New Books in Political Science

If ideology has never before been so much in evidence as a fact and so little understood as it appears to be today then, Jason Blakely argues in his new book Lost in Ideology: Interpreting Modern Political Life (Agenda Publishing, 2023), this may not be because we are like travellers guided by old maps of the political world but because we make the mistake of thinking that our maps are the worlds in which we live and act politically. When we read them as if they are reality, rather than a representation of it, we get lost.If you like this episode of New Books in Interpretive Political and Social Science then you might also be interested in others in the series, including Jason and Mark Bevir talking about their Interpretive Social Science, and James C. Scott, who passed away shortly before this episode was recorded, discussing his Against the Grain.Jason recommends Charles Taylor’s sequel to The Language Animal, Cosmic Connections, and Jon Fosse’s novelistic exploration of the human condition, Septology. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

More than any other global institution, the US Federal Reserve’s decisions and communications drive capital markets and alter financial conditions everywhere from Seattle to Seoul. While its interest rate are set by an expert committee, for almost a century, the Fed’s core philosophy and operational approach have been moulded by one person: the Chair of the Board of Governors.In this podcast series, Tim Gwynn Jones - a veteran central bank "watcher" - talks to authors of books about the Fed's most influential Chairs, starting with Marriner Eccles, Bill Martin, Arthur Burns, and Paul Volcker.In this first episode, he interviews Mark Nelson - author of Jumping the Abyss: Marriner S. Eccles and the New Deal, 1933-1940 (University of Utah Press, 2017). Eccles chaired the Fed from 1934 to 1948, turned it into a Washington power centre, and centralised policymaking with the Board of Governors.The US might have been better served if Eccles and his nemesis Henry Morgenthau, the Treasury Secretary from 1934-1945, had swapped roles, says Nelson. "That's true except for the fact that Eccles did do something very important at the Fed and that is the Banking Act of 1935, which really changed the Fed in an enormously important way and Morgenthau would not have done that ... I think it would have happened at some point. You could make the argument, though, that it may not have happened in 1935 if Eccles hadn't been there because Eccles took the job at the Fed on the understanding that these changes would be made”.An actor-turned-historian, Mark Nelson was educated at Pepperdine University and Claremont Graduate University and today teaches at Greenville Technical College, South Carolina. His next book will be Race and Recovery: James F. Byrnes and the New Deal. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Vice President Kamala Harris is poised to become the Democratic Party’s nominee for president. The path to this nomination and the generation election has been a bit unusual—with President Joe Biden deciding not to pursue re-election but doing so after the primary season has concluded. Thus, there is a rather condensed election season, and Vice President Kamala Harris has worked to bring the Democratic Party together after she received President Biden’s endorsement after he withdrew from the race. Given the changing dynamics of the presidential race, we also find ourselves with an unexpected choice for the presidency, Kamala Harris, a former attorney general for California, a senator from California, a former prosecutor, and now the vice president of the United States. Harris is also bi-racial, of South Asian and Black heritage, and she will be the second woman nominated as the standard bearer for one of the two major political parties in the United States.I invited three experts on presidential politics, gender, and race in American politics to join me to discuss Kamala Harris’s historic and unique run for the presidency. Mary McHugh, Executive Director of Civic and Community Engagement, Stevens Service Learning Center at Merrimack College and member of the Political Science Department at Merrimack, Valeria Sinclair-Chapman, Deputy Director of the American Association for the Advancement of Science SEA Change Program, and professor of political science at Purdue University, and Linda Beail, Professor of Political Science at Point Loma Nazarene University and co-author of the 2012 book, Framing Sarah Palin: Pit Bulls, Puritans, and Politics, all joined the conversation to think about the presidential race, Kamala Harris, race, gender, masculinity, and partisan politics. We cover a lot of ground, including the presentation of masculinity at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in July, how TikTok and viral memes may influence younger voters, and how Kamala Harris is trying to frame herself and how others are trying to frame her in the course of the abbreviated election cycle. We examine historical contexts for women ascending to office, and how that might be a component of the shifting candidates and how Americans think about elections. We also dive into some of the controversial comments about “crazy cat ladies” and concepts of motherhood, politics, and racial and gendered double binds. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

What is the “dragonbear”? It is a metophor of an emerging strategic alliance between Russia and China. In this episdoe, Julie Yu-Wen Chen talks to geostrategist Velina Tchakarova about the dragonbear in the geopolitics of the 21st century.What does the Dragonbear really aim to achieve in global affairs? First and foremost, it is about counterbalancing arising centrifugal forces in all fields — from economy, finance, trade, diplomacy, to military, defense and strategic alliances. But it also has a lot to do with Russia and China’s overlapping understanding that the world is in a system transformation, whose results are unpredictable and whose implications might be very dangerous for them. Velina Tchakarova’s previous position as the Director of the Austrian Institute for European and Security Policy (AIES) in Vienna is marked by profound contributions to understanding the geopolitical domain and its implications for various sectors. In her current consulting firm, FACE For A Conscious Experience, Velina leverages her broad network and practical experience as a geopolitical strategist to deliver tailored solutions, helping the public and private sector adeptly navigate the complex geopolitical terrain. In this episode, Velina Tchakarova articulates that the unpredictable trajectory of Russia's war against Ukraine may force Putin to align Russia more closely with China’s geopolitical and geoeconomic interests, increasing dependencies within the dragonbear modus.Julie Yu-Wen Chen is Professor of Chinese Studies at the Department of Cultures at the University of Helsinki (Finland) and visiting professor at the Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia at Mahidol University (Thailand). Since 2023, she has been involved in the EUVIP: The EU in the Volatile Indo-Pacific Region, a project funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe coordination and support action 10107906 (HORIZON-WIDERA-2021-ACCESS-03). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

By examining the intersection of Islamic law, state law, religion, and culture in the Egyptian nation-building process, Recasting Islamic Law: Religion and the Nation State in Egyptian Constitution Making (Cornell University Press, 2021) highlights how the sharia, when attached to constitutional commitments, is reshaped into modern Islamic state law.Dr. Rachel M. Scott analyses the complex effects of constitutional commitments to the sharia in the wake of the Egyptian Revolution of 2011. She argues that the sharia is not dismantled by the modern state when it is applied as modern Islamic state law, but rather recast in its service. In showing the particular forms that the sharia takes when it is applied as modern Islamic state law, Scott pushes back against assumptions that introductions of the sharia into modern state law result in either the revival of mediaeval Islam or in its complete transformation. Scott engages with premodern law and with the Ottoman legal legacy on topics concerning Egypt's Coptic community, women's rights, personal status law, and the relationship between religious scholars and the Supreme Constitutional Court. Recasting Islamic Law considers modern Islamic state law's discontinuities and its continuities with premodern sharia.Thanks to generous funding from Virginia Tech and its participation in TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem), the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access volumes from Cornell Open (cornellpress.cornell.edu/cornell-open) and other repositories.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 about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Murder by Mail: A Global History of the Letter Bomb (Reaktion, 2024) by Dr. Mitchel P. Roth and Dr. Mahmut Cengiz unfolds the gripping history of weaponized mail, offering the first ever comprehensive exploration of this sinister phenomenon. Spanning two centuries, the book unveils the history of postal bombs, describing the evolution of both explosives and the postal services that facilitated their deadly use. From an eighteenth-century incident involving Jonathan Swift to modern acts of terror by groups like the IRA and the suffragettes and lone wolves such as the Unabomber, it uncovers the surprising ubiquity of mail bombs. This chronological account meticulously covers each decade, from early anarchists and world wars through the Cold War to the rise of the serial bomber. Astounding in scope, this book sheds light on the psychopathy, motivations and political implications behind murder by mail.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 about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Politics in Action is an annual forum in which invited experts provided an analysis of the current political situation in Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore and Vietnam, and discussed the broader implications of events in these countries for the region. After the event, each of the six speakers sat for a podcast to chat with Dr Natali Pearson and delve further into the political situation of their respective countries.In this podcast the presenter of the Myanmar update, Dr Moe Thuzar, discusses the political situation in Myanmar.Moe Thuzar is a Senior Fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, where she coordinates its Myanmar Studies Programme. From 2008 to 2019 she was the lead researcher in the ISEAS ASEAN Studies Centre. Prior to joining ISEAS, Dr Thuzar spent ten years at the ASEAN Secretariat, where she headed the Human Development Unit from 2004 to 2007. A former diplomat, she researched Burma’s foreign policy implementation (1948–88) for her PhD at the National University of Singapore. She was a Fox International Fellow (2019–2020) at Yale University’s MacMillan Center during her PhD candidacy. Her research interests include Myanmar’s foreign policy, ASEAN integration impacts and issues (socio-cultural areas) and ASEAN’s dialogue relations. Among many other publications, she has also contributed to several compendia and edited volumes on ASEAN and on Myanmar. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Waging and winning a nuclear war have been called “thinking about the unthinkable” but that’s exactly what Edward Kaplan and I discussed in our interview about his recent book, The End of Victory: Prevailing in the Thermonuclear Age (Cornell UP, 2022).The current Dean of the School of Strategic Landpower at the US Army War College, Kaplan recounts the costs of failure in nuclear war through the work of the most secret deliberative body of the National Security Council, the Net Evaluation Subcommittee (NESC).From 1953 onward, US leaders wanted to know as precisely as possible what would happen if they failed in a nuclear war―how many Americans would die and how much of the country would remain. The NESC told Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy what would be the result of the worst failure of American strategy―a maximum-effort surprise Soviet nuclear assault on the United States.Kaplan details how NESC studies provided key information for presidential decisions on the objectives of a war with the USSR and on the size and shape of the US military. The subcommittee delivered its annual reports in a decade marked by crises in Berlin, Quemoy and Matsu, Laos, and Cuba, among others. During these critical moments and day-to-day containment of the USSR, the NESC’s reports offered the best estimates of the butcher’s bill of conflict and of how to reduce the cost in American lives.Taken with the intelligence community’s assessment of the probability of a surprise attack, the NESC’s work framed the risks of US strategy in the chilliest years of the Cold War. The End of Victory reveals how all policy decisions run risks―and ones involving military force run grave ones―though they can rarely be known with precision.Andrew O. Pace is a historian of the US in the world who specializes in the moral fog of war. He is currently a DPAA Research Partner Fellow at the University of Southern Mississippi and a co-host of the Diplomatic History Channel on the New Books Network. He is also working on a book about the reversal in US grand strategy from victory at all costs in World War II to peace at any price in the Vietnam War. He can be reached at andrew.pace@usm.edu or via andrewopace.com. Andrew is not an employee of DPAA, he supports DPAA through a partnership. The views presented are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of DPAA, DoD or its components. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Politics is a site of performance, and contemporary politicians often perform the role of a regular person--perhaps someone we would like to have a beer with. They win elections not because of the elevated rhetorical performances we often associate with charisma ("ask not what your country can do for you"), but because of something more ordinary and relatable. The everyday magic spell that politicians cast using mass and social media is what sociologist Julia Sonnevend calls "charm." In Charm: How Magnetic Personalities Shape Global Politics (Princeton UP, 2024), Sonnevend explores charm (and the related "charm offensive") as a keyword of contemporary global politics. Successful political leaders deploy this form of personal magnetism--which relies on proximity to political tribes and manifests across a variety of media platforms--to appear authentic and accessible in their quest for power.Sonnevend examines the mediated self-representations of a set of liberal, illiberal, and authoritarian political leaders, past and present: New Zealand's Jacinda Ardern, Hungary's Viktor Orbán, Iran's Mohammad Javad Zarif, North Korea's Kim Jong-un, and Germany's Angela Merkel. She considers how charm (or the lack of it) is wielded as a political tool, and the ways charm is weaponized to shape the international image of a country, potentially influencing decisions about military aid, trade, and even tourism. Sonnevend argues that charm will shape the future of democracy worldwide, as political values will be increasingly embodied by mediated personalities. These figures will rise and fall, often fading into irrelevance; but if we do not understand charm's political power, we cannot grasp today's fragile political moment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

The idiom of contemporary politics is a kind of philosophical hodge-podge. While there’s plenty of talk about the traditional themes of freedom, justice, equality, and autonomy, there is also an increasing reliance on ideas like misinformation, bias, expertise, and propaganda. These latter notions belong, at least in part, to epistemology – the area of philosophy that deals with issues concerning knowledge, rationality, evidence, and belief. Relatively recently, the subfield of political epistemology has emerged. Political epistemologists explore philosophical issues of political belief, political expertise, political information and so on. But they also are concerned to examine the ways in which political arrangements can go well or badly, depending on the character of the epistemic practices that prevail in society.Political epistemology is — by philosophy’s standards – a new subfield. Perhaps it is no more than two decades old. Yet the field is organized around a few disputes. In Political Beliefs: A Philosophical Introduction (Routledge 2024), Oliver Traldi surveys the terrain, often leading the reader to the conclusion that things are more complicated than they might seem.This book is available open access here.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science