RevDem Podcast: Recent Episodes
Review of Democracy
RevDem Podcast is an initiative of the Review of Democracy, academic journal and an open platform created by the CEU Democracy Institute.
In this conversation at the Review of Democracy, Michael S. Roth sketches the main ways of being a student since ancient times; reflects on the process of learning “to be free”; explores the reasons behindthe politicization of universities in the United States; considers what might be new about the adversarial relationship between students and universityadministrators these days; and sketches what “safe enough spaces” might look like in our turbulenttimes.
Michael S. Roth is a historian, curator, author, and public advocate for liberal education. He has acted as President of Wesleyan University since 2007. He is the foundingdirector of the Scripps College Humanities Institute. He formerly acted as the associate director of the GettyResearch Institute in Los Angeles and as president of theCalifornia College of the Arts. He is the author of eight books. The Student: A Short History is his newest book.
The Student: A Short History is published by YaleUniversity Press.
In this conversation at the Review of Democracy, Michael S. Roth sketches the main ways of being a student since ancient times; reflects on the process of learning “to be free”; explores the reasons behindthe politicization of universities in the United States; considers what might be new about the adversarial relationship between students and university administrators these days; and sketches what “safe enough spaces” might look like in our turbulenttimes.
Michael S. Roth is a historian, curator, author, and public advocate for liberal education. He has acted as President of Wesleyan University since 2007. He is the foundingdirector of the Scripps College Humanities Institute. He formerly acted as the associate director of the GettyResearch Institute in Los Angeles and as president of theCalifornia College of the Arts. He is the author ofeight books. The Student: A Short History is his newest book.
The Student: A Short History is published by Yale University Press.
In this conversation with the Review of Democracy, Ho-fung Hung shares his eye-opening analysis of the internal contradictions and external limitationsplaguing China’s export-led development model and offers novel insights into the difficulties its political leadership is encountering in challenging US hegemony and extending its global sphere of influence. While acknowledging China’s impressive achievements, Hung emphasizes China’s technological dependency and chronic industrial overcapacity, the impact of the rise ofprotectionism, the hegemony of the US dollar, and China’s lack of confidence in its military capabilities. At the same time, he forecasts the intensification of US-Chinese rivalry in connection with the gradual decoupling of the US and Chinese economies.
Ho-fung Hung is Henry M. and Elizabeth P. Wiesenfeld Professor in Political Economy at the Sociology Department of the Johns Hopkins University. His scholarly interests include global political economy, protest,nation-state formation, social theory, and East Asian Development. He is the author of the award-winning Protest with Chinese Characteristics (2011, Columbia UP), The China Boom: Why China Will not Rule the World (2016, Columbia UP) and the Clash of Empires: From “Chimerica” to the “New Cold War” (2022, Cambridge UP).
In this conversation at the Review of Democracy, Joshua Leifer – author of the new book Tablets Shattered. The End of an American Jewish Century and the Futureof Jewish Life – analyzes the unravelling of the postwar American Jewish consensus and the reemergence ofoppositional Jewish politics; discusses what he sees as the four main political-religious tendencies in our times and how his own relationship to them has evolved over the years; explores the radical potential of traditionalJudaism; and reflects on how the diasporic double bind may be navigated today.
Joshua Leifer is a journalist, editor, and translator whose essays and reporting have appeared widely in international publications, including The New York Review of Books,The New Statesman, and The Nation. Joshua is a member of the Dissent editorial board and is currently pursuing a PhD at Yale University which focuses on the history of modern moral and social thought.Tablets Shattered is Joshua Leifer’s first book.
Tablets Shattered. The End of an American Jewish Century and the Future of Jewish Life will bereleased in August. It is published by Dutton.
The conversation was conducted by Ferenc Laczó. Therecording has been edited by Lilit Hakobyan.
What are the most important legal and political challenges in rebuilding the Rule of Law in Poland? Polish Minister of Justice Adam Bodnar highlighted them in his lecture at the CEU Democracy Institute in Budapest.
On May 27 the CEU Democracy Institute Rule of Law clinic was launched with an inaugural lecture from the Minister for Justice of Poland Adam Bodnar. The event provided a unique opportunity to hear a sitting member of an anti-illiberal government explain how the Rule ofLaw will be restored after nearly a decade of backsliding under the previous government. The key theme of the lecture was the endorsement of incrementalism over revolution as a means to rebuild a ‘sustainable’ Rule of Law.
In this conversation, Jannis Panagiotidis and Hans-Christian Petersen – authors of the new book Antiosteuropäischer Rassismus in Deutschland. Geschichte und Gegenwart(Racism Against East Europeans in Germany. History and the Present Day) – show why racism is an appropriate category when discussing stereotypes and prejudicesagainst East Europeans; explain why there is a need for “an Eastern enlargement of the racism debate”; discuss how the most extreme, National Socialist forms of racism relate to what came before and after; consider how racism against East Europeans might be embedded in the larger, more global system of prejudices and domination; and reflect on the current stakes of their scholarly intervention.
Jannis Panagiotidis is the Scientific Director of the Research Center for the History of Transformations (or RECET), an institute of advanced research in Vienna.
Hans-Christian Petersen is a staff member at the Federal Institute for Culture and History of the Germans in Eastern Europe (BKGE), which is based in the city of Oldenburg.
Antiosteuropäischer Rassismus in Deutschland. Geschichte und Gegenwart has been published by Beltz Juventa.
The conversation was conducted by Ferenc Laczó. Ádám Hushegyi and Lilit Hakobyan edited the audio recording.
In this conversation with Lorena Drakula, Yannis Stavrakakis – author of the new Research Handbook on Populism and the book Populist Discourse. Recasting Populism Research – discusses the past and future of populism research; analyzes the outdated stereotypes that shape the political role of the ‘populist’ label; andargues for returning passions to the very core of democratic representation.
Yannis Stavrakakis is a Professor of Political Science at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and director ofthe Laboratory for the Study of Democracy. He was one of the founding co-conveners of the Populism Specialist Group of the Political Studies Association (UK) and also directed the POPULISMUS Observatory.
In this conversation at the Review of Democracy, Mike Smeltzer –Senior Research Analyst at Freedom House who has just co-led the research on the Nations in Transit 2024 report – clarifies how the research they conduct into the broad and diverse post-communist region conceives of democracy; explains how the newest developments in these twenty-nine countries can be related to long-term trends and how thesecountries may fit broader patterns; discusses what autocratizing hybrid regimes – such as Georgia, Hungary, or Serbia – have in common and how autocracies help each other these days; and reflects on the most positive developments andurgent tasks for democrats.
Mike Smeltzer is an expert ondevelopments in the post- space and Senior Research Analyst for Nations in Transit, Freedom House’s annual survey of democratic governance from Central Europe to Eurasia. He has led the research, together with Alexandra Karppi, on the Nations in Transit 2024 report.
The Nations in Transit 2024 report – subtitled “A Region Reordered by Autocracy and Democracy” – can be accessed here.
Since the 2015 refugee crisis there has been an increasing ‘securitization’ of EU refugee law that has only been exacerbated by the Russia-Ukraine conflict. In this latest RevDem Rule of Law podcast Oliver Garner discusses this phenomenon with Aleksandra Ancite- Jepifánova. She is a Research Affiliate with the Refugee Law Initiative at the University of London and Visiting Fellow at the Centre of Law and Society at Cardiff University.
In this conversation at the Review of Democracy, Martin Conway and Camilo Erlichman – editors of the new volume Social Justice in Twentieth-Century Europe –discuss how to approach the question of social justice historically; show how this aspiration may be placed at the confluence of key developments in the twentieth century; explain how focusing on these questions allows us to study the interactions between rulers and the ruled; sketch some of the main features of different eras of social justice; and consider whether social justice is still understood primarily by its absence as it so often was during the past century.
Martin Conway is a Professor of Contemporary European History at the University of Oxford. His recent booksinclude the major monograph Western Europe's Democratic Age: 1945 to 1968.
Camilo Erlichman is a historian of modern and contemporary Europe who acts as an Assistant Professor at Maastricht University. He is also the co-founder and co-convenor of the Occupation Studies Research Network.
Social Justice in Twentieth-Century Europe has been published by Cambridge University Press.
The conversation was conducted by Ferenc Laczó. Ádám Hushegyi prepared the audio file for publication.
In this interview with Tarunabh Khaitan, we discuss the ongoing crisis of democracy and constitutionalism in India. At the time of conducting the interview, elections are underway in India, with approximately a month left for results to be declared.In this context, we discuss the differences between the first and the second term of the Modi government, India’s place in the ongoing wave of global populism,suggestions for recovering constitutional democracy, and the dangers of “Scholactivism”.
In this conversation at the Review of Democracy,Judith Butler – author of the new book Who’s Afraid of Gender – discuss their interpretation of the anti-gender ideology movement and what makes it ‘inadvertentlyconfessional’; explain why we should think about the material and the social as intertwined also when we reflect on issues of gender; show what a broader, moreglobal discussion of such issues could yield; and illuminate how they think about radical democracy.
Judith Butler are among the best known and most discussed philosophers, gender scholars, andcultural critics in our age. They have exerted a major influence on a host of fields, perhaps most evidently on feminist and queer scholarship. They act as Professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
Who’s Afraid of Genderhas been published byFarrar, Straus and Giroux.
The conversation was conducted by Ferenc Laczó. LucieHunter edited the recording.
In the latest RevDem Rule of Law podcast Oliver Garner discusses the substantive and constitutional tensions caused by the Court of Justice of the EU’s internalmarket case-law with Dr Vilija Velyvyte. She is a Lecturer in Law at the University of Reading and was previously a Lecturer in EU Law and Constitutional Law at the University of Oxford. She is the author of Judicial Authority in EU Internal Market Law: Implications for theBalance of Competences and Powers (Hart Publishing, 2022).
In this conversation at the Review of Democracy, Philipp Lenhard – author of the new book Café Marx. Das
Institut für Sozialforschung von den Anfängen bis zur Frankfurter Schule (Café Marx. The Institute for SocialResearch from the Beginnings to the Frankfurt School) – discusses the history of the Institute For Social Research and the Frankfurt School and his approach to this subject; shows what his exploration of less famous actors in this history and his focus on spaces and networks have yielded; and reflects on what the impact of the Institute for Social Research and the Frankfurt School has been like – and what might be mostrelevant about critical theory today.
Philipp Lenhard is a DAAD Professor at the Department of History, the University of California, Berkeley. He completed his PhD and Habilitation at the University of Munich. His research interests include Modern Jewish History; Modern German History; Intellectual History; Critical Theory and the Frankfurt School; and Comparative European History.
Café Marx. Das Institut für Sozialforschung von denAnfängen bis zur Frankfurter Schule (Café Marx. The Institute for Social Research from the Beginnings to the Frankfurt School) has been published by C.H. Beck.
The conversation was conducted by Ferenc Laczó. Lucie Hunter prepared the recording for publication.
In this conversation at the Review of Democracy,Joseph Stiglitz discusses key features of progressive, social democratic capitalism; explains what motivated him to want to reclaim the language of freedom from the Right; and reflects on what the toolkit of the economist can contribute to our understanding of the relationship between freedom and democracy.
Joseph Stiglitz is among the best-known economists and public policy analysts in the world. He acted as the senior vice president and chief economist of the World Bank andalso served as the chairman of the US president’s Council of Economic Advisers.Stiglitz was the recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2001. He currently acts as a professor at Columbia University.
The Road to Freedom. Economics and the Good Society has been published by W. W. Norton.
The conversation was conducted by Ferenc Laczó.
Oliver Garner: You have recently published a working paper for the CEU Democracy Institute on the subversion of judicial legitimacy in Mexico by presidential rhetoric. Could you summarize this phenomenon for our listeners who may not be familiar with the political context in Mexico?
Azul Aguilar: I wanted to explore how the dynamics of attacks from the President on the judiciary are evolving and what are the causes, conditions, and the timing of these rhetorical attacks. I wanted to explore this because the judiciary is an important institution in presidential and constitutional democracies as it guarantees the separation of powers and checks and balances. I wanted to study this and put it into a research program because, since thearrival of our current President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador in 2018, we have seen variations in how the president refers to the judges and constitutional judges in the judiciary. I started my discussion in the working paper from the 1994 judicial reform. This reform is very important for us because it radically transformed the performance of the judiciary. The 1994 reform introduced judicial independence for the courts and a professional system of judges. But the most important change in this reform was that it empowered the courts through a mechanism called constitutional actions. This mechanism of judicial review allowed the courts to review the legislation of both the executive and the legislative branch in Mexico. It also allowed another mechanism, called amparo, meaning the real rights that can be contested by society because they think some institutional acts violate or breach their rights.
In this conversation at the Review of Democracy, Angéla Kóczé introduces civil rights icon Ágnes Daróczi, and sketches her paths and the development of her consciousness as a Roma woman; covers the main facets of the movement of Roma emancipation in Hungary and the roles Daróczi has played in them; discusses why the nationality question has been so crucial in Daróczi’s understanding and how her agenda might be placed intransnational contexts; and reflects on the achievements and shortcomings of Hungary’s post-89 democracy and how she perceives the legacies of Daróczi.
Angéla Kóczé is an Assistant Professor of Romani Studies, Chair of the Romani Studies Program, and AcademicDirector of the Roma Graduate Preparation Program at the Central European University. She is also affiliated with theDepartment of Sociology and Social Anthropology of the CEU. Angéla Kóczé has authored and edited numerous scholarly publications and is the recipient of prestigious awards and fellowships. Her research focuses on the intersections of gender, ethnicity, and class as well as thesocial and legal inequalities faced by the Roma in various European counties. Her activities prominently include community engagement and policy making as well.
Ágnes Daróczi’s Hosszú az út előttem (The Long Road Before Me), edited by Angéla Kóczé, has been publishedby Magvető.
In this conversation at the Review of Democracy, Stefanos Geroulanos – author of The Invention of Prehistory. Empire, Violence, and Our Obsession with Human Origins – sketches the major ways the story of humanity’s emergence has been conceived over the past two and a half centuries; shows how such conceptions can shed light on the history of the modern world; discusses what has made this generative intellectualtradition also one of the most ruinous; and reflects on what our fashionable prehistories may reveal about the kind of world we currently live in.
Stefanos Geroulanos is the Director of the Remarque Institute and a Professor of History at New York University.
The Invention of Prehistory. Empire, Violence, and Our Obsession with Human Originsis published by W.W.Norton.
The conversation has been conducted by Ferenc Laczó. The audio recording has been edited by Lucie Hunter.
Are constitutional judges well equipped to deal with fundamental constitutional questions about the EU? Should national constitutional courts aim to address the EU democratic deficit? Several scholars see national constitutional courts as a constructive force in the EU legal order. Nik de Boer argues differently and reasons why is it better to leave certain issues to parliaments rather than constitutional courts?
In this conversation with Kasia Krzyżanowska, Nik de Boer discusses hisrecent book “Judging European Democracy. The Role and Legitimacy of National Constitutional Courts in the EU” (Oxford University Press 2023).
Nik de Boer is Associate Professor in Constitutional Law at the University of Amsterdam, a member of the editorial board of the European Constitutional Law Review and afounding board member of the University of Amsterdam’s platform for Democratic Resilience (DEMRES). His research focuses on constitutional courts, EU constitutional law, central banks and democratic backsliding.
In this conversation with our guesteditor Eszter Horvath, Phillip Ayoub discusses recentdevelopments in the LGBT movement, introduces the concept of locally rooted messaging, and his own trajectory from activism to academia.
Phillip Ayoub is a Professor in the Department ofPolitical Science and School of Public Policy at University College London. He also serves as Editor of the European Journal of Politics & Gender. Ayoub's research bridges international relations and comparative politics, engaging with literature on transnational politics, sexuality and gender, norm diffusion, and the study of social movements, with a strong interest in how the transnational mobilization of marginalized peoples and international channels of visibility influence socio-legal change across states. He is the author of When States Come Out: Europe’s Sexual Minorities and the Politics of Visibility (Cambridge University Press, 2016), and The Global Fight Against LGBTI Rights: How Transnational Conservative Networks Target Sexual and Gender Minorities(with Kristina Stoeckl, New YorkUniversity Press 2024). He has also contributed to a number of journals and edited volumes.
In this conversation at the Review of Democracy, Erica Benner – author of the new book Adventures in Democracy: The Turbulent World of People Power – shows what a more self-critical and down-to-earthunderstanding of democracy would entail; discusses what it means that there is a constant battle within democracies between principles of universal liberty,equality, and power-sharing, on the one hand, and the boys’ club logic, on the other; explains why self-restraint andacknowledging others’ fear of losing their share of power are crucially important; and reflects on the development of a truly global conversation about democracy.
Erica Benner is a political philosopher and historian of ideas. She teaches at the Hertie School for Governance in Berlin, at LSE Ideas, as well as for academic programmes in Sweden and China. She has previously been affiliated with Oxford University, Yale University, Warsaw University as well as the CEU’s Institute of Advanced Studies, among other institutions. Benner also acts as the President of the European Society for the History of Political Thought and is a founding editor of the book series History of European Political and Constitutional Thought. She is the author ofnumerous books, including Be Like the Fox: Machiavelli In His World.
Adventures in Democracy: The Turbulent World of People Power has been published by Allen Lane.
The conversation has been conducted by Ferenc Laczó.The recording has been edited by Lucie Hunter.
Who is a dark politician? How do dark politicians perform in the elections and in handling crises? What does being “dark” mean for female politicians? Why do some people like it dark? In this conversation with Kasia Krzyżanowska, Alessandro Nai discusses his newest book “Dark Politics. The Personality of Politicians and the Future of Democracy,” co-authored with Jürgen Maier.
Alessandro Nai – AssociateProfessor of Political Communication at the Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR), University of Amsterdam. His work focuses on the dark sides of politics – the use of negativity and incivility in election campaigns in a comparative perspective, the (dark) personality traits of political figures, and radical partisanship in voters.
In this conversation at the Review of Democracy, Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins – editor of the new collection Did It Happen Here? Perspectives on Fascism and America – discusses the intellectual stakes and political relevance of the fascism debate; reflects on how the fascism debate relates to discourses around democratic decline and the ongoing history wars; shows what a more global perspective on US American debates can reveal; and ponders whether the next round of the fascism debate might just be around the corner.
Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins is a historian of modern political and intellectual thought. He acts as Assistant Professor in the College of Social Studies at Wesleyan University. He runs a regular interview series at The Nationand is an editor at Modern Intellectual History. He also helps curate the History of Ideas section of the Review of Democracy.
Did It Happen Here? Perspectives on Fascism and America is published by W.W. Norton.
The conversation has been hosted by Ferenc Laczó. Lucie Hunter edited the recording.
In this conversation with Kasia Krzyżanowska, Hanna Eklund discusses her recent article, “Peoples, Inhabitants and Workers: Colonialism in the Treaty of Rome”, published in the European Journal of International Law. She talks about the “coded language” of colonialism in the Treaty of Rome, explains the approach of the Treaty drafters to the African independence movements, and reflects on the colonial legacies of contemporary EU law.
Hanna Eklund is Assistant Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Copenhagen. She publishes within the field of European Union law, particularly in its political and socio-economic context. She is the editor of the forthcoming book Colonialism and the EU Legal Order (Cambridge University Press, 2025).
In this conversation at the Review of Democracy, Leah Hunt-Hendrix – co-author, with Astra Taylor, of the newbook Solidarity. The Past, Present, and Future of a World Changing Idea – shows what makes solidarity so essential in social movements that advance and expand democratic ambitions; explains why philanthropy should be adapted to grassroots movements rather than viceversa; discusses how solidaristic organizing could become more transformative in the future; and reflects on the intellectual historical context of their book.
Leah Hunt-Hendrix is a political theorist with a PhD, an activist, and a movement builder who has organizedaround issues of social and economic justice. She has co-founded progressive organizations such as Way to Win, Solidaire, and the Emergent Fund. She also serves on the board of directors and acts as advisor to several prestigious organizations.
Leah Hunt-Hendrix and Astra Taylor’s Solidarity. The Past, Present, and Future of a World Changing Idea has been published by Pantheon.
The conversation has been conducted by Ferenc Laczo. Lucie Hunter has edited the recording.
In this conversation with RevDem editor and a re:constitution fellow Kasia Krzyżanowska, Krzysztof Izdebski (Batory Foundation) and Bartosz Pilitowski (Court Watch Poland)discuss all the current challenges the Polish government is facing with the legal legacy left by the Law and Justice party. How to restore trust in the judicial institutions? How to deal with the irregularly established Constitutional Tribunal and the National Council of the Judiciary? What should be the role of the judges in designing the judicial system?
Introduction (Alexandra Medzibrodszky): Welcome all to this episode of the Review of Democracy podcast.I’m Alexandra Medzibrodszky, and it is a great pleasure to have with us today Una Bergmane to discuss her book "Politics of Uncertainty: the United States, the Baltic Question, and the Collapse of the Soviet Union". So,first of all, thank you, Una, for accepting our invitation and being here with us. Before we start discussing your book, let me introduce our guest today.
Una Bergmane’s main research interests are the history of the Soviet collapse, the Baltic states, diasporas,transnational networks, collective memory, and the post-Cold War transitions in the Baltic Sea region. She is currently an Academy of Finland research fellow at the Aleksanteri Institute in Helsinki. Before joining the Institute, she held various fellowships across the world; she was a postdoctoral fellow at Cornell University in the US, a teaching fellow at the London School of Economics, and a postdoctoral researcher at the Academy of Finland-funded BALTRANS project. She obtained her Ph.D. from Sciences Po in Paris.
The focus of our podcast today is Una’s first book, which was published by Oxford University Press in 2023. As already mentioned, the title of the book is "Politics ofUncertainty: the United States, the Baltic Question, and the Collapse of the Soviet Union". In a nutshell, the book tells the story of how Cold War superpowers tried to deal with the Baltic question at the end of the 1980s, butalso how marginal actors can find strategies to gain recognition and visibility on the international stage during periods of deep historical change. Let’s have a closer look at the ideas and arguments of your book.
The question of how to reverse illiberal backsliding after regime change is becoming live within Europe and beyond. This Rule of Law section podcast between Oliver Garner and András Sajó (Professor atthe Central European University and Senior Research Fellow at the CEU Democracy Institute) considers this dilemma through the recently published lens of theCEU DI working paper ‘Militant Rule of Law and Not-So-Bad Law’.
For most of its existence the Spanish party system has been dominated by the Socialist Party, PSOE, and the People’s Party, PP.Accordingly, and somewhat unusually in Europe, the governments tended to be based on a single party. However, parties have been repeatedly forced tocooperate in parliament and since 2020 they must share office in government. This change is obviously related to the fact that recently new actors have appearedon the scene, challenging the center-right and the center-left. This podcast between Zsolt Enyedi and Fernando Casal Bertoa discusses inter-party relations in Spain. Fernando Casal Bertoa is Associate Professor at the University of Nottingham and the co-director of the Research Center for the Study of Parties and Democracy.
In this interview with RevDem editor Kasia Krzyżanowska, Rochelle Terman discusses her most recent book The Geopolitics of Shaming: When Human Rights Pressure Works—and When It Backfirespublished with Princeton University Press (2023).
Rochelle Terman -- an assistant professor of the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago. Her first book, The Geopolitics of Shaming: When Human Rights Pressure Works—and When It Backfires, was published in 2023 with Princeton University Press.
In conversation with RevDem editor Lucie Hunter, Joachim Häberlen discusses his latest book, Beauty is in the Street: Protest and Counterculture in Post-WarEurope (Allen Lane, 2023).
Joachim Häberlen, Ph.D., is a historian of modern Europe and a writer focused on protest movements in post-war Europe and the experiences of Afghan and Syrian refugees in Germany. He received his academic training at the University of Chicago, where he graduated with a Ph.D. in Modern European History in 2011. Some of hispublications include The Emotional Politics of the Alternative Left: West Germany, 1968-1984(Cambridge University Press, 2018), Citizens and Refugees: Stories from Afghanistan and Syria to Germany(Routledge, 2022), and Beauty is in the Street: Protest and Counterculture in Post-War Europe(Allen Lane, 2023).
In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Van Jackson – author of the new book Grand Strategies of the Left. The Foreign Policy of Progressive Worldmaking – explains what distinguishes progressives from liberal internationalists; clarifies why he thinks that the tradition of grand strategy might be worth rescuing by and for progressives; discusses the three main progressive grand strategies that are recurrently articulated in the US these days, what they priorities are, and what risks they respectively contain; distils the main consensual points of progressive worldmaking; and reflects on what a global starting point for agendas comparable to his own might lead to.
Van Jackson is a political scientist and a scholar of international relations who specializesin East Asian and Pacific security, critical analysis of defense issues, and the intersection of working-class interests with foreign policy. He is a Senior Lecturer in International Relations at Victoria University of Wellington. He also acts as a Senior Research Scholar at Security in Context where he co-directs the “Multipolarity, Great-power Competition, and the Global South” project. He is the author of four books, has made contributions to a wide range of international media, and runs The Undiplomatic Podcast.
Grand Strategies of the Left. The Foreign Policy of Progressive Worldmaking has been published by Cambridge University Press.
In collaboration with Lucie Hunter.
The guest for the latest RevDem Rule of Law podcast is Professor Jeff King. He is a Professor of Law at University College London and he is the Director of Research at the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law. He has previously acted as a legal adviser to the House of Lords Select Committee on the Constitution. The conversation with Oliver Garner discusses Jeff’s 'regulatory’ conception of the Rule of Law and its application to contemporary challenges.
In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó,Matthew Longo – author of the new book The Picnic. A Dream of Freedom and the Collapse of the Iron Curtain – discusses what motivated him to research the Pan-European Picnic of 1989; why he places such an emphasis on the uncertainty of the situation in those crucial days; and what conclusions he has drawn regarding the meaning of freedom in 1989 – and how that meaning has changed since.
Matthew Longo is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Leiden University.
The Picnic. A Dream of Freedom and the Collapse of theIron Curtain has been published by W.W. Norton &Company.
In collaboration with Lucie Hunter.
In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Viet Thanh Nguyen – author of the new book A Man of Two Faces. A Memoir, A History, A Memorial – reflectson the ambiguities and contradictions of growing up Vietnamese-American in the aftermath of what is called the Vietnam War in the US; explains what motivated him to seek a new balance between remembering andforgetting in his new book; shares his ethical considerations regarding the revelation of secrets; shows why self-representation is not enough; and discusses how his dialectic Marxism wavers between Groucho and Karl.
Viet Thanh Nguyen (Vietnamese: Nguyễn Thanh Việt) is aVietnamese-American professor and novelist. He is the Aerol Arnold Chair of English and Professor of English and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. He is the author of the scholarly monograph Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War and the novel The Sympathizer, among several other books.
A Man of Two Faces. A Memoir, A History, A Memorial has been published by Grove Press.
In collaboration with Lucie Hunter.
In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Mirjam Zadoff – director of the Munich DocumentationCentre for the History of National Socialism and author of Gewalt und Gedächtnis: Globale Erinnerung im 21.Jahrhundert –discusses what motivated her to publish a collection on global memory and which key themes she wanted to address; how the explorations and reflection on key remembrance sites from across the globe have impacted her perspective on German and European trends; why she considers it so important to emphasize transnational and transcultural links; what are the shortcomings of Germany’s often-praised memory culture; and which examples of remembrance she considers particularly inspiring and capable of fostering a culture of responsibility.
Mirjam Zadoff is the director of the Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism.
Gewalt und Gedächtnis: Globale Erinnerung im 21.Jahrhunderthas been published by Hanser.
In collaboration with Lucie Hunter.
In this conversation with Lorena Drakula and Ferenc Laczó, Volodymyr Ishchenko – author of the new collection, Towards the Abyss: Ukraine from Maidan to War – explains how the study of contemporary Ukraine could contribute to our understanding of globally relevant processes. He reflects on the main political cleavage in the country and how the relationship between the various camps has evolved; and shows what led to the “deficient revolutions” in early 21st-century Ukraine and what have been their main outcomes. Finally, he discusses what he sees as thedriving force behind the authoritarian tendencies in the country.
Volodymyr Ishchenko is a research associate at the Institute of East European Studies, Freie Universität Berlin.
Towards the Abyss: Ukraine from Maidan to War is published by Verso.
In a conversation with Kasia Krzyżanowska, Bécquer Seguin discusses his book “The Op-Ed Novel. A Literary History of Post-Franco Spain” (Harvard University Press, 2023). He elaborates on the concept of the op-ed novel, explains the idea of literary populism, advocates for the engagement of novelists in the public debates of historical and national meaning, and discusses some most noteworthy examples of Spanish op-ed novelists.
Bécquer Seguín is an assistant professor ofIberian studies at Johns Hopkins University, where he teaches the literary, cultural, and political history of modern Spain. He is a regular contributor to The Nation, where he has been reporting on Spain since 2015, and has written for Slate, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and Public Books, where he co-edits the literature in translation and sports sections. The Op-Ed Novel is hisfirst book.
In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Jacob Mikanowski – author of Goodbye, Eastern Europe: An Intimate History of a Divided Land – discusses his major inspirations as a writer and how his travels have shaped his perspective; explicates his specific approach to the history of Eastern Europe and what he views as thedistinguishing features of this diverse region; and reflects on whether Eastern Europe might still be a place where nonconformists and their heterodoxideas can flourish.
Jacob Mikanowski (PhD, University ofCalifornia, Berkeley) is a writer, journalist, and critic who has written for The Atlantic and the New York Times, among a host of other high-profile publications. Goodbye, Eastern Europe: An Intimate History of a Divided Landis his first book.
Goodbye, Eastern Europe: An Intimate History of a Divided Land has been published by Pantheon.
In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Jarosław Kuisz and Karolina Wigura – authors of Posttraumatische Souveränität. Ein Essay – explain why they have centred the concept of posttraumatic sovereignty in their new book and how it might help us account for current trends in East Central Europe; reflect on the prevalence of trauma discourses and the tensions and risks inherent to such discourses; and discuss howEast-West relations in Europe may have been transformed by Russia’s violent escalation and ongoing war against Ukraine and the varied responses to it.
In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Yaroslav Trofimov – author of the new book Our Enemies Will Vanish. The Russian Invasion and Ukraine’s War of Independence – shows how Ukraine has turned out to be much stronger than hoped whereas Russia has proven significantly weaker than feared; discusses the major crimes Russia has committed in Ukraine and the destruction its war of aggression has wrought; reflects on the experience of reporting on a major conflict in his country of origin; describes the evolving relationship between the Ukrainian leadership and its Western supporters; and shares his assessment of the prospects for Ukraine.
Yaroslav Trofimov is the chief foreign-affairs correspondent of The Wall Street Journal. He has reported on most major conflicts of the past two decades. Yaroslav Trofimov is the author of two previous books and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in international reporting inboth 2022 and 2023.
Our Enemies Will Vanish. The Russian Invasion and Ukraine’s War of Independencehas been published by Penguin Press.
The editors of the Review of Democracy, CEU Democracy Institute's online platform participated in an online conversation summarizing their favorite pieces in 2023.
On behalf of the RevDem staff, we wish our audience Happy New Year! Visit us and listen to us in 2024 too!
Hello, my name is Feren Laczo, I am an editor at the Review of Democracy, and I am also the co-head of the Ideassection. And it is my pleasure today to share with you a brief list of some of the most impressive publications we have covered this year.
Ideas editors and podcasters have been invited to a continuous feast in 2023: the year has offered an unusual number of original publications of the highest caliber.
Natasha Wheatley’s The Life and Death of States: Central Europe and the Transformation of Modern Sovereignty,the Vienna-based discussion of which we were proud to co-organize; Sam Moyn’s Liberalism Against Itself. Cold WarIntellectuals and the Making of Our Times that substantially critiques the dominant form Western liberalism has taken; Danielle Allen’s exciting proposal of a power-sharing liberalism; George Steinmetz’s major monograph on the colonial origins of modern social thought in France; or Adam Shatz’s collection of essays on the radicalimagination have all been evident highlights.
Here comes an all too selective list of five recommendations from RevDem Ideas of books that deserve to be more widely read and discussed.
Kasia Krzyżanowska, RevDem editorof the Review of Books section, recommends five books read in 2023.
Only two out of five books recommended here were published in 2023 (including a one translation of a bookfrom the 50s). This very subjective selection assumes that some socio-political problems tackled by the proposed books do not have an expiration date and they can evoke awe, disbelief or anger even decades after the first publication.
Hello, my name is Oliver Garner.
I'm the editor of the Rule of Law section of the C EU Democracy Institute's Live Platform, TheReview of Democracy. These are my top five Rule of Law books of 2023.
My first choice is the abuse of constitutional identity in the European Union by Julian Scholtes, published by Oxford University Press.
This year, I had the pleasure of interviewing Julian about his work in autumn for RevDem. His book impressively categorizes the manners in which constitutional identity may be abused by a liberal actor into generative substantive and relational aspects.This work can provide a rejoinder to claims that constitutional identity is an unmitigated danger to liberal democracy. And instead, it may help us to preserve a concept that can usefully delimit the spheres of sovereign autonomy within our globalized world.My second choice is the book Against Constitutionalism by Martin Loughlin, published by Harvard University Press in 2022.The polemic title sets out the author's stall as an academic who is always willing to challenge the prevailing consensus within a field.Our fellow RevDem editor Kasia Krzyzanowska’ interview with Professor Loughlin this year teased out the heart of his argument as one that seeks to privilege the power of politics to change society over what he perceives to be the ideology of constitutionalism that may ossify progress through rarely legality.My third choice is the book European Disunion, Democracy, Sovereignty, and The Politics of Emergency by Stefan Auer, published by Hurst in 2022.
This monograph provides another challenge to one of the prevailing notions in liberal Western academia that the empty seat of power in supranational integration within Europe is a desirable feature of modernity.
Instead, such over bureaucratization may be a causative factor in the democratic irritations of populism and the liberalism. As Auer argues in this book, a full symposium on the monograph with contributions from Peter J. Verovšek, Gábor Halmai, and Petr Agha is available on RevDem.
My fourth choice is the book, The Jurisprudence of Constitutional Conflict in the European Union by Anna Bobek, published by Oxford University Press in 2022.
The legal face of the liberal challenge to supranational integration may be regarded as the constitutional conflicts between national apex courts and the Court ofJustice of the European Union.Anna Bobek's book provides a rigorous academic treatise on these phenomena from the perspective of an insider within the court of justice.
Her development of categories of constructive and destructive constitutional conflict in the European Union may marry well with Scholtz's notions of abusive and genuine constitutional identity claims and both can be very useful tools in the future for such conflicts.
My final choice is the research handbook on the politics of constitutional law, edited by Mark Tushnet and the Lead researcher for the rule of law workgroup, Dmitry Kochenov.And this book was published by Edward Elgar in 2023.
This, will I believe be an authoritative tone on the interaction between core concepts such as democracy and the rule of law within constitutional systems.
The handbook is divided into contributions on foundations, structure rights and futures, which allows both a systematic look into the origins of constitutional politics and valuable reflections upon its development by a wide array of greatvoices within the field.
I hope that you have also enjoyed these books if you've also managed to read them this year and I hope you've also enjoyed the content we've put out on RevDem on the rule of law section and our book review section on themes covered in these works and similar.
I hope that you will join us again in 2024 when we continue to deliver podcasts and op-eds considering these arguments that are relevant for democracy in Europe.
“To protect the future of liberal democracy in Europe, one must first understand its challengers.” So is the motto of AUTHLIB, the project titled ‘Neo-Authoritarianisms in Europe and the Liberal Democratic Response’, led by the CEU Democracy Institute, funded by the European Union and the UK Innovation and Research, and implemented incooperation with the Charles University, Sciences Po, Scuola Normale Superiore, SWPS University,the German Marshall Fund of the United States, the University of Oxford and the University of Vienna. If you are interested in fresh academic research and policy analysison matters of illiberalism, populism, authoritarianism, and their implications to liberal democracy in Europe, followAUTHLIB on social media and at authlib.eu.
Among the challengers to liberal democracy in Europe, we can count populists, autocrats, and the increasingly often mentioned illiberals. But who are they and what is illiberalism? How does it relate to populism? Can illiberals be democrats at all? What are the policy implications of having illiberal politicians, especially of the radical right, in power in the EU? This interview explores these questions with Professor Cas Mudde. It covers various issues at the intersection of academic and policy research on populism, illiberalism, democracy, and the radical right. It discusses whether the growing body of literature on illiberalism addresses something that is fundamentally new on theglobal political agenda, how this literature relates to academic research on populism, and if illiberalism anddemocracy is reconcilable against the backdrop of a global trend of autocratization, which many scholars of democracy have noted and which is often attributed to illiberal and populist leaders. Furthermore, the conversation sets out to understand how the recent election outcomes in Slovakia and Poland fit into the aforementioned trend and also predict what is in store for European democracies in the near future as illiberal actors of the radical right are readying themselves for the next European parliamentary elections in June 2024.
Cas Mudde is a professor of international affairs and a distinguished research professor at the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Georgia. His academic research agenda centers around the question how liberal democracies can defend themselves against political challenges without undermining their core values. He has published widely on uncivil society, democratization, Euroskepticism, extremism, and the practices of political parties, especially those of far right and populist inclinations.
This interview was conducted as a collaboration between The Review of Democracy and the research consortium "AUTHLIB - Neo-authoritarianisms in Europe and theliberal democratic response" by Zsuzsanna Vegh, visiting fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the UnitedStates, in cooperation with Bálint Mikola, Post-doctoral Research Fellow at the CEU Democracy Institute.
In this conversation with RevDem editor Robert Nemeth, Dean Starkman and Neil Weinberg (International Consortium of Investigative Journalists) talk about Cyprus Confidential, the investigation exposing how Cyprus-based financial services firms have enabled the Russian elite— including Vladimir Putin’s inner circle — to shelter their wealth and shield billions of dollars in assets from the threat of impending sanctions.They explain how this system worked and what enabled it, but also share insights into how journalists work on cross-border collaborative projects on such scale.
Dean Starkman is a senior editor for ICIJ, a Fellow of theCEU Democracy Institute, and a visiting lecturer at the School of Public Policy at the Central European University. He is the author of The Watchdog That Didn’t Bark: The Financial Crisis and the Disappearance of InvestigativeJournalism, an acclaimed analysis of business-press failures prior to the 2008 financial crisis and theoretical framework for journalism’s past, present, and future. An investigative reporter for more than two decades, he covered white-collar crime and national real estate for The Wall Street Journal and helped lead the Providence Journal’s investigative team to a Pulitzer Prize in 1994.
Neil Weinberg is a senior reporter for ICIJ. He has morethan three decades' experience in journalism, including most recently as a business and finance reporter at Bloomberg. He served as editor-in-chief of trade publication American Banker from 2011 to 2014, and prior to that was a journalist with the Forbes Media Group for almost 20 years, first as a reporter before becoming a bureau chief and, ultimately, executive editor.
In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, John M. Owen IV – author of the new bookThe Ecology of Nations. American Democracy in a FragileWorld Order – explains what he means by co-evolution and the regime-power dilemma; shows how authoritarian rivals, such as China and Russia, have attempted to engineer their ecosystems; discusses the three historical ages of liberalism and what might replace the currentlydominant form of open liberalism; and reflects on what the emergence of two rather separate but partly overlappinginternational ecosystems might imply for the future.
John M. Owen IV is Amb. Henry J. and Mrs. Marion R. Taylor Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia and a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture and the Miller Center for Public Affairs.
The Ecology of Nations. American Democracy in aFragile World Orderhas been published by Yale University Press.
Among the challengers to liberal democracy in Europe, we can count populists, autocrats, and the increasingly often mentioned illiberals. But who are they and what is illiberalism? How does it relate to populism? Can illiberals be democrats at all? What are the policy implications of having illiberal politicians, especially of the radical right, in power in the EU? This interview explores these questions with Professor Cas Mudde. It covers various issuesat the intersection of academic and policy research on populism, illiberalism, democracy, and the radical right. It discusses whether the growing body of literature on illiberalism addresses something that is fundamentally new on the global political agenda, how this literature relates to academic research on populism, and if illiberalism anddemocracy are reconcilable against the backdrop of a global trend of autocratization, which many scholars of democracy have noted, and which is often attributed to illiberal and populist leaders. Furthermore, the conversation sets out to understand how the recent election outcomes in Slovakia and Poland fit into theaforementioned trend and also predict what is in store for European democracies in the near future as illiberal actors of the radical right are readying themselves for the next European parliamentary elections in June 2024.
Cas Mudde is a professor of international affairs and a distinguished research professor at the School ofPublic and International Affairs at the University of Georgia. His academic research agenda centres around the question how liberal democracies can defend themselves against political challenges without undermining their core values. He has published widely on uncivil society, democratization, Euroskepticism,extremism, and the practices of political parties, especially those of far-right and populist inclinations.
Leila Farsakh on Settler Colonial Violence and the Palestinian Path to Emancipation.
In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó,Leila Farsakh explains what has been truly novel and devastating about the conflict in Palestine and Israel this fall; discusses how the Israeli occupation has evolved in recent decades and what major consequences thathas had; clarifies why she pleads for prioritizing citizenship rights for Palestinians over the partition paradigm of the last century; reflects on how Palestinianvoices and the Palestinian struggle have acquired greater resonance in the United States; and sketches how a resolution based on equality might be achieved.
Leila Farsakh is a Professor of Political Science at theUniversity of Massachusetts Boston. She is a widely recognized expert on Middle East politics, on comparative politics, and on the politics of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Her recent books include Rethinking Statehood inPalestine: Self-Determination and Decolonization Beyond Partition (as editor) and The Arab and Jewish Questions: Geographies of Engagement in Palestine and Beyond (as co-editor with Bashir Bashir).
Despite the Polish opposition election victory in the 15 October elections on 27 November President Duda swore in the Law and Justice Party ahead of a confidence vote that the incumbents seem set inevitably to lose. In this latest Rule of Law podcast, Oliver Garner and DanielHegedüs discuss the implications of the election for Central and Eastern Europe. Daniel is a German Marshall Fund fellow with expertise in populism and democratic backsliding and the foreign affairs of the Visegradcountries.
In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Miroslav Wlachovský – Minister of Foreign and European Affairs of Slovakia in the recent caretaker cabinet headed by Ľudovít Ódor – discusses Slovakia’s role in the EU and his priorities while in office; analyses the recent Slovak elections and the potential consequences its outcome will have in terms of the country’s foreign policy; and reflects on the relationship between Slovakia and Hungary as well as the future of the Visegrad Four.
In this conversation with RevDem editor Kasia Krzyżanowska, Massimo Fichera talks about the need to include the future when designing EU constitutional architecture, criticises the economic components’ dominance over the European integration process, and explains his idea of communal constitutionalism as a remedy to presentism of constitutional theories.
In this conversation with RevDem assistant editor Lorena Drakula, Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser sheds light on the historical context, ideological characteristics, and the consequential impact of the recent far-right success in Latin America, encompassing prominent figures from José Antonio Kast and Jair Bolsonaro to Nayib Bukele and Javier Milei.
Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser is aprofessor at the Institute of Political Science at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, an associate researcher at the Centre for Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies, and the Director of the Laboratory for the Study of the Far Right.
In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Peter Beinart discusses forms of ethical and unethical Palestinian resistance and the complex relationship between condemning and contextualizing mass crimes; explains why he thinks ongoing Israeli military efforts are not only morally wrong but also likely to prove counterproductive; points to ways that Israeli Jews and Palestinians may be brought together now to recognize their intertwined tragedies – and reflects on how he balances his Jewish familial obligations and the universalistic ethical message about the dignity of all people in the current moment of despair and rage.Peter Beinart is professor of journalism and political science at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York and editor-at-large at Jewish Currents. He also runs the Substack The Beinart Notebook.
In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Darrin M. McMahon – author of the new book Equality: The History of an Elusive Idea – discusses his approach to the intellectual history of equality on the longue durée and explains why we shouldn’t think of this history as a triumphant march of progress; highlights the tensions between difference and sameness and explores the changing relationship between liberty and equality; and reflects on the globalization of our concern with equality – and our human ambivalence towards this resilient idea.
Darrin M. McMahon is a historian, author, and public speaker who acts as the Mary Brinsmead Wheelock Professor of History at Dartmouth College. He is the author of three previous books respectively titled Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity (2001); Happiness: A History (2006); and Divine Fury: A History of Genius (2013). He is also the editor or co-editor of the volumes Rethinking Modern European Intellectual History (2013); Genealogies of Genius (2017); and History and Human Flourishing (2022).
Equality: The History of an Elusive Idea is published by Basic Books.
In the latest RevDem Rule of Law podcast, Oliver Garner discusses the current state of the Rule of Law, democracy, and corruption in Malta with Jenny Orlando-Salling. Jenny is a Ph.D. researcher at the University of Copenhagen, and she previously worked at the Permanent Representation of Malta to the EU and as Deputy Head of Mission and Consul to the Embassy of Malta in Egypt and Sudan.
Why the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty was a significant moment for the EU? Who are the right-wing populists in the EU and how has their modus operandi changed throughout the decades? Why did the national leaders engage in the EU politics? In this conversation with RevDem editor Kasia Krzyżanowska, Dermot Hodson talks about his most recent book Circle of Stars. A History of the EU and the People Who Made It published by Yale University Press.
In this RevDem podcast episode for the Democracy and Culture section, RevDem assistant editor Karen Culver speaks with Clement Akpang about his research into European museums and how their displays can mitigate or exacerbate perceptions of social inequalities in post-colonial settings.
In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Maximilian Hess – author of the new book Economic War: Ukraine and the Global Conflict between Russia and the West – shows how an economic war between Russia and the West has broken out in the 2010s; discusses why Russia’s large-scale invasion and brutal attempt to wreck Ukraine in 2022 has caused such disruption on the global scale; reflects on key features of the relationship between Russia and China today; and considers the future place of Russia in the international economic order.Maximilian Hess is the founder of the political risk consultancy Enmetena Advisory, a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and associate fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies and at the Oxus Society for Central Asian Affairs. His research focuses on the relationship between trade, debt, international relations, and foreign policy as well as the overlap between political and economic networks.Economic War: Ukraine and the Global Conflict between Russia and the West has been published by Hurst Publishers.
In conversation with Flora Hevesi Ruzha Smilova explores Bulgaria's complex and ongoing political crisis, which has left a profound mark on the country's political landscape.
The stalemate began in 2021, stemming from widespread public dissatisfaction with the government of Prime Minister Boyko Borisov and his center-right Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria (GERB) party. The ensuing period of instability was marked by difficulties in forming and maintaining a stable majority coalition government: Bulgaria faced five elections in two years, most recently in April 2023. The crisis has been characterized by an increasingly fragmented political landscape and a polarized society, and by constantly shifting power dynamics between GERB as the status quo and a new anti-corruption wave represented by the centrist parties of We Continue the Change - Democratic Bulgaria.
This period provides a unique case study in democratic resilience, political uncertainty and the challenges of coalition building in parliamentary systems. The recent elections were won by GERB, which managed to reach a compromise with We Continue the Change-Democratic Bulgaria to form a new coalition government with a rotating prime minister. Nevertheless, the situation remains highly unstable, and a major new event is looming on the horizon: the upcoming local elections in October, which will be another crucial test for Bulgaria's political parties.
Ruzha Smilova teaches political theory at Sofia University and is a program director at the Center for Liberal Strategies, an independent Bulgarian think tank. Her academic research is focused on the authority of democracy, normative and positive theories of democracy, democratic erosion, and illiberalism.
The monograph The Abuse of Constitutional Identity in the European Union (OUP, 2023) by Julian Scholtes (Lecturer in Public Law, University of Glasgow) was published in September. In this latest RevDem Rule of law podcast, Oliver discuss constitutional identity and its implications for the Rule of Law and democracy in Europe today.
In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Yascha Mounk – author of the new book The Identity Trap. A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time – discusses how the identity synthesis has been created and gone mainstream; why he considers this synthesis dangerous and counterproductive; what he sees as key advantages of a liberal, more universalistic approach; and whether the ‘battle of ideas’ between the identity synthesis and liberalism is shaping up to be the defining contest of our time. Yascha Mounk is a Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at Johns Hopkins University and a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is a Contributing Editor at The Atlantic and Herausgeber (publisher) of the German weekly Die Zeit. He is also the Founder of Persuasion and host of the podcast The Good Fight. Yascha Mounk is the author of five books.
The Identity Trap. A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time has been published by Penguin Press.
In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Melvin Rogers – author of the new book The Darkened Light of Faith. Race, Democracy, and Freedom in African American Political Thought – introduces the thinkers he has studied and explains why he chose to engage with their ideas; discusses the normative vision of African American thinkers and what makes that vision distinctive; clarifies his own approach and analytical vocabulary; reflects on his inspirations and the connections between his recent books; and suggests critical responsiveness as an essential element of democracy.
Melvin Rogers is Professor of Political Science and Associate Director of the Center for Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at
Brown University.
The Darkened Light of Faith. Race, Democracy, and Freedom in African American Political Thought is published by Princeton University Press.
In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Stefano Bottoni – author of the new Hungarian-language book A hatalom megszállottja. Orbán Viktor Magyarországa (Obsessed with Power. Viktor Orbán’s Hungary) – discusses how the current political system has been built up in Hungary and which theories might help us analyse this process; reflects on the Orbán regime’s sources of legitimacy and internal contradictions; and explores the changing relationship of the country to the European Union and to Putin’s Russia.
In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Eva von Redecker – author of the new German-language book Bleibefreiheit (The Freedom to Stay) – shows what it means to think of freedom in terms of time rather than space; explains what implications it has that we are actually “born unfree but not alone”; reflects on the personal experiences and intellectual influences that inspired her; and sketches what the realization of positive ecological freedom might look like.
What is the link between the European counter-revolutionaries of the 17th and 18th centuries and today’s self-declared illiberals? Who were modern conservatives and what kind of ideas did they preach? How the idea of Christian Europe was understood at that time?
In this conversation with RevDem editor, Kasia Krzyżanowska, Matthijs Lok answers these questions and more and discusses his newest book Europe Against Revolution: Conservatism, Enlightenment, and the Making of the Past (OUP 2023).
In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Samuel Moyn – author of the new book Liberalism Against Itself. Cold War Intellectuals and the Making of Our Times – discusseswhat motivated him to explore the Cold War liberal betrayal of previous liberal traditions; what their redefinition of the liberal canon and silences about crucial developments in their own lifetime may reveal about Cold War liberals; why the liberal establishment has failed to reexamine Cold War liberalism since1989–91; and what would be minimally needed to make contemporary liberalism “credible enough for salvation.”
In this conversation with assistant editor Lorena Drakula, Bodo Weber, a Senior Fellow at the Democratization Policy Council in Berlin, discusses the current situation, as well as the complex dynamics of the Kosovo-Serbia dialogue, unpacking its democratic implications, challenges, and opportunities.
In this latest RevDem Rule of Law podcast, assistant editor Teodora Miljojkovic discusses the different models of judicial independence in Spain and beyond with Dr. Pablo Castillo Ortiz.
In this conversation with RevDem contributor Una Blagojević, Paul Stubbs, Chiara Bonfiglioli, and Agustín Cosovschi discuss the different meanings of the Non-Aligned Movement and the need to rethink the “West–East–Non-Aligned” trajectories; approach Yugoslav foreign policy critically and explain why they attach such importance to imaginaries; show the importance of developing a “perspective from below” and analyze what a gendered perspective on the movement can yield; and reflect on possibilities of future research.
In this episode, assistant editor Rohit Sarma discusses the “basic structure” doctrine of the Indian Constitution on the occasion of its 50th anniversary with Moiz Tundawala and Anuj Bhuwania, Professors of Constitutional Law at the Jindal Global Law School in India.
In this conversation co-hosted by Marta Haiduchok (Visible Ukraine) and Ferenc Laczó (the Review of Democracy), Serhii Plokhy – author of the new book The Russo-Ukrainian War – discusses why Ukraine was so crucial to the Soviet collapse and how Ukraine and Russia diverged subsequently; explains what made Ukraine a focal point of competition in the post-Cold War decades and which factors enabled the current devastating war; dissects the origins of Russian imperialism and Russia’s current war aims; reflects on the state of Ukrainian Studies and suggests new questions concerning Ukrainian nationalism and Russian imperialism; elaborates on the stages of the unfolding war and the reasons behind Ukraine’s ability to fight back; and ponders what major geopolitical shifts the Russo-Ukrainian war might signal or reinforce.
In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Andrew Port – author of the new book Never Again. Germans and Genocide after the Holocaust – describes and compares the German responses to mass atrocities in Cambodia, Bosnia, and Rwanda; explains which were the consensual and the most contested issues in German debates; discusses the “softer,” societal responses connected to German memory work and how these mass atrocities across the globe may have impacted the interpretations of Germany’s own past; and reflects on what might be most striking about the rather conflicted German response to Russia’s ongoing war of aggression against Ukraine.
Andrew Port is a professor of history at Wayne State University. He is the former editor-in-chief of the journal Central European History and the recipient of the DAAD Prize for Distinguished Scholarship in German and European Studies.
Never Again. Germans and Genocide after the Holocaust has been published by Harvard University Press.
Despite, or perhaps due to, the war in Ukraine there have been positive developments in combating corruption and other issues in anticipation of EU membership. In this RevDem Rule of Law podcast Teodora Miljojkovic discusses these issues around transition with Professor Maria Popova.
In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Ben Judah – author of the new book This is Europe. How We Live Now – discusses what motivated him to tell stories on a continental scale, which authors and books have inspired him the most, and what has been his own approach to “telling extraordinary stories of ordinary individuals.” He also reflects on key themes that have emerged from his extensive reportage and on what he sees as the most consequential new aspects of how Europeans live now.
In recent weeks proposals by the Meijers Committee to suspend Hungary’s Presidency of the Council of the EU in 2024 have received support in a resolution of the European Parliament. In this RevDem Rule of Law podcast, Oliver Garner discusses these proposals in the wider context of the Rule of Law crisis with John Morijn and Alberto Alemanno.
In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Ari Joskowicz – author of the new book Rain of Ash: Roma, Jews, and the Holocaust – discusses the ways Jewish and Romani histories have been entangled and what motivated him to write a relational history of the two groups; illuminates why he considers it essential to explore the conditions of knowledge production and how to try to avoid reproducing injustices; shows what it has implied in concrete setting that the stories of persecution of one group of people have been nested within those of another; and reflects on what has truly changed in memory culture and what new dialogues could be pursued in the future.
In this conversation with RevDem editor Kasia Krzyżanowska, Orlando Scarcello discusses his newest book Radical Constitutional Pluralism in Europe (Routledge 2022). He elaborates on the descriptive nature of the theory of constitutional pluralism, stresses the inevitability of constitutional conflicts in the EU, and ponders on the political side of these conflicts.
In conversation with RevDem assistant editor Lucie Hunter, Dr. Aliaksei Kazharski discusses his newest book Central Europe Thirty Years after the Fall of Communism: A Return to the Margin? (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022, 2022).
In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Danielle Allen – author of the new book Justice by Means of Democracy – discussesher proposal of a power-sharing liberalism and explains why she calls herself a “eudaemonist democratic pragmatist”; shows why it is essential to foster a connected society and measure that society by the principle of “difference without domination”; reflects on what a paradigm change in political economy could look like and which model of citizenship would be most suitable for our times.
The war in Ukraine continues into its second year. In recent weeks President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has undertaken a European tour to drum up support ahead of a counter-offensive against Russia. In the background Ukraine continues as a candidate state subject to the Copenhagen criteria process.
In this podcast, Oliver Garner speaks to Professor Roman Petrov on this subject of “accession through war”. Professor Petrov is the Jean Monney Chair in EU Law and Head of the Centre of Excellence in EU Studies at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. He is currently a British Academy Research Fellow at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law.
In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Martin Schulze Wessel – author of the new book Der Fluch des Imperiums. Die Ukraine, Polen und der Irrweg in der Russischen Geschichte (Imperial Curse. Ukraine, Poland, and the False Paths in Russian History) – traces the ideas that have shaped Russianimperialism and reflects on their devastating contemporary force; explores key moments in the parallel and entangled histories of Poland and Ukraine and how those histories have been shaped by Russian imperialism across the centuries; dissects what he calls Germany’s “imperialism of a second order” and emphasizes the urgent need to revise Russia-centric interpretations of East European history.
In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Thomas Biebricher – author of the new book Mitte/Rechts: Die international Krise des Konservatismus (Center/Right: The International Crisis of Conservatism) – discusses conservatism’s various types and how each relates to the political center and to authoritarianism; illuminates the contemporary crisis of the center right in three major European countries; explains what has driven the culturalization of politics and the redrawing of enemy images, and why the authoritarian right has been a prime beneficiary of those trends; and reflects on how his approach and special emphases relate and add to other contributions to the ongoing debate on the present state and future prospects of liberal democracy.
In conversation with RevDem editor Kasia Krzyżanowska, Dr. Stephanie DeGooyer discusses her recent publication Before Borders: A Legal and Literary History of Naturalization (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022).
Formal Rule of Law backsliding in Hungary and Poland has been well-publicized. Yet this is just the tip of the iceberg of a system of informal power connections that are undermining the Rule of Law and democracy. In this RevDem Rule of Law podcast Oliver Garner discusses this informal power with Edit Zgut-Przybylska.
In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, George Steinmetz – author of the major new monograph The Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought. French Sociology and the Overseas Empire – sketches the manifold entanglements of French sociology with the French Empire and colonialism; discusses the key ideas and innovations that have emerged in this context; dissects how indigenous scholars fared within the vast network of French institutions over time; illuminates his own approach to intellectual history he calls a historical socio-analysis of the social sciences; and reflect on how contemporary agendas of decolonization could be made more convincing and fruitful, not least by drawing on what French sociologists of colonialism have “partially and tentatively foreseen.”
George Steinmetz is a historical sociologist of states and empires with a focus on modern Germany, France, and Britain and their colonies, and a social theorist especially interested in the history and philosophy of the social sciences. He acts as the Charles Tilly Professor of Sociology at the University of Michigan.
The Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought. French Sociology and the Overseas Empire has been published by Princeton University Press.
In the latest RevDem Rule of Law podcast Oliver Garner discusses the work of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee. András Kádár is an attorney at law and co-chair of the Committee. Amongst other engagements and positions he is the Hungarian member of the European Network of Legal Experts in the Non-Discrimination field. Márta Pardavi is the other co-chair of the Committee and she also co-leads the Recharging Advocacy for Rights in Europe (RARE) program. Previously, she has been a policy leader fellowat the EUI School of Transnational Governance in Florence.
In the last months the Israeli public has demonstrated regarding a series of proposed judicial reforms. The protests led to the suspension of the government’s plans for the Passover break of the Israeli Parliament. The Knesset will reconvene this week and the next chapter of this saga will commence.
In this podcast, Assistant Editor of the Rule of Law section Teodora Miljojkovic discusses the reforms with Professor Adam Shinar, Associate Professor at Harry Radzyner Law School, Reichman University. Professor Shinar is a member of the Board of Directors of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, and he is an academic advisory board member of the Israel Supreme Court Project at Cardozo Law School, Yeshiva University.
In this conversation with assistant editor Lorena Drakula, Vjosa Musliu discusses her book Europeanization and State Building as Everyday Practices. Performing Europe in the Western Balkans (Routledge, 2021). The conversation critically examines mechanisms of Europeanization, discourses surrounding international interventions, and the processes of EU enlargement to the Western Balkans.
In this interview with RevDem assistant editor Giancarlo Grignaschi, Clara Mattei – Assistant Professor in the Economics Department of The New School for Social Research – talks about her new book The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism (Universityof Chicago Press, 2022). The manuscript explores the historical origins of austerity and its intellectual underpinnings in interwar Britain and Italy. Duringthis interview, the author presents the main arguments of the book, the comparison between the two countries, the role of politics and the decline inelectoral participation, the relationship between austerity and populism, and the recent problem of rising inflation.
In this conversation with Ferenc Laczó and Vera Scepanovic, Quinn Slobodian – author of the new book Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy – discusses the unusual legal spaces and peculiar jurisdictions that have multiplied in recent decades and the libertarian ideas that propelled their rise; dissects the relationship of such zones to existing states and their sovereignty; shows how legal unevenness of contemporary globalization relates to earlier forms of imperial and colonial rule; and reflects on the more normative elements of his critique and on the future of the zones in an age of ‘de-globalization.’
Quinn Slobodian is a history professor at Wellesley College.
Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy has been published by Penguin.
In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Daniel Chandler – author of the new book Free and Equal: What Would a Fair Society Look Like? – discusses key principles that a better and fairer society could be based on; shows what makes John Rawls’ ideas so exceptionally relevant today and how they could help improve the democratic process; explains how placing questions of power, control, dignity, and self-respect at the center of liberal economic thinking would foster new economic arrangements; and discusses where egalitarian liberalism has already been practiced and with what consequences.
Daniel Chandler is an economist and philosopher based at the London School ofEconomics.
Free and Equal: What Would a Fair Society Look Like? has just been published by Allen Lane.
In this conversation with RevDem editor Kasia Krzyzanowska, Aleksandra Lewicki discusses her recently published article “East-west inequalities and the ambiguous racialization of ‘Eastern Europeans’”. Lewicki elaborates on the racialized imaginary of the Western European discourses on migration, talks about how the stereotype of hard-working Eastern Europeans negatively impacts their labor conditions, and ponders on the influence of neoliberal policies on the precarization of labor.
In this conversation with Kasia Krzyżanowska, Zoltán Gábor Szűcs discusses his newest book Political ethics in illiberal regimes. A realist interpretation. He explains the internal logic of an illiberal regime, the importance of studying its ethics, discusses the role of the policy experts, civil servants and judges in illiberal regimes, and elaborates on the problem of playing hardball by illiberal politicians.
In collaboration with Lucie Hunter.
“What we ended up with in recent decades are fragmented structures: educators who are not listening to academic knowledge production because their time is just spent on reproducing knowledge; researchers who don't feed back their knowledge into the educational sphere because they are bought out or are buying themselves out from education; civil society which is not listening to academic knowledge production because it generates its own professionalization, the dynamic of which has nothing to do with academic reflection; and academics who are not paying attention to the usability of their ideas in real life.” This is how Balázs Trencsényi, Professor at the CEU History Department and Lead Researcher at the CEU Democracy Institute, describes the larger challenge that the projects he is currently involved in aim to address.
Delving into the research conducted at the Democracy in Historygroup of the CEU Democracy Institute and ongoing initiatives such as theInvisible University for Ukraine and the Academics Facing Autocracy Program with Lucija Balikić, Trencsényi provides historically informed insights into the modalities of relinking these structures and offers inspiring reflections on their potential for strengthening democratic societies across the globe.
In this episode of the party cooperation series, Zsolt Enyedi talks with Murat Somer, professor at Koç University working on polarization, religion, ethnic conflicts, democracy, and democratic erosion. He is an advisor to various civil society organizations and opposition political parties.
Turkey is a country with a long experience of cooperation among parties both in the government and outside of it. At the same time, Turkish politics is deeply polarized. The party system is dominated by AKP, the Justice and Development Party, led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the country’s president. AKP is supported by the so-called People’s Alliance. The opposition party with most governmental experience is CHP, the Republican People’s Party. CHP leads the Nation Alliance, which is also called the “Table of Six”, having currently five other members. The Pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party, HDP, is at the head of a third, smaller alliance. The parliamentary and presidential elections are scheduled to take place on 14th of May, six weeks from now.
In this conversation with RevDem assistant editor Lorena Drakula, Michael Freeden – leading political theorist and author of the new book Concealed Silences and Inaudible Voices in Political Thinking – discusses the various forms of political silences; the problems of superimposing and inventing voices; the effects of the unnoticeable and the unknowable in political thinking, with the aim of understanding the complex and often hidden aspects of silence that shape our political beliefs and actions.
In this conversation with Kasia Krzyżanowska, Johannes Voelz discusses his theory of the aesthetics of populism, explains how Pierre Bourdieu and Norbert Elias can help us understand contemporary populism, elaborates on the concept of a (Trump) rally, talks about the culture of a dichotomized world, and shares his insights on the role of culture in helping to ease the deep political conflicts.
In this conversation with Kasia Krzyżanowska, Martin Loughlin discusses his newest book Against Constitutionalism (Harvard University Press 2022).
In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Aakar Patel – author of The Anarchist Cookbook. A Toolkit to Protest and Peaceful Resistance – discusses why he considers dissent essential to improving society; what lessons we can draw from successful recent examples of protest; which options activists have to amplify and maximize their efforts; and how egregious laws on the book, practices of denying rights, and the extreme disparities of Indian society have shaped activists’ possibilities and agenda.
In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Tara Zahra – author of the new monograph Against the World: Anti-Globalism and Mass Politics Between the World Wars – discusses the common features of anti-globalist agendas between the 1910s and the 1930s; explains what the main phases of anti-globalism looked like and how its various forms related to globalization; shows why centering women – as key actors as well as objects – and focusing on Central Europe amount to fruitful approaches; reflects on the long-term consequences of interwar anti-globalism – and how our present predicament may help us reconsider this history.
In cooperation with Lucie Hunter.
In this latest RevDem Rule of Law podcast, Oliver Garner speaks to Jakub Jaraczewski about the European Commission’s latest actions to defend the EU’s values against backsliding Member States. Jakub is a Research Coordinator at Democracy Reporting International, a Berlin based NGO, and one of the coordinators of the “re:constitution” programme.
In the conversation with Vilius Kubekas, Jerry Z. Muller discusses the life of German Jewish intellectual Jacob Taubes. In his newest book Professor of Apocalypse: The Many Lives of Jacob Taubes (Princeton University Press, 2022), Muller develops an in-depth interpretation of Taubes, the person and the intellectual, uncovering the extensive intellectual networks Taubes contributed to, and clarifying his role as a facilitator of ideas across different national and intellectual milieus. The book offers a close examination of European intellectual life during the 20th century with a particular focus on German and Jewish intellectuals.
RevDem assistant editor Giancarlo Grignaschi in conversation with Dora Piroska, assistant professor at CEU in Vienna at the department of International Relations, about her chapter on financial nationalism in the Elgar Handbook of Economic Nationalism, edited by Andreas Pickel.
In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Shadi Hamid – author of the new bookThe Problem of Democracy: America, the Middle East, and the Rise and Fall of an Idea – addressesdemocratic dilemmas that cannot be wished away; explains how he distinguishes between liberalism and democracy and why he proposes a democracy-first strategy; assesses the democratic record of Islamist political movements and parties; and discusses how the US could use its leverage in the Middle East to support or even foster democratic change.
In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Dan Stone – author of the new book The Holocaust: An Unfinished History – discusses various ways the history of the Holocaust has been misunderstood; addresses the challenges of narrating the Holocaust and clarifies his own interpretative framework; sketches the European dimension of the genocide and how German and non-German perpetrators interacted to execute it; and reflects on how perspectives on the Holocaust have changed over timeand what studying it meant in the current moment.
Dan Stone is a professor of Modern History at Royal Holloway, University of London, and director of its Holocaust Research Institute. He is a historian of ideas who works primarily on twentieth-century European history.
The Holocaust: An Unfinished History is published in Penguin’s Pelican series.
In this conversation, our guest contributor Alexandra Medzibrodszky talks with Zoltán Boldizsár Simon and Lars Deile, the co-editors of the recently published volume Historical Understanding: Past, Present, and Future (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022). The conversation focuses on the theory of history, reflecting on our changing perceptions of historical time; the relationship between the past, present, and future; the concept of the Anthropocene and its importance for historians; as well as on the legacy of Reinhart Koselleck and the extent to which he remains significant to contemporary debates on the theory of history.
In autumn 2023, Polish parliamentary elections will take place 8 years after the Law and Justice Party came to power and the “Rule of Law crisis” with the EU commenced. In this first RevDem Rule of Law podcast of the year our editor Oliver Garner discusses the “8th season of the Polish telenovela” with Dr. Anna Wójcik. Anna is an assistant professor at the Institute of Law Studies at the Polish Academy of Sciences and she has co-founded two Rule of Law monitoring projects in Poland – the Wiktor Osiatyński Archive and the “Rule of Law in Poland”.
The podcast is based on the conference and the special issue of Politics and Governance, No. 3 in 2022 edited by Matthijs Bogaards (CEU Department of Political Science, CEU Democracy Institute) and Andrea Pető (CEU Department of Gender Studies, CEU Democracy Institute).
The first major exploration of the relationship between illiberalism and gender focuses on a region where gender progress is under threat from de-democratization: post-communist Europe. The authors of the papers in the podcast investigate the gendered working of illiberal institutions as well as the policies, mechanisms, and discourses through which the very notion of gender is constructed as a threat to increasingly populist and nationalist views of the polity, society, family, and individual.
The contributions examine illiberalism’s impact on gendered issues in a broad range of social, economic, and political spheres, including the labor market, culture, academia, the legal system, foreign policy, and security. They do so from a variety of perspectives and a diversity of academic backgrounds, together building the first systematic examination of the relationship between illiberalism and gender in post-communist Europe.
Speakers include: Andrea Pető, Weronika Grzebalska. Zuzanna Madarova, Karolina Zbytniewska, Lubomir Zvada, Judit Takács, Matthijs Bogaards, Jazgul Kochkorova, Barbara Gaweda, Alina Dragolea, Katalin Parti.
In this conversation with RevDem editor Kasia Krzyżanowska, Bruce Robbins discusses his newest book Criticism and Politics. A Polemical Introduction. He tackles the influence the democratic movements had on literary criticism; discusses the nostalgic paradigm of literary studies; ponders on the role of critics in society; and argues against populist approaches to the literature.
In this conversation with RevDem assistant editor Lorena Drakula, Filip Milačić – author of the book Stateness and Democratic Consolidation. Lessons from Former Yugoslavia – discusses the effects unresolved issues of stateness can have on the trajectories of democratic consolidation; how political actors can instrumentalize polarization in society to justify authoritarian measures; and what can be learned for democracy promotion projects today.
In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Beverly Gage – author of the new biography G-Man. J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century – discusses how Hoover built and shaped the FBI and what made him enjoy such an exceptional and long-lasting career; dissects his contradictions, reflecting on the sources of his popularity and why his reputation got so badly damaged; and explains what original sources and innovative scholarship a new biography of him can utilize and what placing him at the center of the American Century can teach us.
Beverly Gage isProfessor of 20th-century U.S. history at Yale University.
G-Man. J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century is published by Viking.
In a special edition of the RevDem podcast, our editors Laszlo Bruszt, Oliver Garner, Kasia Krzyżanowska, Ferenc Laczo, Michał Matlak, and Renata Uitz discuss their favorite RevDem content, best books and articles they have read, most important political events of 2022 and more. At the end of the episode, they are joined by the authors of the most popular piece of 2022 published by RevDem: an op-ed by Elżbieta Krzyżanowska and Pavel Skigin “The discourse of privilege: Western Europe and the Russian War against Ukraine.”
In this conversation with RevDem Editor Robert Nemeth, Hungarian journalist Szabolcs Panyi talks about the Hungarian government’s response to the war in Ukraine, why it is not willing to counter Russian infiltration in Hungary, the reasons behind the anti-US sentiment of Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his inner circle, and anti-Western propaganda in Hungary. He also discusses how being targeted by the Pegasus spyware impacted him.
What is the EUPL? What is the story behind and what are its aims? Is there a European-wide readership? How to promote European literature? These and more questions are answered by Anne Bergman-Tahon in this conversation with editor Kasia Krzyżanowska.
In this conversation with RevDem Political Economy andInequalities section co-head Vera Scepanovic, Nancy Fraser – whose newest book Cannibal Capitalism has just been released – explains why the ongoing crises of democracy, healthcare, climate, and racial injustice are really manifestations of a single broader crisis of capitalism; how the ability of capitalism to survive by redrawing boundaries between the economic and non-economic realms is being challenged; and what an emancipatory coalition building might look like that ambitions more than greater inclusion into the existing system.
Nancy Fraser is a philosopher and political scientist whose work embraces social and political theory, feminist theory, and contemporary French and German thought. She is the Henry A. and Louise Loeb Professor of Philosophy and Politics at The New School in New York City. Her previous books include Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse, and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory (1989) and Fortunes of Feminism: From State-Managed Capitalism to Neoliberal Crisis (2013).
Cannibal Capitalism. How Our System Is Devouring Democracy, Care, and the Planet—and What We Can Do About It is published by Verso.
In this podcast episode, Teodora Miljojkovic, discusses with Nino Tsereteli the roadblocks to Georgia's accession to the European Union. Their discussion covers how the response from Georgian citizen’s differs from the response of the Georgian government; what reforms are needed in order for Georgia to get closer to the compliance with the Copenhagen criteria; how informal powers negatively impact Georgian governance and how they can be overcome; and if Nino Tsereteli believes the will in both Georgia and the EU remain for progress towards EU accession.
In this conversation with RevDem assistant editor Iker Itoiz Ciáurriz, Archie Brown – author of the recently released book The Human Factor. Gorbachev, Reagan, and Thatcher, and the End of the Cold War – explains why he approaches the end of the Cold War through the study of political leaders; explores the different personal formations and the varying relationships between his three main protagonists before and after 1985; elaborates on his views on when and how the Cold War ended; and elucidates why the relationship between Russia and the West has deteriorated in the post-Cold War decades.
In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Susan Neiman dissects what has made the articulation of universalistic Jewish commitments increasingly difficult in the German public sphere; explores why debates concerning global colonialism and the Nazi-colonial connection tend to be so fraught in the country; explains what post-colonial criticisms misunderstand about the intellectual heritage of the Enlightenment; and shows how both ignorance regarding Eastern Europe and social solidarity with the victims have shaped German responses to the ongoing Russian war of aggression against Ukraine.
In this conversation with RevDem editor Kasia Krzyżanowska, Peter Brooks — author of the new book Seduced by Story. The Use and Abuse of Narrative — discusses the "storyfication" of reality; explains why we need stories; ponders the impact fiction has on our lives; and depicts the dangers oversimplified narratives pose to our democratic societies.
In this discussion, RevDem Managing Editor Michał Matlak discusses with András Bozóki about his last book, Rolling Transition and the Role of Intellectuals: Case of Hungary, published this year by Central European University Press, which tells a compelling story of the role of intellectuals in political and social change that took place in Hungary between 1977-1994.
Alina Tryfonidou (Neapolis University Paphos) presented the main points of her work on the obstacles that rainbow families face on the road to equality in the European Union. The presentation was followed by comments from Ivana Isailović (University of Amsterdam) and Dimitry Kochenov (Central European University), who also chaired the debate.
Ivana Isailović is Assistant Professor of EU law at the University of Amsterdam. She is co-leading the project on Gender & Private International Law at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law in Hamburg.
Dimitry Vladimirovich Kochenov leads the Rule of Law Workgroup at CEU Democracy Institute and teaches at the Department of Legal Studies.
Alina Tryfonidou is Professor of European Law at Neapolis University Pafos and Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Reading
In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Luke Savage – author of The Dead Center. Reflections on Liberalism and Democracy After the End of History – discusses key aspects of his critique of contemporary liberalism; reflects on the role of generational experiences in shaping the search for a political alternative; offers a detailed assessment of Joe Biden’s ongoing presidency; and ponders whether democratic socialists have managed to challenge the hegemony of liberal ways of thinking and transform the political conversation.
In this conversation with RevDem assistant editor Lucie Hunter, Oksana Sarkisova – Blinken OSA Research Fellow and the Director of Verzió International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival – discusses the role of filmmaking in today’s society; how festivals are reacting to contemporary global conflicts and challenges; the importance of safekeeping visual archives; and how micro-histories help us understand the wider context.
Oksana Sarkisova is a Research Fellow at Blinken OSA Archive at Central European University and the Director of Verzió International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival in Budapest. Her fields of research are cultural history, memory and representation, film history, amateur photography, and visual studies. Besides university teaching, she also participated as a tutor in multiple workshops including Cinema Without Borders, and served as Jury member at international film festivals around the world.
Verzió International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival, 19th edition, November 8-20, 2022. https://www.verzio.org/en
In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Lucan Way – co-author, with Steven Levitsky, of the new book Revolution and Dictatorship:The Violent Origins of Durable Authoritarianism – introduces what revolutionary autocracies are; explains why they tend to prove much more durable than other kinds of authoritarian regimes; discusses how the revolutionary sequences so crucial for the emergence of such regimes have played out in the various cases across the globe; and reflects on the contemporary relevance of the book’s findings concerning autocratic longevity.
In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Zsuzsanna Szelényi – author of the new book Tainted Democracy. Viktor Orbán and the Subversion of Hungary – analyzes the main characteristics of the Orbán regime and the techniques Hungary’s current rulers have employed to establish their dominance over the country’s economy; reflects on the dilemmas and strategies of the Hungarian opposition; examines the role of gendered practices in Hungarian politics; and discusses the reasons behind the sharp democratic reversal and decline of the early 21st century.
In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Ben Tarnoff – author of the new book Internet for the People. The Fight for Our Digital Future – discusses how the internet was created and how it has been privatized; how its current version fuels inequality and the rise of the political Right; why finding the right metaphors is crucial; and why the ongoing anti-monopoly push is not enough.
In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Lilia Moritz Schwarcz – author of the book Brazilian Authoritarianism – contrasts mythological and critical-realistic versions of Brazilian history; discusses the main facets of authoritarianism in the country; compares the Bolsonaro phenomenon with the Trump one; and elaborates on her vision of democracy and full citizenship.
In this conversation with RevDem editor Kasia Krzyżanowska, Karolina Watroba discusses her most recent book “Mann’s Magic Mountain — World Literature and Closer Reading,” published with Oxford University Press.
In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Timothy Shenk – author of Realigners: Partisan Hacks, Political Visionaries, and the Struggle to Rule American Democracy – discusses what motivated him to explore the making of majorities and key members of the democratic elite who made those majorities; how the strongest and strangest coalition in American history – the New Deal majority – was assembled; what a study of the parallel maturation of the civil rights revolution and the liberal establishment may reveal about the making and unmaking of that coalition; and why it has become so difficult to sustain majorities today.
In this latest RevDem Rule of Law section podcast, Oliver Garner speaks to Paolo Sandro, Lecturer in Law at the University of Leeds. Sandro’s recently published monograph The Making of Constitutional Democracy: From Creation to Application of Law (Hart Publishing, 2022) confronts the topic from a legal theoretical perspective. Their conversation considers the practical application of his work and the theme of (re)making constitutional democracy following recent significant events in Europe.
In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Till van Rahden – author of the new Vielheit. Jüdische Geschichte und die Ambivalenzen des Universalismus (Multitude. Jewish History and the Ambivalences of Universalism) – discusses why the relationship between equality and difference is so crucial from the liberal democratic point of view; what new insights conceptual history can offer that take us beyond the social scientific ideal of analytical precision; how examining the relationship between the particular and the universal helps us reconsider European history; and how de-naturalizing our dominant political concepts can open spaces for timely reflections.
Till van Rahden teaches modern and contemporary history at the Université de Montréal and the previous holder of the Canada Research Chair in German and European Studies. His publications include the books Jews and other Germans: Civil Society, Religious Diversity and Urban Politics in Breslau, 1860-1925 (2008) and Demokratie: Eine gefährdete Lebensform [Democracy. A Fragile Way of Life] (2019) which he discussed with Elias Buchetmann here at the Review of Democracy.
Vielheit. Jüdische Geschichte und die Ambivalenzen des Universalismus is published by Hamburger Edition.
In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Gaia Vince – author of the new book Nomad Century.How to Survive the Climate Upheaval – sketches the transformations climate change and the accompanying rise in global average temperature are likely to bring in the coming decades; reflects on the most promising innovations when it comes to mitigating temperature rise and moving towards a circular economy; discusses ways to plan for lawful and safe mass migration at a time when large parts of the Earth are becoming uninhabitable; and addresses the key political questions of how to set the right priorities at the global level and how to act to enforce them.
Gaia Vince is a British environmental journalist, broadcaster, and award-winning non-fiction author who has contributed to the BBC, The Guardian, Nature, and New Scientist, among others. She is the author of two previous books: Adventures in the Anthropocene: A Journey to the Heart of the Planet We Made (2014), for which she got awarded the prestigious Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books in 2015, and Transcendence: How Humans Evolved Through Fire, Language, Beauty, and Time.
Nomad Century. How to Survive the Climate Upheaval is published by Allen Lane.
In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Joseph Wong – co-author with Dan Slater of the new monograph From Development to Democracy. The Transformations of Modern Asia – discusses when and why regimes have chosen to democratize in modern Asia; how come types rather than levels of development have shaped country’s democratic prospects; why Singapore and China remain significantly less democratic than one might expect; and how studying the patterns of modern Asia can help us rethink democracy promotion today.
In conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Sally Hayden – author of My Fourth Time, We Drowned: Seeking Refuge on the World's Deadliest Migration Route – discusses the various detention centers across Libya and sketches the profiles of the people detained in them; reflects on her ambition of centering the voices of the victims and her dilemmas concerning what to release and what not to release about their cruel treatment; addresses the role and responsibility of the European Union in the emergence and maintenance of these lawless environments, and how media and politicians have related to the results of her detailed investigations; and raises the question of accountability and how the dire situation of the victims could be improved.
In this conversation with RevDem guest contributor Norman Aselmeyer, Andreas Eckert – author of German-language overviews of the history of colonialism and of slavery – presents his approach to the history of colonialism and how the study of this subject has evolved in the early 21st century; reflects on the special challenges of composing a global history of slavery; shares his views on the ongoing German debates regarding colonial crimes; and discusses the current state and special pitfalls of global history writing.
Andreas Eckert, historian of modern Africa at Humboldt University in Berlin, is one of Germany’s leading scholars of African history. Since 2009, he has been the director of the international research centre Work and Human Lifecycle in Global History. Throughout his career, he has held fellowships and guest professorships all over the world. He taught and researched at institutions such as Princeton, Harvard, Stanford, the Swedisch Collegium in Uppsala, SOAS, and others. Andreas Eckert has published numerous books and articles on the history of labour, colonialism, global history, and the historiography of African history. Today, we will speak about two of his latest books on the history of colonialism and slavery: Kolonialismus (S. Fischer, 2006) and Geschichte der Sklaverei: Von der Antike bis ins 21. Jahrhundert History of Slavery. From Ancient Times to the 21st Century.
Norman Aselmeyer, PhD, is a lecturer of modern history at the University of Bremen. His research interests lie at the intersection of African and global history.
In this extended conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Franziska Exeler – author of the new monograph Ghosts of War: Nazi Occupation and Its Aftermath in Soviet Belarus – discusses the extremely violent history of Belarus during the Second World War; analyses the various choices people made under the dire constrains of the Nazi German occupation and the challenges of drawing on Soviet sources to analyze those choices; zooms in on the issue of Soviet retribution and its ambiguities; and reflects on how the partisan experience and narrative has continued to shape the country.
In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, three authors of the new collective monograph Socialism Goes Global. The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the Age of Decolonisation, Péter Apor, James Mark, and Steffi Marung, dissectthe relationship between eastern Europe and the extra-European world in the age of decolonization; explain how key East European traditions of relating to the extra-European world have evolved over time; analyse the extent to which long-standing civilizational and racial hierarchies were overcome, or perhaps reproduced, via East–South connections during the Cold War; show how the study of this alternative form of globalization can help us reconsider the end of European state socialism; and discuss some of the key contemporary consequences and legacies of socialist world-making today.
James Mark is a Professor of History at the University of Exeter
Steffi Marung is the Director of the Global and European Studies Institute of Leipzig University
Péter Apor is a senior research fellow (tudományos főmunkatárs) in contemporary history at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
Socialism Goes Global. The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the Age of Decolonisation, coordinated by James Mark and Paul Betts, is published by Oxford University Press. Its main contributors are – next to Péter Apor, Paul Betts, James Mark, and Steffi Marung – Alena Alamgir, Eric Burton, Bogdan Iacob, and Radina Vučetić.
In this conversation with RevDem section heads Vera Scepanovic and Ferenc Laczó, Fritz Bartel – author of the new The Triumph of Broken Promises. The End of the Cold War and the Rise of Neoliberalism – explains how the notion of breaking promises cancapture developments of the late Cold War period and why democracies proved more successful at doing so; argues that a structural explanation of the rise of neoliberalism is more convincing from a historical point of view; discusses how the U.S. empire came to pay for itself and with what consequences; and reflects on how his arguments about breaking promises in the Global North can help us understand political trends today.
Fritz Bartel is an assistant professor of International Affairs at The Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University.
The Triumph of Broken Promises. The End of the Cold War and the Rise of Neoliberalism is published by Harvard University Press.
In this conversation with RevDem editor Kasia Krzyżanowska, Peter Verovšek — author of “Memory and the future of Europe. Rupture and integration in the wake of total war” — discusses the importance of foundational stories for communities; explains the influence of personal experience on the European integration; shows differences in remembering the past in West and East Europe and ponders on the consequences of Russian aggression on Ukraine for the European memory.
In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Charlotte Wiedemann – author of the just released German-language volume Den Schmerz der Anderen begreifen. Holocaust und Weltgedächtnis (To Grasp the Pain of Others. Holocaust and Global Remembrance) – explores the inequalities of the reigning “economy of empathy”; discusses ways to connect the histories of National Socialism and global colonialism to each other; reflects on problematic aspects of German memory culture today; and suggests paths through which more pluralistic and inclusive memory cultures might be fostered.
Teodora Miljojkovic, RevDem assistant editor, interviews Professor John Shattuck, international legal scholar, diplomat, human rights leader and previous CEU rector. In his early career, Professor Shattuck was a visiting lecturer at the Woodrow Wilson School of Politics at Princeton University and lecturer at the Harvard Law School. In the early post-Cold War years, Professor Shattuck, while serving as the US Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, had a key role in the negotiations of the Dayton Peace Agreement and he was instrumental in the establishment of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Today, Professor Shattuck is a senior fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University and Professor of Practice at the Fletcher School at Tufts University. Teodora and Professor Shattuck discussed the book “Holding Together - the Hijacking of Rights in America and How to Reclaim Them for Everyone” by Professor Shattuck, Sushma Rahman and Matthias Riss from the Carr Centre for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University, which was published by The New Press. This followed the launch event for the book at the CEU in Vienna.
In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Fabio Wolkenstein – author of the new book Die dunkle Seite der Christdemokratie. Geschichte einer autoritaeren Versuchung (The Dark Side of Christian Democracy. The History of an Authoritarian Temptation) – sketches the broad variety of Christian politics across modern Europe; discusses the types of political Catholicism and explains how Christian Democratic attitudes to liberalism and democracy have evolved over time; and reflects on how Christian Democracy may have changed over the past half a century – and whether parties like Law and Justice in Poland or Fidesz in Hungary might be seen as representing new forms of Christian politics.
Zsolt Enyedi discusses party cooperation with Danica Fink-Hafner, professor and Head of the Political Science Research Programme at University of Ljubljana, and expert on party politics, European integration, nation-building, interest-representation and democratization.
Slovenia has one of the most fragmented party systems in Europe. In the past its coalitions often contained more than five parties. In the 1990s and 2000s the Liberal Democrats had a dominant role in the governments, due to their relatively large size, centrist ideological position and pragmatic politics. After their decline no similar party emerged, even though the Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS), one of the oldest Slovenian parties, maintained a leading position in the polls and provided the prime minister across many years. The parliamentary elections took place six weeks ago, and the new government was installed one week ago. The reconfiguration of the government allows us to have a fresh look at the interparty dynamics.
In this conversation conducted by Vilius Kubekas, Anna von der Goltz discusses her recent book The Other ‘68ers: Student Protest and Christian Democracy in West Germany (Oxford University Press, 2021). The conversation touches on how 1968 was experienced by center-right student activists in West Germany; their intellectual influences; how they dealt with the Nazi past; the conservative brand of feminism that they embraced; and the legacies that the combativeness of student protest left on German Christian Democracy.
In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Daniel Treisman – co-author, with Sergei Guriev, of Spin Dictators: The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st Century – discusses how ‘spin dictatorships’ differ from ‘fear dictatorships’; why such a new form of dictatorship has emerged and spread in recent decades; what might explain the at times notable popularity of such regimes and whether they are likely to represent the wave of the future; and why an informed citizenry should be seen as crucial to the defense of liberal democracy.
In this conversation with Bence Bari and Orsolya Sudár, editors Ferenc Laczó and Bálint Varga and contributor Dóra Vargha discuss the new volume Magyarország globális története, 1869-2022 (A Global History of Hungary, 1869-2022). The conversation focuses on some of the innovative questions posed by trying to reconceptualize the history of a Central and Eastern European country in a global frame; how the subjects of the volume’s one hundred chapters have been selected; the relation of this new book to other narratives of Hungarian history; and the more political stakes of releasing such a publication today.
László Bence Bari is a doctoral candidate at the History Department of the Central European University. Ferenc Laczó is an assistant professor with tenure (universitair docent 1) in history at Maastricht University. He is also an editor at the Review of Democracy. Orsolya Sudár is a doctoral candidate at the History Department of the Central European University. Bálint Varga is a research fellow at the Center for Humanities in Budapest. Dóra Vargha is professor of history and medical humanities at the University of Exeter and Humboldt University, and is a visiting scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin.
In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Jacob Mchangama discusses central ideas of his new monograph Free Speech: A Global History from Socrates to Social Media. The conversation reflects on how to write a global history of this subject; contrasts egalitarian and elitist conceptions of free speech; explores facets of the free speech recession experienced in the early 21st century; and explains why the counterintuitive principle of free speech should be seen as essential.
In a conversation with our editor Kasia Krzyżanowska, professor Tommaso Pavone discusses his newly published book The Ghostwriters. Lawyers and the Politics behind the Judicial Construction of Europe[CUP 2022]. He challenges the judicial empowerment thesis leveraging empirical data obtained from the EU national judiciaries; explains the role that the local Euro-lawyers played in the judicial construction of Europe; and traces the evolutions of European lawyering, the role of contemporary legal academics, and the implications of his research for understanding the EU’s rule of law crisis.
In this conversation with guest contributor Nikola Pantić, Davide Rodogno discusses his new book Night on Earth: A History of International Humanitarianism in the Near East, 1918-1930 (Cambridge University Press, 2021). The conversation focuses on the reasons why the Middle East became a popular destination for Western humanitarian agencies in the first decades of the twentieth century, how these agencies operated among the local populations, what role religion played in these missions, and the ways in which the writing of history can give some agency to those whose voices have been omitted in the archives of these humanitarian institutions.
In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Wolfgang Merkel describes key decisions and non-decisions of the new German government led by Olaf Scholz and addresses the question of continuities with the Merkel era; he discusses the main issues and dilemmas that have been raised in the German debates regarding the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine and reflects on the reasons that led him to sign the recent Open Letter to Chancellor Olaf Scholz; and considers the perceptions and attitudes that guide Germany in its complex international environment but also the blind spots and mistakes of the country’s recent Russia policy. Wolfgang Merkel is a Senior Research Fellow at the CEU’s Democracy Institute. Between 2004 and 2020, he acted as Professor of Political Science at the Humboldt University in Berlin and as the Director of the department “Democracy and Democratisation” at the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung. He is a member of several prestigious academic bodies and has held visiting professorships at universities on various continents. He is also a non-party member of the Basic Values Commission of the Executive Committee of the German Social Democratic Party.
In a conversation with RevDem editor Kasia Krzyżanowska, professor Ewa Thompson (University of Rice) elaborates on imperialistic motifs in Russian literature from the end of 18th century up until today.
In this interview for the Rule of Law section, RevDem Editor Oliver Garner converses with Niels Kirst about the state of the Rule of Law in the USA and the EU. They discuss the recently-leaked Supreme Court draft Opinion which, if passed, would overturn the constitutional right to abortion, and whether this constitutes a form of regression; if the principle of non-regression would prevent EU Member States from following suit; what lessons the EU can learn from how the USA went about establishing a federal government; how the U.S. Supreme Court interprets the “constitutional identity” of the USA; whether or not the EU should engage in similar constitutional interaction to that seen in the USA immediately following the leaked draft Opinion; and if a mechanism akin to the “federal guarantee” clause would work for the EU.
The idea of a liberal international order originated from the critique of imperialism, secret diplomacy, and the lack of state accountability. It proposed the institutionalized cooperation of nation-states. Its main elements, ranging from self-determination to minority rights, were developed in a particularly impressive manner in the circles of British and French liberal intellectuals around the First World War who waged a moralizing propaganda campaign against their 'declining' and 'repressive' Austro-Hungarian enemy. Despite the grand ideals of such liberals and a host of supporting statistics and maps, a number of political ideas and practices of the 'old Europe' continued to prevail at the Versailles Peace Conference and beyond.
In this episode, historians of the Habsburg Empire and the First World War analyze the fascinating story of Robert William Seton-Watson's propaganda for the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the creation of a 'New Europe.' They historicize ideas concerning the 'balance of power', European integration, anti-imperialist liberal internationalism, and the making of the post-Habsburg nation-states in Central Europe. The panel argues that while Seton-Watson's campaign was progressive in its ambition to reconcile ethnic diversity and democracy, it was also rooted in a primordial view of nationhood. Lucija Balikić (History Department, CEU & host) discusses these issues with Pieter Judson (EUI, Florence), Mark Cornwall (University of Southampton), Gábor Egry (Institute of Political History, Budapest) and Samuel Foster (University of East Anglia).
RevDem Editor László Bence Bari in conversation with Éva Fodor, Professor at the Gender Studies and Pro-Rector of the Central European University about her latest book “The Gender Regime of Anti-Liberal Hungary”. In this book, she argues that the anti-liberal government of Hungary has established a specific kind of gender regime, the ’carefare’ policy which allows the government to stabilize and expand its rule over society and to support its ideological and political goals.
In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Ian Merkel – author of Terms of Exchange: Brazilian Intellectuals and the French Social Sciences – discusses why Brazil in the 1930s offered such a precious opportunity to innovate in the social sciences; shows the ways in which Brazilians were crucial interlocutors for French social scientists; explores how the terms of exchange between French and Brazilian scholars evolved over time; and reflects on the broader implications of these fascinating encounters for the writing of global intellectual history.
Oliver Garner interviews Renáta Uitz, Co-Director of the CEU Democracy Institute and Co-Editor-in-Chief of RevDem, on the distinct but interconnected roles of the European Parliament and the Court of Justice in combatting the Rule of Law crisis.
In conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Simon Kuper – author of the new book Chums: How a Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over the UK – discusses why Oxford University was so crucial to the formation of the current Tory elite; how this highly influential generational cohort of Tories may be placed into the long continuum of British history and what might make it rather distinct; and which ideas and concerns shaped their attitude and relationship to the European Union on the path to Brexit. The conversation also reflects on how Simon Kuper’s insider-outsider status has helped him paint this insightful group portrait.
In conversation with RevDem editor Kasia Krzyżanowska, Stefan Auer discusses his new book European Disunion. Democracy, Sovereignty, and the Politics of Emergency (Hurst&Company 2022). In a conversation, he points out to the EU hubris, discusses crises that hit the EU recently, puts into a broader context Russian invasion of Ukraine, and shares his scepticism on the future of Europe.
In a conversation with our editor Kasia Krzyżanowska, Kacper Pobłocki discusses his recent book Chamstwo and reflects on how Polish society was historically based on violence; elaborates on the historical sources of the name “Cham”; compares Polish predicament with other European states and discusses current state of the academia.
In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Boyd van Dijk – author of the new monograph Preparing for War: The Making of the Geneva Conventions – discusses what makes the Geneva Conventions such defining documents when it comes to formulating rules for armed conflict; how he has managed to trace the making of these documents and come to challenge their previous interpretations; how key parties to the drafting process may be compared; and how ideas of state sovereignty and of humanity came to shape the outcome in 1949. The conversation touches on urgent questions regarding the key achievements, shortcomings, and omissions of “the most important rules ever formulated for armed conflict” – and how current trends in scholarship may help us address them in innovative ways.
Boyd van Dijk is a McKenzie Fellow at the University of Melbourne. He was also a visiting fellow in Wolfson College and the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law at the University of Cambridge. He taught previously at the London School of Economics, King's College London, Queen Mary, and the University of Amsterdam. He studied Political Science and History in Amsterdam, Istanbul, Florence, and at Columbia University. He has published two monographs, articles, and essays in Humanity, the American Journal of International Law, Law and History Review, Yad Vashem Studies, Past & Present, as well as Dutch magazines and newspapers. Preparing for War: The Making of the Geneva Convention is released by Oxford University Press.
In this discussion with Laetitia Strauch-Bonart, hosted by RevDem Editor Michał Matlak, they discuss Emmanuel Macron’s ideology, the differences between conservatives and populists, her thoughts on Brexit and Frexit, and more.
In conversation with Vera Šćepanović, Helen Thompson explains how concentrating on energy can reshape our understanding of contemporary history, political economy, and transnational finance; discusses how international relations are simultaneously shaped by zero-sum attitudes and tacit cooperation; asks what it means when representative democracies no longer rely on ‘citizen-creditors’; and reflects on how the profound economic shock triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine might play out across the world.
With the EU moving forward with the new Digital Services Act, in today’s episode of the RevDem Rule of Law podcast, our assistant editor Alexander Lazović sits down with Moritz Schramm to talk about the connections between digital constitutionalism, the Rule of Law, the role of court-like settlement bodies, and democratic participation in the digital sphere. Moritz is PhD researcher at the DFG Graduate Program 'Dynamische Integrationsordnung (DynamInt)’ at the Humboldt-University of Berlin and recently published an article on The Digital Constitutionalist platform entitled ‘Where is Olive? Or: Lessons from Democratic Theory for Legitimate Platform Governance’.
In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Matthew Specter discusses key concepts and tropes in the language of realism; the comparisons across the Atlantic that have defined the realist tradition over the generations; the broad appeal of this manner of thinking despite its notable intellectual weaknesses; and the more normative elements of his critique.
In this conversation with RevDem assistant editor Vilius Kubekas, Sarah Shortall discusses the history of the nouvelle théologie movement in France and brings into focus the political dimension of theology. The thinkers associated with this movement were theological innovators and developed a certain form of counter-politics that challenged both secular and neo-scholastic understandings of the relationship between politics and religion. Shortall argues for the broadening of our understanding of the history of modern political thought, asserting that certain forms of political intervention do not take the state as the primary frame of reference; the case of nouvelle théologie shows that theology must be regarded as a distinctive political language.
Sarah Shortall is an intellectual and cultural historian of modern Europe. She teaches at the Department of History at the University of Notre Dame. Her research focuses primarily on modern France, Catholic thought, and the relationship between religion and politics. Her recent book is entitled Soldiers of God in a Secular World: Catholic Theology in Twentieth-Century French Politics (Harvard University Press, 2021).
In this extended conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó published in two parts, Gary Gerstle discusses key questions tackled in his new The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era.
In Part II, Gerstle discusses opposed moral perspectives and their compatibility with the neoliberal political order; why the neoliberal order used the coercive power of the state to incarcerate millions; and the ways in which we can observe the retreat of neoliberal hegemony today.
In the newest episode of the RevDem Rule of Law podcast, assistant editor Gaurav Mukherjee talks to Nick Barber to discuss democratic backsliding in the UK, the role of courts in protecting democratic procedures, and the state of Parliamentary Sovereignty in the face of Brexit and COVID-19. Nick Barber is Professor of Constitutional Law and Theory at the University of Oxford, and a non-practicing barrister and member of Middle Temple. His published work includes The Constitutional State in 2011, Principles of Constitutionalism in 2018, and The United Kingdom Constitution in 2021. He was founding editor of the UK Constitutional Law Blog, and he was a co-author with Jeff King and Tom Hickman of the blog post that sparked the litigation in Miller.
In this conversation with RevDem guest contributor Máté Rigó, Iván Szelényi discusses his career as a sociologist in Hungary, Australia, and the United States through the theme of social inequality. The conversation addresses his works on leisure time and gender, urban housing under socialism as well as on the wealth of postsocialist oligarchs. Szelényi discusses the role of 1945 and 1989 on social and economic transformations and reflects on the reasons why the study of social inequality was such a sensitive subject prior to 1989. At present “economists are moving aggressively” into the study of inequality, Szelényi concludes, even as social inequality remains the key focus of sociologists.
The conversation follows up on Iván Szelényi’s interview with Holly Case conducted in 2017.
On 28 February, in the early days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky officially applied for membership of the EU. On 18 April, it was confirmed that Ukraine had completed the membership questionnaire, with President Zelensky expressing his hopes that Ukraine could become a full candidate state ‘in weeks’.
This interview, conducted by Rule of Law section editor Oliver Garner, considers the feasibility of immediate EU accession for Ukraine with Prof. Dimitry Kochenov, Professor in the CEU Legal Studies Department and Lead Researcher in the Democracy Institute Rule of Law work group. Dimitry has recently argued that immediate accession for Ukraine is feasible under the EU Treaties for Verfassungsblog, and in an article co-authored with Ronald Janse for EU Law Live.
In this extended conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó published in two parts, Gary Gerstle discusses key questions tackled in his new The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era. Part I covers Gerstle’s interpretation of the longue durée history of liberalism; his encompassing approach to the study of political orders; how the neoliberal order became hegemonic in the US; and why the Soviet Union is crucial to the history of the US.
Gary Gerstle is Paul Mellon Professor of American History Emeritus and Paul Mellon Director of Research in American History at Cambridge University and a Fellow of Sidney Sussex College. He is also a fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Historical Society. He has written extensively about immigration, race, and nationality, with a particular focus on how Americans have constituted and reconstituted themselves as a nation and the ways in which immigration and race have disrupted and reinforced that process. He has also studied the history of American political thought, institutions, and conflicts, and maintains a longstanding interest in questions of class and class formation.
Gary Gerstle’s best-known books include the co-edited The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, 1930-1980 (1989), which he has followed up with the co-edited volume Beyond the New Deal Order (2019), Liberty and Coercion: The Paradox of American Government from the Founding to the Present (2015), American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century (2017, updated edition) and the co-edited volume A Cultural History of Democracy in the Modern Age (2021). The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era published in April 2022.
Part II shall be released next week.
Our editor Robert Nemeth talks to Marius Dragomir and Astrid Söderström, authors of a recent study on the state of state media globally, which covers 546 state media outlets in 151 countries in the world, and it found that government control has reached extremely high levels: nearly 80% of these state-administered media companies lack editorial independence.
In this conversation concerning the recently released volume “Crisis and Renewal in the History of European Political Thought,” co-editors Cesare Cuttica, László Kontler, and Clara Maier discuss how the history of political thought can help us reflect on crisis; how the key concept of crisis has triggered new ways of thinking about politics and new modes of conducting politics; how it is a deeply politicized question what gets to be called a crisis and how such a label makes things doable or permissible which under normal circumstances would not be; and that current crisis should give us the opportunity to go back to the basics of our thinking and how, instead of focusing on the crisis of democracy, we might wish to consider again how democracy leads to or engenders crisis.Cesare Cuttica is Lecturer in British History in the Department of Anglo-American Studies at the University of Paris 8.
László Kontler is professor at the Department of History of the Central European University, Pro-Rector for Budapest and KEE, and an affiliate of the Democracy in History research group of the CEU’s Democracy Institute.
Clara Maier is a lecturer in political science at Columbia University.
In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Mark R. Beissinger introduces his unique global dataset and probabilistic structural approach to revolution; analyzes the prevalent form of revolution in our age he calls “urban civic”; dissects how the consequences of revolution have shifted over time; and reflects on how revolution may be changing again today.
Mark R. Beissinger is Henry W. Putnam Professor in the Department of Politics at Princeton. His main fields of interest are social movements, revolutions, nationalism, state-building, and imperialism, with special reference to the Soviet Union and the post-Soviet states. In addition to numerous articles and book chapters, Mark R. Beissinger is the author or editor of six books, which include Nationalist Mobilization and the Collapse of the Soviet State (from 2002) and the volume Historical Legacies of Communism in Russia and Eastern Europe (co-edited with Stephen Kotkin, from 2014). He has received several prestigious awards for his scholarship, and his research has been supported by numerous leading academic institutions. He has also acted as the President of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies and as Director of the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, among others.
“Reverting from illiberal regimes back to a state of the Rule of Law will be a long and difficult process. Probably the more instruments there are the better in order to advance along that path.”
In March 2022, before the Hungarian elections, our editor Oliver Garner sat down with Professor Armin von Bogdandy, director at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law in Heidelberg, Germany, and Honorary Professor for Public Law at the University in Frankfurt am Main. They discussed Professor von Bogdandy’s recent article, published with Luke Dimitrios Spieker, on restoring the rule of law through criminal responsibility. Viktor Orban’s election victory on 3 April means that such proposals are unlikely to be pursued in the near future in Hungary. However, the question of how to revert from illiberalism remains live, and more relevant than ever in the shadow of Russia’s continuing invasion of Ukraine.
In light of the recent solidifying of what could be named as ‘populist international’, we are opening a conversation on one of the first areas and people that were targeted: history and historians. Populist regimes and their supporters feed themselves on historical myths, distortions and subversion of the public debate on historical themes. The responsibility is both on those who participate in the making of populist abuses of history as professional researchers, as well as on those who engage with public history as social commentators and public figures.
Program
Part 1: "Walking on eggshells: historiography in the populist contexts”
(moderated by Lucija Balikić, CEU)
Tjaša Konovšek (Institute for Contemporary History Ljubljana)
Réka Krizmanics (University of Leipzig)
Vita Zalar (Research Center of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts)
Part 2: "Pundits, megaphones and marches: struggles over public history”
(moderated by Vita Zalar, Research Center of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts)
Orsolya Sudár (Central European University)
Florian Bieber (University of Graz)
Lucija Balikić (Central European University)
In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Peter Osnos discusses his new edited volume George Soros: A Life in Full. Osnos introduces the concept of the volume, reflects on Soros’ remarkably complex character, addresses his path-breaking philanthropy and special commitment to education, and dissects his profound and fraught connection to Hungary and the post-Soviet world.
Peter Osnos has had a long and distinguished career as a reporter, editor, and publisher. He worked for The Washington Post and then at Random House until he founded Public Affairs in 1997. He has published a host of major authors and public figures, including four former US Presidents and several of the most celebrated personalities in human rights, business, and media. In 2021, Peter Osnos released An Especially Good View. Watching History Happen, a reported memoir.
George Soros: A Life in Full is out on April 5. It contains chapters by Leon Botstein, Eva Hoffman, Michael Ignatieff, Ivan Krastev, and Darren Walker, among a host of other distinguished authors.
Britain is probably the last country that comes to mind when one thinks of alliances of parties. But, in fact, there have been many examples of co-operation among parties both in the governmental, parliamentary and extra-parliamentary arenas. No academic work has analysed yet these various examples of cooperation in a comprehensive fashion. The first one will be Alan Wager’s book to be published by Oxford University Press. He discusses his work with Zsolt Enyedi, Party Co-Op Series host and a professor of political science at the Central European University.
India, like many countries, faces democratic backsliding. In the newest episode of the RevDem Rule of Law podcast, assistant editorGaurav Mukherjeetalks toTarunabh Khaitan(Head of Research at theBonavero Institute of Human Rights at the University of Oxford, Professor of Public Law and Legal Theory at the Faculty of Law,Fellow at Mansfield College, andHonorary Professorial Fellow at the Melbourne Law School) about his recent work on the phenomenon of democratic backsliding in India, the rise of an unchecked executive, and the role that courts and opposition parties play in protecting democracy.
Thanks to the Latin American experience political science realized the significance of the institutionalization of political parties and party systems. The actual forms and logic of cooperation among parties has received so far less attention, even though party alliances play a crucial role in a number of countries of the region. In this episode, Zsolt Enyedi and Jennifer McCoy examine party cooperation in Nicaragua, Chile, Venezuela and Colombia.
Simone Weil’s figure poses a challenge to each reader of hers. In this conversation, our editor Kasia Krzyżanowska speaks to prof. Robert Zarestky (professor at the University of Houston), about the heroine of his recently published biography: Simone Weil.
In this conversation, Lucija Balikić, a researcher affiliated with the CEU Democracy Institute and a PhD candidate at the History department of the same university, discusses Forging Germans: Youth, Nation and the National Socialist Mobilization of Ethnic Germans in Yugoslavia (1918-1944) (Oxford University Press, 2020) with the author, Caroline Mezger. The conversation touches upon issues related to researching children and youth as historical actors in their own right, complex avenues of negotiating “Germanness” in historical perspective, as well as the dynamics of the National Socialist takeover of youth organizations in the regions of Bačka and Western Banat during the interwar and World War II periods.
In this conversation with our editor, Kasia Krzyżanowska, Dr. Signe Larsen (a Fellow by Examination in Law at Magdalen College, University of Oxford) talks about her recently published book The Constitutional Theory of the Federation and the European Union (OUP 2021). In this interview, Dr. Larsen elaborates on the (largely unacknowledged) nature of the EU as a federation, varieties of constitutionalism within EU Member States, and the impact of colonial legacies on the EU.
Zsolt Enyedi in conversation with Krystof Dolezal, political scientist and strategist about party cooperation in Czechia during the 2021 parliamentary elections. They discussed the rationale behind two opposition blocks, reasons of its success, and the lessons that could be drawn from this instance of party cooperation.
On Monday 21 February, the Review of Democracy and the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law co-hosted an event on the Court of Justice of the EU’s judgment on the budget conditionality regulation. An article co-authored by two of the panelists,’Linking Money to Values - the New Rule of Law Regulation and its Constitutional Challenges’, was cited by the Advocate General in the Opinion for the case. In this podcast, Oliver Garner and one of those co-authors, Professor Antonia Baraggia (Associate Professor in the Department of Italian and Supranational Public Law at the University of Milan), discuss the judgment and conditionality as a constitutional tool in more detail.
This is an interview with Maarten Prak, Professor of Social and Economic History at the Department of History and Art History, Utrecht University, Netherlands, hosted by Karen Culver. They discuss Maarten’s book Citizens without Nations: Urban Citizenship in Europe and the World c. 1000-1789 Maarten discusses how urban citizenship functioned in medieval and early modern Europe. He argues that urban citizenship in the period was much deeper and wider than many people assume as it includes people who participated in all the activities related to being a citizen plus those with formal citizenship status. He also demonstrates how this definition of citizen impacts urban and national governance in the period before 1789.
In this extended conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó regarding her new monograph Race, Rights and Reform, Sarah Dunstan maps the landscape of Black activist thought across the French Empire and the United States from World War One to the Cold War; shows how gender operated in tandem with the dynamics of race and class; underlines how the end of empire connected rights to national belonging; and reflects on how positionality continues to define the canon in ways that need to be critically examined.
In this podcast, RevDem assistant editor Teodora Miljojkovic interview Dr Ana Bobić (Référendaire to Advocate General Tamara Capeta at the Court of Justice of the European Union, and previously post-doctoral researcher at the Hertie School of Governance) on whether primacy and the Rule of Law crisis can be separated. They also discuss the benefits of a theory of constitutional pluralism that adheres to a normative core for judicial dialogue and democratic legitimacy in the EU.
In this conversation with our editor, Katarzyna Krzyżanowska, Dr Molly Krasnodębska discusses her newest book “Politics of Stigmatization. Poland as a Latecomer in the European Union”. The interview touches on the political equality of Member States within the EU, the stigma of a latecomer applied to Poland (and other Eastern European countries), and the discursive hierarchy inside the EU.
Conversation was conducted on 4th of February, before Russia invaded Ukraine.
Andrea Pető in conversation with Marlene Laruelle (Director of the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies,The George Washington University) about illiberalism studies, whether Russia is fascist, the nature of Russia’s illiberalism, as well as its conservative softpower.
The conversation was recorded before the Russian invasion on Ukraine on the 24th of February
In this lecture, Martin Kryguer discusses three conventional ways of approaching the rule of law, each of which seems to me misconceived and misleading. The first starts in the wrong place. The second goes on in the wrong way. The third misconstrues the point and destination of the quest.
In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó regarding contemporary Turkey, Dimitar Bechev discusses how the Justice and Development Party has evolved into a personality cult; how Erdogan pro-active, remilitarized foreign policy has probably reached its limits; how leverage now goes both ways in EU-Turkey relations while Europeanization may also mean a turn to xenophobia; as well as the promising signs of democratic health and political competition.
Ferenc Laczo discusses with Kiran Klaus Patel his latest book "Europäische Integration. Geschichte und Gegenwart" (European Integration: History and the Present Day).
January 2022 marked two years since the novel coronavirus ‘COVID-19’ emerged in Wuhan, China. In this latest podcast for the RevDem Rule of Law section, Oliver Garner interviews Dr Joelle Grogan (Senior Lecturer in Law at Middlesex University, London and co-investigator in the Horizon 2020 RECONNECT project) about the legacy of the pandemic for the Rule of Law, democracy, and other constitutional values around the world.
In 2021, six opposition parties decided to select a prime ministerial candidate through a joint primary, to nominate a single candidate in every electoral district, and to run a common electoral list for the proportional part of the electoral system. One of the most influential Hungarian political scientists, Zsolt Enyedi, discusses with Daniel Rona, political scientist, director of the 21 research center, and former advisor to the Momentum Movement, the key questions related to the cooperation between the opposition parties before the April elections.
In this striking, in-depth conversation, Suzanne Schneider (Brooklyn Institute for Social Research) discusses the modernity of new forms of jihad; shows how the Islamic State’s organizational structure, understanding of the law, and spectacular violence reflect broader contemporary trends; explains why nihilism and apocalypticism can be viewed as responses to liberal triumphalism; and argues that democratic states – much like Santa Claus – have to deliver for belief in them to remain credible.
In this conversation, RevDem editor Michał Matlak speaks with Michael Ignatieff about his recent book On Consolation: Finding Solace in Dark Times(Macmillan, 2021), a series of portraits of writers, artists, and musicians searching for consolation. Ignatieff shows how, throughout history, people in very difficult life situations have looked to arts, philosophy, and religion to regain hope. The book reconstructs the moments when these figures found the courage to face their fate and find hope. One of the arguments in On Consolation is that we can revive these traditions of consolation and they can still help us. In this conversation, Igatieff and Matlak discuss the role of religion in the modern world, whether conservative liberalism is possible today, the cancel culture, the (im)possibility of European integration, and much more.
Our editor Oliver Garner (Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law) interviews Tom Theuns, Assistant Professor of Political Theory and European Politics at the Institute of Political Science at the University of Leiden and principal investigator in the Dutch Research Council project “Protecting Democracy in Europe”. They talk about the possibility and justification of a mass-exodus of democratically minded Member States via Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union and the founding of an EU 2.0 in response to Member States becoming autocratic. Oliver and Tom not only touch upon the political feasibility of such a mass withdrawal, but also its legal problems, democratic legitimacy, and alternative solutions.
In this conversation, hosted by RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Roosevelt Montás discusses his recent book Rescuing Socrates: How the Great Books Changed My Life and Why They Matter for a New Generation*;why liberal education for citizens is vital in today’s world; how he moved on from his youthful crush on deconstruction and postmodernism and discovered the enduring importance of self-reflections by Plato, Saint Augustine, Sigmund Freud and Mahatma Gandhi; the key concepts behind Columbia University’s Core Curriculum; and how the Columbia’s liberal arts program may be adapted to different cultures around the world.
Dirk Moses in conversation with Ferenc Laczo on the Diplomacy of Genocide and the Deeply Sinister Ambition of Permanent Security.
Our editors Laszlo Bruszt, Oliver Garner, Kasia Krzyżanowska, Ferenc Laczo, and Michal Matlak discuss their favorite RevDem content, as well as the year's highlights and the most significant developments of the year.
Dirk Moses in conversation with Ferenc Laczo on the language of transgression and the Genocide Convention in context.
In this episode, Michal Matlak interviews Alberto Alemanno in the aftermath of the publication of the first batch of recommendations coming from the Conference on the Future of Europe Citizens’ Panel. This initiative provides an opportunity for a highly diverse group of randomly selected ‘ordinary’ European citizens to voice their wishes with EU-level decisionmakers on how to change the European Union. They discuss what representativeness – if any – this group of citizens has, how the recommendations are facilitated and drafted, and what impact this might have on the future of Europe.
Marius Turda in conversation with Ferenc Laczo about "A Cultural History of Race", a series of six books tracing history on the long term, from antiquity all the way till contemporary times.
Richard Youngs in conversation with Michał Matlak about citizens’ attitudes towards democracy, transformative power of protests movements, citizens’ assemblies as well as democratic innovations on the European level.
Laszlo Bruszt, our editor-in-chief, in conversation with Michał Matlak about the ideas behind the Review of Democracy, the foundation of the Democracy Institute in Budapest and his academic interests: the relations between core and periphery in the governance of the European Union.
Professor Dimitry Kochenov* in conversation with Michał Matlak explains why he believes citizenship is a “perpetuation of the ideas of aristocracy,” sexism, and racism; what can be done to fix this issue; and what motivated him to write “Citizenship” (MIT Press, 2019).
RevDem Editor Oliver Garner sits down with Barbara Grabowska-Moroz, Research Fellow at the CEU Democracy Institute Rule of Law Workgroup, and member of the Horizon 2020 RECONNECT Project. They discuss the current state of the rule of law crisis in Poland, the arduous relationship between the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and the Polish Constitutional Tribunal, and the effects this has on other EU Member States and constitutional courts.
In conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Emily Greble discusses what foregrounding Muslims’ agency implies for the writing of European history; what were key legacies of the Ottoman Empire and how Muslims became a distinct legal minority; in what ways they related to the major political movements of the twentieth century; and how focusing on their experiences can help us reconceptualize questions of secularism and citizenship.
Bence Bari interviews Tamás Dombos, from the Hungarian LGBTQI organization ‘Háttér Society’ concerning the recently adopted Hungarian anti-LGBT measures, their transnational and historical background with respect to the global dynamics of acceptance, and homophobia between the Western and Eastern hemisphere.
In this interview, RevDem editor Michal Matlak interviewed Professor Julie Smith*, Baroness of Newnham, who is a Liberal Democrat parliamentarian in the British House of Lords. They discuss referendums, the causes and outcomes of Brexit, how the negotiation strategies of both the EU and UK could have been improved, the likelihood of the UK returning to the EU in the future, and how the COVID-19 pandemic has complicated post-Brexit evaluations.
In conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Emily Levine (Stanford University) discusses key ideas in her new bookAllies and Rivals: German-American Exchange and the Rise of the Modern Research University. Allies and Rivals is a transatlantic monograph that draws on extensive historical research and applies sociological theory to study how the academic social contract was repeatedly renegotiated in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The conversation addresses the rise of modern research universities and its alternatives, questions of meritocracy and democracy, academic freedom and hard compromises, the global exchange of ideas and academic innovation in the twenty-first century.
In this wide-ranging conversation occasioned by the release of his The Dream of Europe. Travels in the Twenty-First Century, Geert Mak discusses with Ferenc Laczo why he chose to write a sequel to In Europe.Travels Through the Twentieth Century;how interconnections have led to new tensions; how the European and the democrat in him have quarreled; how he traces undercurrents in society; and how important it is to understand the sources of despair.
In conversation with RevDem editor Robert Nemeth, Dean Starkman, senior editor at the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, talks about the Pandora Papers and how tax avoidance and secrecy endangers democracy.
In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Gábor Tóka discusses the recent opposition primaries and ongoing political developments in Hungary. The conversation explores the mobilizatory successes of the opposition forces with a focus on the most surprising elements of the primaries; the unexpected rise of Péter Márki-Zay and his character as a politician; the opportunities and challenges the united opposition faces and will continue to face going forward; and the ongoing transformation and slide of the Orbán regime. The transcript of the conversation will follow soon.
Michal Matlak interviews Zsolt Enyedi about the development of Church-State relations in Hungary, Viktor Orban’s vision of Christian Democracy, why the Democracy Institute plays an important symbolic role in Budapest, and about his recently published book, “Party System Closure: Party Alliances, Government Alternatives, and Democracy in Europe”
In this wide-ranging conversation, Lea Ypi discusses her new memoir Free: Coming of Age at the End of History and how the people who populate its pages help her connect historical experiences with philosophical thought; how she experienced and dealt with the rupture of 1990 that forced her to reassess her childhood; how that rupture placed her country, Albania, on a seemingly new trajectory with liberal-sounding concepts soon filling the conceptual void that emerged; how the new regime violently collapsed in 1997, just when she was about to graduate from secondary school; and how she relates to the overlapping ideas of freedom in the liberal and socialist traditions.
Our assistant editor, Bence Bari interviews László Kontler, the research affiliate of the CEU Democracy Institute about the DI History Working Group project “History as Democracy”.
As part of a special symposium on the past and present of Christian democracy held on September 24, 2021, just ahead of this year’s German elections, the Review of Democracy has interviewed Kati Marton about her forthcoming book The Chancellor. The Remarkable Odyssey of Angela Merkel (Simon & Schuster, 2021). This new book, which will appear in fifteen languages in the near future, draws on years of research and direct access to key individuals to paint a human portrait of the first female chancellor of the Federal Republic. The conversation conducted by Ferenc Laczó focuses on Kati Marton’s motivation to paint a human portrait of Angela Merkel who has been known to be rather fiercely protective about her privacy; on Merkel’s personality traits and how they have impacted the style and substance of her political leadership; the tensions between Merkel’s commitment to liberal and democratic values and the demands of Realpolitik that have defined her sixteen years in office; die Kanzlerin’s signature achievements, notable failures and her legacy; and how her time in charge of Germany has transformed our image of a competent and effective political leader, not least in gender terms.
Our editor Kasia Krzyżanowska (EUI, CEU) talks with Samantha Rose Hill, professor at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, about her recently published biography of Hannah Arendt.
Our editor Kasia Krzyżanowska interviews Dr Elise Hugueny-Léger, Senior Lecturer in French at the University of St Andrews about the French writer Annie Ernaux.
Our assistant editor Teodora Miljojković (CEU) talks with András Sajó, Professor in the Law Department of Central European University and former judge of the European Court of Human Rights about his new book, the tactics of illiberal regimes, their relationship to the rule of law, and shortfalls in the EU’s reaction.
Aldo Madariaga discusses his latest book “Neoliberal Resilience: Lessons in Democracy and Development from Latin America and Eastern Europe”with our editor, Giancarlo Grignaschi. You can find all our podcasts at: revdem.ceu.edu
Oliver Garner interviews Michael Wilkinson on his latest book "Authoritarian Liberalism and the Transformation of Modern Europe" (Oxford University Press 2021)
Our editor Vilius Kubekas interviews Carlo Invernizzi Accetti, author of the book "What is Christian Democracy. Politics, Religion, Ideology" (Oxford University Press 2020).
Alexander Lazovic (EUI) interviews Martin Krygier (Professor of Law and Social Theory at the University of New South Wales) on how to understand the rule of law crisis from a teleological perspective
Ferenc Laczo interviews Ireneusz P. Karolewski on the book he co-authored with Claus Leggewie “The Visegrád Connection”on the gradual erosion and steep decline of democracy in the four Visegrád states – Czechia, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia.
Our editor Ferenc Laczo interviews Jonathan Hoslag (Free University Brussels) on his book "World Politics Since 1989" (Polity Press).
RevDem editor Ferenc Laczo interviews LaTosha Brown, co-founder of the voting rights group Black Voters Matter whose work is credited with significant voter registration and get out the vote efforts in several elections, including the 2020-21 state elections in Georgia. In this podcast conversation, LaTosha Brown discusses her motivation to co-launch Black Voters Matter and some of the key activities of her organization; strategies they use to reach marginalized communities; the unprecedented political mobilization in 2020 in the shadow of the pandemic as well as her current plans.
Laurent Pech (Middlesex University) in conversation with Oliver Garner (RevDem Editor) about conflicts between the Polish government and the European institutions.
Katarzyna Krzyżanowska talks with Robert Talisse, W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy at the Vanderbilt University in Nashville, on the epistemology of democracy. The conversation largely draws on Talisse’s recently published book “Sustaining Democracy”.
RevDem editor Ferenc Laczo interviewed historian Konrad H. Jarausch, Lurcy Professor of European Civilization at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, about his latest book Embattled Europe: A Progressive Alternative, a rich and finely balanced portrait of contemporary Europe.
Ferenc Laczo in conversation with Samuel Moyn (Yale University) about his book "Humane. How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War".
In conversation with our editor Ferenc Laczo, Mitchell Orenstein, Professor of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, discusses post-communist transitions.
Ferenc Laczo talks with Jennifer Evans (Carleton University) about the new Holocaust memory debate.
Jennifer Evans curated a series of articles in the New Fascism Syllabus (NFS) responding to a paper written by historian Dirk Moses in the Swiss history journal Geschichte der Gegenwart [History of Today]. In “The German Catechism,” Moses (UNC-Chapel Hill) argued that remembering the Holocaust was considered a moral foundation of the Federal Republic and that comparing it to other genocides was heresy. Moses suggested that it was time to abandon this catechism. His article sparked a very spirited discussion. “The Catechism Debate” reached more than 36,000 views and has attracted media attention in Germany, with follow-ups appearing in the country’s most prestigious newspapers.
You can also read the interview on our website: revdem.ceu.edu
Ferenc Laczo discusses with Mira Siegelberg her latest book "Statelessness", the story of a much-contested legal category.
Do populists pose a threat to constitutional democracy? Are populists always the villains in our tales about democracy? Bojan Bugarič answers these questions in a conversation with Kasia Krzyżanowska. He also talks about his recent book on the relationship between constitutionalism and populism, co-authored with Mark Tushnet.
Elias Buchetmann talks to Till van Rahden about his latest book 'Demoracy: A Fragile Way of Life', which focuses on the history of democracy in the Federal Republic of Germany and raises fundamental questions about the nature of democracy around the world.
RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó spoke to Stephen Wertheim, Director of Grand Strategy at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and Visiting Faculty Fellow at the Center for Global Legal Challenges at Yale Law School, about his new book, Tomorrow, the World: The Birth of US Global Diplomacy. The book explores the moment in which the US decided to lead the post-war world and become the global hegemon – a pivotal decision in the origins of our time.
In an interview with our assistant editor Bence Bari, Vera Mérő, Hungarian journalist, media researcher, human rights activist, founder and host of the Facebook page and foundation “Nem tehetsz róla, tehetsz ellene” (“You are not responsible for it, but you can respond to it”) discusses the questions of representation, popularization, internal conflicts and successes, challenges and leeways provided by the political and the social sphere when it comes to human rights activism in Hungary since 2016 - a space much defined by the ambiguous policy and rhetoric of the Orbán governments.
Petr Agha (University of Copenhagen) discusses the clash between populism and antipopulism, and the implications for Europe, in conversation with Oliver Garner.
What is the societal dimension of the rule of law? How can we improve democracy on the European Union level? Is there a place for citizens engagement in design of the Conference on the Future of Europe? Paul Blokker, an associate professor at the University of Bologna, in a conversation with Kasia Krzyżanowska, unpacked all these issues.
In an interview with our assistant editor Bence Bari, Lili Rutai, Hungarian feminist journalist and podcaster, co-founder and co-host of the popular podcast series "Vénusz Projekt," discusses the representation and the popularization of feminism in Hungary - all of which must be done in opposition to popular misconceptions, the hostile rhetoric of the Orbán government and the restrictive measures on press freedom.
Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins and Ferenc Laczo discuss with Martin Conway his latest book "Western Europe’s Democratic Age 1945-1968" (Princeton University Press 2020).
RevDem Editor Ferenc Laczo is discussing the book "Planet on Fire. A Manifesto for the Age of Environmental Breakdown" by Mathew Lawrence and Laurie Laybourn-Langton with its authors.
Chris Bickerton (University of Cambridge) is discussing his latest book “Technopopulism” (co-authored with Carlo Invernizzi Accetti) with Ferenc Laczo (Maastricht University).
Markus Patberg (University of Hamburg) in his recent book argues that we should not see the master of the Treaties in member states but in citizens. In this episode, Patberg, a research fellow in political theory at the University of Hamburg, talks to RevDem editor Kasia Krzyzanowska on how we could envision a different theory of constituent power within the EU, based on the already existing public narratives of citizens' political autonomy.
Professor Gabor Halmai (EUI) discusses with Theodora Miljojkovic the constitutional backsliding in Poland and Hungary, as well as their relationship with the EU.
In this episode Kasia Krzyżanowska talks to Douglas G. Morris, a legal historian and practicing criminal defense attorney with Federal Defenders of New York, about his newest book on Ernst Fraenkel. Fraenkel's most famous work is "The Dual State, but he did not limit himself to scholarly work only. We discuss Fraenkel's resistance that encompassed defending politically persecuted, as well as writing essays on the Nazi state from the legal and practical perspective.
David Stasavage (New York University) in conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczo (Maastricht University) about his recent book “The Decline and Rise of Democracy”, which presents the global history of democracies since ancient times.
RevDem editor Ferenc Laczo (Maastricht University) talks with Federico Finchelstein (New School for Social Research, New York) about his two recent books: “From Fascism to Populism in History” and “A Brief History of Fascist Lies”
In the newest episode of the RevDem podcast Giancarlo Grignaschi interviews Luiza Bialasiewicz (University of Amsterdam) and Prof. Oskar Josef Gstrein (University of Groningen). They discussed the latest proposal of the European Commission – vaccination passports (or certificates).
In this conversation with Assistant Editor Gaurav Mukherjee, Melissa Crouch discusses the rapidly evolving situation involving the military coup in Myanmar on 1 February 2021. Prof. Crouch is Professor and Associate Dean Research at the Law School, University of New South Wales, Syndey. While Prof. Crouch’s research contributes to the fields of comparative constitutional law; law and society; and law and religion, she is the author of the definitive book on the 2008 constitution of Myanmar, titled “The Constitution of Myanmar: A contextual analysis” (2019), which was shortlisted for the Australian Legal Research Awards inaugural book award.
Link to “The Constitution of Myanmar: A Contextual Analysis”: https://www.bloomsburyprofessional.com/uk/the-constitution-of-myanmar-9781509927371/
Link to Prof. Crouch’s writings on the military coup on her personal website: https://melissacrouch.com/
Supported by a grant from the Open Society Foundations.
Professor Nandini Ramanujam (McGill University) discusses with Oliver Garner the connection between academic freedom and the Rule of Law, contemporary and historical challenges, and prospects for the future. Supported [in part] by a grant from the Open Society Foundations
Kasia Krzyżanowska interviews Michael Zeller (Central European University) on the far-right demonstration campaigns and how are demobilized by the counter-activists. We talk also about the last year BLM mobilization, and why demonstrations are still better than the social media campaigns.
Oliver Garner interviews Professor Dimitry Kochenov (University of Groningen) on Member State legal action against backsliding Member States to enforce the Rule of Law in the EU. Supported [in part] by a grant from the Open Society Foundations
Oliver Garner interviews Professor Petra Bard (CEU and Eötvös Loránd University) on the new regime of budget conditionality to enforce the Rule of Law in the European Union. Supported [in part] by a grant from the Open Society Foundations
Kasia Krzyzanowska interviews Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins, a faculty member in History Department at Dartmouth College, on the future of liberalism, especially post-Cold War liberalism as envisioned by American intellectuals.
Samuel Moyn (Professor of Jurisprudence at Yale University) in conversation with Kasia Nowicka on the current state of America's democracy on the eve of Joe Biden's presidency.
Michal Matlak interviews Professor Alberto Alemanno (HEC, Paris) and the founder of Good Lobby about the upcoming Conference on the Future of Europe.