New Books in Political Science

New Books Network

Episodes

Mentioned books

undefined
Mar 22, 2026 • 43min

A Year of Autocratization: Steep Declines in Democracy Registered in 2025 V-Dem Report

Paul Friesen, research associate focused on V-Dem indicators and global autocratization patterns. Kenneth Roberts, Cornell government professor and comparative politics expert. They discuss the V-Dem 2025 report's startling U.S. score drop and which institutions drove it. They map global shifts—declines in India and Indonesia, recoveries in Poland and Guatemala. Conversation closes on judicial, electoral, and societal fault lines to watch.
undefined
Mar 22, 2026 • 50min

Stephen G. Brooks, "The Political Economy of Security" (Princeton UP, 2026)

Stephen G. Brooks, Professor of Government at Dartmouth and author of The Political Economy of Security, explores how economic forces shape war, terrorism, and civil conflict. He discusses sixteen economic-security pathways, the non-linear effects of development on terrorism, Adam Smith’s influence, and policy implications like cautious economic statecraft and rare-earth dependencies.
undefined
Mar 21, 2026 • 57min

Sidra Hamidi, "After Fission: Recognition and Contestation in the Atomic Age" (Cambridge UP, 2026)

Dr. Sidra Hamidi, assistant professor and author of After Fission, studies nuclear politics and the social life of nuclear status. She discusses how legal rules like the NPT and ambiguous tests shape recognition. She examines India, Iran, North Korea, and US responses. She outlines motivations states have for contesting status and the diplomatic stakes for negotiation.
undefined
Mar 20, 2026 • 1h 10min

Paul Kohlbry, "Plots and Deeds: Agrarian Annihilation and the Fight for Land Justice in Palestine" (Stanford UP, 2026)

Paul Kohlbry, an anthropologist and UCSB professor who studies agrarian politics, discusses Palestinian land as home, property, territory, and homeland. He explores agrarian annihilation, contrasts fast and slow violences, and examines how titling, property, and reclamation shape rural life. Conversations cover gendered inheritance, commodification, and strategies for land defense and regeneration.
undefined
Mar 20, 2026 • 1h 14min

Piergiorgio Di Giminiani et al. eds., "The Futures of Reparations in Latin America: Imagination, Translation, and Belonging" (Rutgers UP, 2026)

Karine Vanthuyne, anthropology professor specializing in memory and Indigenous mobilization. Piergiorgio Di Giminiani, associate professor focused on land claims and political imagination. Helene Risør, researcher of violence, reparations, and democratization. They explore reparations as ongoing practices, contested translations of harm into policy, imagination of alternative futures, Indigenous environmental claims, and public memory and protest.
undefined
Mar 18, 2026 • 43min

Our Age of War: A Discussion with Author Robert Pape

Robert Pape, a University of Chicago political scientist who studies international security and coercion, discusses living in an Age of War. He explores rising violent populism and the normalization of political violence. He links U.S. social change to global instability. He also analyzes strategic dilemmas around Iran, state collapse, and how conflicts can become prolonged.
undefined
Mar 17, 2026 • 1h

Alex Powell, "Queering UK Refugee Law: Sexual Diversity and Asylum Administration" (Bristol UP, 2026)

Alex Powell, Associate Professor in Law at Warwick focusing on law, gender, sexuality and migration. He explores how UK asylum systems demand coherent sexual identity stories, how shifts from discretion to disbelief and dispersal to rural areas hinder claimants, and how politicized rhetoric and caseload pressures affect legal practitioners and NGOs.
undefined
Mar 15, 2026 • 1h 21min

Lauren M. MacLean, "Negotiating Power and Inequality in Ghana: Electricity and Citizenship as Reciprocity (Indiana UP, 2026)

Lauren M. MacLean, a political scientist focused on African electricity access and citizenship, explores Ghana’s chronic power shortages and their political effects. She traces history from postcolonial electrification to modern dumsor. MacLean examines why the hardest‑hit communities are least likely to demand accountability, uses art and fieldwork to illuminate lived inequality, and reframes citizenship as reciprocity.
undefined
Mar 14, 2026 • 1h 8min

Pepper Culpepper and Taeku Lee, "Billionaire Backlash: The Age of Corporate Scandal and How it Could Save Democracy" (Bloomsbury, 2026) 

Pepper Culpepper, a political scientist who studies corporate power, explains how major corporate scandals can turn diffuse public concern into political pressure. He discusses vivid framing, privacy and platform harms, historic cases like VW and Cambridge Analytica, and when scandals succeed or fail at driving democratic reform.
undefined
Mar 14, 2026 • 40min

Suzanne Mettler and Trevor E. Brown, "Rural Versus Urban: The Growing Divide That Threatens Democracy" (Princeton UP, 2025)

Trevor E. Brown, a postdoctoral scholar and co-author of Rural Versus Urban, studies polarization, place-based inequality, and political organization. He traces how a growing rural–urban divide developed over decades. Short segments tackle sequential polarization, the role of local organizations, institutional consequences for democracy, and whether repair through local political organizing is possible.

The AI-powered Podcast Player

Save insights by tapping your headphones, chat with episodes, discover the best highlights - and more!
App store bannerPlay store banner
 Get the app