Propaganda names a familiar collection of phenomena, and examples of propaganda are easy to identify, especially when one examines the output of totalitarian states. In those cases, language and imagery are employed for the purpose of shaping mass opinion, forming group allegiances, constructing worldviews, and securing compliance. It is undeniable that propaganda is employed by liberal democratic states. But it is also undeniable that the use of propaganda is especially problematic in liberal democracies, as it looks incompatible with the democratic ideals of equality and autonomous self-government. It’s surprising, then, that the topic of propaganda has gone relatively unexplored in contemporary political philosophy.

In How Propaganda Works (Princeton University Press, 2015), Jason Stanley develops an original theory of propaganda according to which propaganda is the deployment of an ideal against itself. Along the way, Stanley distinguishes various kinds of propaganda and explores the connections between propaganda, ideology, stereotypes, and group identities. Stanley’s central thesis is that propaganda poses an epistemological problem for democracy, as propaganda is the vehicle by which false beliefs are disseminated and opportunities for knowledge are closed.

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Righteous Republic: The Political Foundations of Modern India (Harvard University Press, 2012) by Ananya Vajpeyi is a rethinking of the self in self-rule, as understood in the ideas generated and reworked by five leading figures of the Indian independence movement. Analysing crises of the self, which it is argued stem from a crisis of tradition during late colonialism, Righteous Republic retells the movement for self-rule through a history of ideas.

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“Conspiracy theories are neither the vile excrescence of puny minds nor the telltale symptom of a sick society. They are the ineradicable stuff of politics.”That’s a quotation from American Conspiracy Theories (Oxford UP, 2014), by Joseph E. Uscinski and Joseph M. Parent, two professors of political science at the University of Miami.Their study of conspiracy theories concludes that nearly all Americans hold conspiracy beliefs and that “conspiracy theories bring to the surface people’s deepest political anxieties.”The book studies American conspiracy theories over 120 years from 1890 to 2010. It analyzes well-known conspiracy theories such as the many about the assassination of JFK and the events of 9/11 to more obscure ones such as the Congressional plot to kill pet dogs. In this interview with the New Books Network, co-author Joseph Uscinski suggests American conspiracy theories can teach us a lot about everyday politics.

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Torild Skard is the author of Women of Power: Half a Century of Female Presidents and Prime Ministers Worldwide (Policy Press, 2015). Skard is a senior researcher in women’s studies at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs in Oslo and is a former member of parliament and the first woman president of the Norwegian Upper House, among many other appointments.

Skard takes on an enormously ambitious project in her recent book. She seeks out to examine the achievements and life stories of nearly the universe of the world’s female political leaders from the 1960s up to the current era. Organized both chronologically and geographically, Skard includes over 70 leaders in 50 countries, and uncovers a variety of paths to power, regional patterns and variation, and fascinating individual stories.

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Conventional wisdom among historians and the public says anticommunism and the Cold War were barriers to reform during their height in the 1950s. In this view, the strong hand of a conservative anticommunism and Cold War priorities thwarted liberal and leftist reforms, political dissent and dreams of social democracy. Jennifer Delton is a professor of history at Skidmore College, and her new book, Rethinking the 1950s: How Anticommunism and the Cold War Made America Liberal (Cambridge University Press, 2013) encourages us–as the title suggests–to rethink that conventional view. She argues that in fact the Cold War and anticommunism promoted and justified many liberal goals rather than stifling them. Her book demonstrates that supposed conservatives championed many liberal causes while many liberals genuinely supported the Cold War and anticommunism. For example, she discusses the liberal beliefs and actions of business leaders and politicians like Dwight Eisenhower, who are often thought of as conservative figures, to show the dominance of liberal political ideas during this period. On the other side, she also argues that liberals, such as many labor activists, were themselves strongly anticommunist because they saw communism as truly damaging to their cause, not simply because they aimed to avoid the taint of a communist label. These sentiments had important effects on policy as well. From high taxes to regulation, civil rights and the continuance of New Deal programs, liberal ideas held sway. They had a powerful effect on policy, not in spite of, but because of the larger Cold War context. In the interview, Delton discusses her book and its importance in reforming both historians’ views of the period and our broader thinking about partisan politics and nationalism.

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Todd Wolfson’s book, Digital Rebellion: The Birth of the Cyber Left (University of Illinois Press, 2014) examines the impact of new media and communication technologies on the spatial, strategic, and organizational fabric of social movements. Wolfson explores how aspects of the mid-1990s Zapatistas movement—network organizational structure, participatory democratic governance, and the use of communication tools as a binding agent—became essential parts of Indymedia and other Cyber Left organizations. From there he uses oral interviews and other rich ethnographic data to chart the media-based think tanks and experiments that continued the Cyber Left’s evolution through the Independent Media Center’s birth around the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle. Melding virtual and traditional ethnographic practice to explore the Cyber Left’s cultural logic, Wolfson maps the social, spatial and communicative structure of the Indymedia network and details its operations on the local, national and global level. He looks at the participatory democracy that governs global social movements and the ways democracy and decentralization have come into tension, and how “the switchboard of struggle” conducts stories from the hyper-local and disperses them worldwide. As he shows, understanding the intersection of Indymedia and the Global Social Justice Movement illuminates their foundational role in the Occupy struggle and other emergent movements that have re-energized radical politics.

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Matthew Green has just written Underdog Politics: The Minority Party in the U.S. House of Representatives (Yale University Press, 2015). Green is associate professor of politics at the Catholic University of America and associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies.

Everyone roots for the underdog, yet nobody seems to like Congress. Green’s book offers to split the difference by offering an investigation about how Congressional underdog, the minority party, actually works. Rather than just a passive group, Green shows how over the last 40 years, the minority party has developed specific and often effective strategies to meet their aims. Green’s research uses extensive elite interviews to demonstrate how campaign and communication innovations in the 1970s and 1980s have shaped the role that the minority has played.

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Carol Faulkner is Professor of History at Syracuse University. Her book Lucretia Mott’s Heresy: Abolition and Women’s Rights in Nineteenth-Century America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011) is a beautifully written biography of the abolitionist and Quaker Lucretia Mott. Committed to liberty and equality based on the divine light within, Mott was one the earliest American activist for immediate emancipation and by extension the full rights of women. Faulkner argues that Mott has been cast as a demure religious matron rather than the radical firebrand she was. Partly, this is due to Mott not having left many of her thoughts in writing, expressing herself primarily through long extemporaneous speeches. Faulkner corrects for this by providing vivid details of Mott’s life and takes us through the Nantucket childhood and time at Nine Partners Boarding School where she received the best education of the era; her joining the Hickite movement; collaboration with William Lloyd Garrison and the founding of the interracial Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society; and her connections with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and women’s rights. Mott considered herself a heretic rejecting dogma, church authority, and the preeminence of scripture for an ethic of pacifism, individual liberty, and radical equality. Her theological views are brought into sharp relief against the backdrop of multiple schisms within Quakerism and anti-slavery. Rather than a frail and domestic Mott, Faulkner offers a courageous ideologue unafraid to risk her own safety in defense of principle, committed to moral suasion, immediate emancipation, and vilified for her disruptive outspokenness.

In this week’s podcast, we hear from an author and an editor. First, Louis DeSipio and Rodolfo de la Garza are authors of U.S. Immigration in the Twenty-First Century: Making Americans, Remaking America (Westview Press, 2015). DeSipio is professor of political science and Chicano/Latino studies at University of California, Irvine; de la Garza is Eaton Professor of Administrative Law and Municipal Science in the Department of Political Science, Columbia University.

DeSipio and Garza’s book covers a lot of ground, including demographic research on immigration patterns in the US as well as a detailed account of immigration policy change in the US. The book is deep in social science research, but also written in a way that makes it accessible to a wider audience, and would make a great addition to an under graduate syllabus.

Later, we hear from Deana Rohlinger the book reviews editor for Mobilization. Deana tells us about the books reviewed in the latest issue.

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We are all aware how important professional movie makers are to modern campaigns. Many trace this importance to John F. Kennedy’s presidential victory in 1960. Yet, as Kathryn Cramer Brownell shows in her new book Showbiz Politics: Hollywood in American Political Life (University of North Carolina Press, 2014), Tinseltownwas a major influence on political races almost since the beginning of the motion picture industry. Her book wonderfully the history of how show business and politics are intertwined.

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