S. Laurel Weldon is Professor of Political Science, Purdue University, and Director of the Center for Research on Diversity and Inclusion. She is the author of When Protest Makes Policy: How Social Movements Represent Disadvantaged Groups (University of Michigan Press, 2011). The book provides a theoretical and empirical case for the relationship between women’s movements and social change. In a manner similar to Clifford Bob’s work on the Global Right Wing, Weldon’s expands the conversation about social movements to the international arena. She weaves together both cross-national and 50-state data to argue for ways to think about social movements that move beyond narrow studies of interest groups. The dot-connecting effort to bridge her strong theoretical arguments with these data, make the book a major contribution to the field of public policy. Weldon’s incorporation of social movement literature also is a contribution to political science literature, which has tended to shy away from engaging deeply in social movements.

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Arend Lijphart is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a past president of the American Political Science Association. In this interview, we discuss his book Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries (Yale University Press, 2012), now in a newly updated edition. The book is an empirical study of power-concentration and power-sharing in 36 democracies around the world during the period 1945 to 2010. Professor Lijphart finds strong correlations between institutional arrangements, such as a country’s electoral system, and quantifiable aspects of democratic quality, including political and economic equality, governmental accountability, rates of incarceration, and gender equality. Patterns of Democracy has been called “controversial,” “magnificent,” and “the best-researched book on democracies in the world today.”

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Daniel McCool, professor of political science at the University of Utah, is the editor of The Most Fundamental Right: Contrasting Perspectives on the Voting Rights Act (Indiana University Press, 2012). The VRA was one of the center pieces of the civil rights legislation passed in the 1960s. The Act aimed to address great inequities in access to and participation in voting, particularly among African Americans. Perhaps most controversially, the law labeled a handful of states that were deemed the most egregious violators of voting rights, and required them to gain pre-clearance from the Department of Justice on any changes in state voting procedures. Nearly fifty years later, is the case for the VRA still so pressing or are modifications or a complete overhaul called for? This timely collection provides deep theoretical and empirical justifications for the VRA, and equally well-developed arguments in opposition. One finished the collection more informed and a little unsure of what is called, both signs of a well-edited volume.

The timeliness of this book cannot be overstated. On Wednesday February 26, 2013, the Supreme Court hears arguments in the Voting Rights case of Shelby County v Holder.

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Kristi Andersen is the author of New Immigrant Communities: Finding a Place in Local Politics (Lynne Rienner, 2010). Andersen is professor of political science at Syracuse University. Previous to her latest, she published After Suffrage: Women in Partisan and Electoral Politics Before the New Deal and The Creation of a Democratic Majority, 1928-1936. Her latest book places a pressing issue of the day, how to fully incorporate newcomers into US society, in a political context. Rather than emphasize the individual, this book focuses on the group and the political resources immigrant groups possess, access, and are shut out from. The qualitative method focused on six cities captures a rich understanding of nuance and detail. Read along with other more quantitative analyses of the subject, the field of political science has been better able of late to grapple with the immigrant question. Andersen’s book is a highly recommended read.

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Over the last year, this podcast has featured several authors who’ve examined the presidency of Barack Obama. John Sides, Daniel Kriess, and Enid Logan each wrote about the election campaign of the President. Michael P. Jeffries steps back and places the President into a larger theoretical conversation about race and language. Jeffries is an Assistant Professor of American Studies at Welleseley College and also writes for The Atlantic magazine and The Guardian newspaper. He is the author of Paint the White House Black: Barack Obama and the Meaning of Race in America (Stanford University Press, 2013) and published his first book, Thug Life: Race, Gender, and the Meaning of Hip-Hop in 2011. Jeffries peels back the debate over exactly “post-racial” life in America really is in 2013. Using the presidency of Barack Obama as a focal point, he draws from sociology, feminist theory, and political science to situate the president in long-standing debates about the state of race in America. The book is provocative, timely, and an enjoyable read

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The “rise” of the Tea Party has become one of the most exaggerated political stories in recent memory. The hullabaloo regarding the Tea Party reminds me of what a leading neo-conservative once said about the New Left, “What’s new isn’t new and what’s left isn’t left.” In other words, there isn’t much new about the Tea Party and their principles are not necessarily more conservative than orthodox Republicanism. Kevin Mattson‘s new book, Just Plain Dick: Richard Nixon’s Checkers Speech and the ‘Rocking, Socking’ Election of 1952(Bloomsbury, 2012) argues just that. According to Mattson, the infamous “Checkers Speech” established a rhetorical and political template for the New Right and today’s Tea Party. This book is funny, insightful and worth reading. Listen to the interview, buy the book, and tell a friend.

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Andra Gillespie is the author of The New Black Politician: Cory Booker, Newark, and Post-Racial America (NYU Press, 2012). She is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Emory University and earned her Ph.D. from Yale University. Her new book focuses on the rise of one of the most well-known mayors in the country, Cory Booker. Gillespie tracks Booker’s rise through the complex politics of the city of Newark, NJ. As one of the few US cities with a history of African American mayors, Booker’s story is unique, but also illustrative. By challenging long-time Mayor Sharpe James, Booker — a newcomer to the city — confronted a deep and protective political establishment. The strategies Booker used, some effective, others less so, help Gillespie explain a larger phenomenon of the “post-racial America”. The book’s clear and personal writing make this an engaging read for political scientists and those interested in urban politics.

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Most people who listen to this podcast will have heard of Joseph McCarthy and HUAC (The House Committee on Un-American Activities). His activities and those of HUAC were, however, only the tip of a very large iceberg. In the 1940s and 1950s, the U.S. government conducted something like a “purge” of federal employees with leftist pasts. Thousands of federal workers were invested and hundreds (at least) were terminated. In The Second Red Scare and the Unmaking of the New Deal Left (Princeton UP, 2012), Landon Storrs tells this untold (and very disturbing) story. Listen in.

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Deploying hashtags and hunger strikes, flash mobs and vigils, the Idle No More movement of First Nation peoples in Canada is reaching a global audience. While new technology and political conditions alter the landscape of dissent, Indigenous activists using a wide tactical array to further their demands is not anything new, the media’s breathless claims notwithstanding.

Frederick E. Hoxie has composed a powerful new book highlighting this truth. In eight moving chapters stretching from the American Revolution to the contemporary period of self-determination, This Indian Country: American Indian Activists and the Place They Made(Penguin 2012) introduces us to courageous men and women whose names might not be familiar but whose legacies are still felt. Facing down a settler state determined on their erasure, they struggled to carve out a place for Native nationhood within — but not necessarily of— the polity that surrounded them.

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Mitt Romney must feel like Charlie Brown. Always facing an uphill climb against a popular incumbent, Romney truly believed he would kick the veritable football and take the White House. Unfortunately for the GOP, Lucy (Obama) jerked the football away leaving Romney to fall flat and conservatives to wander the political wilderness. Take heart Mitt Romney–Scott Farris has written the book for you.

Scott Farris‘ Almost President: The Men Who Lost the Race But Changed the Nation (Lyons Press, 2011) details how “losers” changed American politics. A journalist who has dabbled in the dark arts of politics, Farris has spent decades writing about state and national politicians. Understanding this rare species enabled him to pen a sprawling work that depicts nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first century losers. This is a fine book and fun read. Listen to the interview, buy the book and tell a friend.

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