel region. Elamin joins the Ufahamu Africa podcast for this episode focused on the conflict in Sudan. Books, Links, & Articles: “Recent protests in Sudan are much more than bread riots.” Analysis by Nisrin Elamin and Zachariah Mampilly Darfur Diaspora Association Keep Eyes On Sudan Dabanga Sudan S...
Feb 01, 2024•1 hr 1 min•Ep 178•Transcript available on Metacast What does nation-branding mean to you? For many listeners, the term probably conjures up ideas of catchy slogans and international tourism or trade promotion campaigns. Think again. In her new book Branding Authoritarian Nations: Political Legitimation and Strategic National Myths in Military-Ruled Thailand (Routledge, 2023), Petra Alderman examines how a military junta deployed nation-branding in the wake of the May 2014 Thai coup d'état, as means of promoting domestic political legitimacy for ...
Feb 01, 2024•31 min•Ep 139•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode of Ufahamu Africa, cohost Kim Yi Dionne presents on the state of democracy in Malawi as part of a panel at the 2023 African Studies Association. The panel focused on democratic backsliding and sites and actors that have worked for democratic endurance, strengthening, and democratic governance. Before Kim’s presentation, you’ll hear from cohost Rachel Beatty Riedl who provided an introduction to the topic. Books, Links, & Articles: Dr. Boniface Dulani “Was the COP28 climate meetin...
Jan 31, 2024•37 min•Ep 177•Transcript available on Metacast In a world shaken by ecological, economic and political crises, the forces of authoritarianism and reaction seem to have the upper hand. How should we name, map and respond to this state of affairs? The rich archive of twentieth-century debates on fascism can steer a path through an increasingly authoritarian present. Developing anti-fascist theory is an urgent and vital task. From the ‘Great Replacement’ to campaigns against critical race theory and ‘gender ideology’, today’s global far right i...
Jan 31, 2024•56 min•Ep 434•Transcript available on Metacast On mainstream social media platforms, far-right women make extremism relatable. They share Instagram stories about organic foods that help pregnant women propagate the “pure” white race and post behind-the-scenes selfies at antivaccination rallies. These social media personalities model a feminine lifestyle, at once promoting their personal brands and radicalizing their followers. Amid discussions of issues like dating, marriage, and family life, they call on women to become housewives to counte...
Jan 31, 2024•41 min•Ep 247•Transcript available on Metacast Drawing on historical institutionalism and interpretive tools of international law, Transforming International Institutions: How Money Quietly Sidelined Multilateralism at The United Nations (Oxford University Press, 2023) Dr. Erin Graham provides a novel theory of uncoordinated change over time. The book illuminates how a slow, quiet, subterranean process can produce big, radical change in international institutions and organisations. It highlights how early participants in a process who do not...
Jan 30, 2024•57 min•Ep 88•Transcript available on Metacast Through two years of ethnographic fieldwork at a megachurch, sociologist Dr. Sarah Diefendorf investigates the ways in which the evangelical church is working to grow during a time in which cultural shifts are leading young people to leave religion behind. In order to expand, the church has revisited topics long understood as external threats to the organization, such as feminism, gender equality, racial inclusivity, and queer life—topics Diefendorf classifies as the “imagined secular” in the mi...
Jan 29, 2024•52 min•Ep 255•Transcript available on Metacast Nearly half of Americans “are inconsistent supporters of democracy and democratic institutions,” Matthew C. MacWilliams writes at the start of his book, On Fascism: 12 Lessons from American History (St. Martin’s Griffen, 2020). In the podcast, we explore MacWilliams’ thesis that “authoritarian attitudes,” typically formed in childhood, explain the ascendance of illiberal politics in the United States as well as Europe. Such attitudes, he posits, are formed prior to political dispositions that fa...
Jan 29, 2024•55 min•Ep 11•Transcript available on Metacast The role of mother is often celebrated in the United States as the most important job in the world but Dr. Caitlin Killian argues that American motherhood is increasingly monitored and perilous. From preconception, through pregnancy, and while parenting, she argues that women are held to ever-higher standards and punished – both socially and criminally – for failing to live up to these norms. Using historical accounts, public health pronouncements, social psychological research, and course cases...
Jan 29, 2024•59 min•Ep 702•Transcript available on Metacast A provocative chronicle of how US public health has strayed from its liberal roots. The Covid-19 response was a crucible of politics and public health—a volatile combination that produced predictably bad results. As scientific expertise became entangled with political motivations, the public-health establishment found itself mired in political encampment. It was, as Sandro Galea argues, a crisis of liberalism: a retreat from the principles of free speech, open debate, and the pursuit of knowledg...
Jan 28, 2024•27 min•Ep 5•Transcript available on Metacast On 1 January 2006, soldiers from across Bosnia and Herzegovina gathered to mark the official formation of a unified army; and yet, little over a decade before, these men had been each other's adversaries during the vicious conflict which left the Balkan state divided and impoverished. Building a Multi-Ethnic Military in Post-Yugoslav Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bloomsbury, 2022) by Dr. Elliot Short offers the first analysis of the armed forces during times of peace-building in Bosnia and Herzegovina...
Jan 27, 2024•1 hr 6 min•Ep 202•Transcript available on Metacast In the summer of 2022, the little-known leader of a small union became a ‘working-class hero’. Facing down media pundits who thought they could walk all over him, he offered a robust critique of the government and provided workers with an authentic voice. At a time when the Labour Party was unable to articulate a credible alternative to the Tories, Mick Lynch spoke for the working class. Where did Lynch come from? How did he develop the skills and traits that make him such an effective spokesper...
Jan 27, 2024•1 hr 7 min•Ep 244•Transcript available on Metacast In recent years, government agencies around the world have been forced to consider the role of competition law and policy in addressing various crises, including the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2008 financial collapse. There is no easy formula that a competition agency can apply to determine the appropriate response to a crisis; indeed, there is substantial debate about the issue. One common criticism of competition law and policy is that usually it is too inflexible to deal with a crisis, prohibi...
Jan 26, 2024•1 hr 8 min•Ep 209•Transcript available on Metacast How the 1970s energy crisis facilitated a neoliberal shift in US political culture. In Energizing Neoliberalism: The 1970s Energy Crisis and the Making of Modern America (Johns Hopkins UP, 2023), Caleb Wellum offers a provocative account of how the 1970s energy crisis helped to recreate postwar America. Rather than think of the crisis as the obvious outcome of the decade's "oil shocks," Wellum unpacks the cultural construction of a crisis of energy across different sectors of society, from presi...
Jan 26, 2024•57 min•Ep 433•Transcript available on Metacast Mark “Zak” Taylor, a political scientist at Georgia Tech University, has a new book that explores the presidents of the Gilded Age, from Ulysses Grant through William McKinley. This period of presidencies is often a forgotten era, since the presidents were somewhat constrained by congressional action taken in the wake of Abraham Lincoln’s presidency and then Andrew Johnson’s impeachment. But Taylor has another complex, fascinating, and lively story to tell about the presidencies of Grant, Hayes,...
Jan 25, 2024•54 min•Ep 701•Transcript available on Metacast Over the past decade, many of the world’s biggest companies have found themselves embroiled in legal disputes over corruption, fraud, environmental damage, tax evasion, or sanction violations. Corporations including Volkswagen, BP, and Credit Suisse have paid record-breaking fines. Many critics of globalisation and corporate impunity cheer this turn toward accountability. Others, however, question American dominance in legal battles that seem to impose domestic legal norms beyond national bounda...
Jan 23, 2024•43 min•Ep 144•Transcript available on Metacast In On the Concept of Power: Possibility, Necessity, Politics (Oxford UP, 2022), Guido Parietti proposes a more proper definition of power--as the condition of having available possibilities and representing them as such--and examines its implications for the study of politics, both empirical and normative. By neglecting the category of possibility, significant portions of political science and philosophy become incapable of conceptualizing power, and therefore politics. Specifically, Parietti as...
Jan 22, 2024•1 hr 21 min•Ep 431•Transcript available on Metacast Dr. Kareem Muhammad has a new book that focuses on the role of Black voters in the United States – specifically in their power as participants in democracy. In many ways, this is a “love story to the Black community” in the U.S. The book traces the sustained electoral power of Black voters, and teases at the fissures within this significant bloc of voters. Muhammad pays particular attention to what it looks like when policies that are important to Black voters are passed and implemented, and how...
Jan 22, 2024•58 min•Ep 697•Transcript available on Metacast “How has it come to this? How has ‘Zionist’…become the dirtiest word to the international Left?” Susie Linfield poses that ripe question at the outset of her book, The Lions’ Den: Zionism and the Left from Hannah Arendt to Noam Chomsky (Yale University Press, 2019). In the podcast, our discussion focuses on three prominent figures examined in The Lions’ Den: Isaac Deutscher, I.F. Stone, and Fred Halliday. And we explore present-day sentiments about Zionism among the Left amid the Gaza-Israel con...
Jan 22, 2024•1 hr 6 min•Ep 10•Transcript available on Metacast 
