New Books in Political Science

New Books in Political Science

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New Books in Political Science episodes

  • The Political Philosophy of Mark Twain: On His Absurd, Noble Americans with Ivan Kenneally

    While many know that Mark Twain created some of the most famous characters in literature—Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, Jim and Puddn’head Wilson—too few have understood that the Missouri author wasn’t only America’s greatest humorist, but also one of its most subtle political thinkers. But what was the political philosophy of the elusive and ironic Mark Twain for his new democratic America?

    To help answer that question, as we continue Season 6, I have as our guest Ivan Kenneally. A contributor to The New Atlantis and First Things, among other publications, he wrote an essay for The Hedgehog Review on modern reactions to Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), titled: “Mark Twain’s Absurd, Noble America,” which we will be discussing today.

    We also talk about the travels of the two runaways Huck and Jim, along with their many disguises and rouses, how Americans like Tom Sawyer read European literature too dogmatically, the conmen Twain depicts in the Duke and Dauphin, technical versus tacit knowledge in his memoir Life on the Mississippi, contemporary interest in Twain from Ron Chernow and Percival Everett, the nature of irony as well as the poverty of modern comedy, and what philosophers and comedians alike can learn from the Missouri author and philosopher.

    Hosted by Ryan Shinkel, Madison’s Notes is the podcast of Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. The transcript for this interview is available on the JMP substack page, “Madison’s Footnotes.

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    1 hr 3 min
  • Richard Ned Lebow, "Why Nations Still Fight" (Cambridge UP, 2026)

    Drawing on an original data set of interventions and wars from 1945 to the current day, as well as numerous short case studies, Richard Ned Lebow offers a novel account of their origins and outcomes - one that emphasises miscalculation, failure to conduct meaningful risk assessments, and cultural and political arrogance.

    A successive work to Why Nations Fight (2010), in this book Why Nations Still Fight (Cambridge UP, 2026) he explains why initiators routinely lose militarily and politically when they resort to force, as well as accounting for why the great powers, in particular, have not learned from their failures.

    Lebow offers both type- and region-specific forecasts for the future likelihood of interventions and wars.

    His account reveals the inapplicability of theories nested in the realist and rationalist paradigms to the study of war.

    He argues what is needed instead is an "irrationalist" theory, and he takes the initial steps in this direction.

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    1 hr 11 min
  • Srirupa Roy, "The Political Outsider: Indian Democracy and the Lineages of Populism" (Stanford UP, 2024)

    Defying the dire predictions that attended its birth as an

    independent nation-state in 1947, the Indian republic is more than
    seventy-five years old. And yet, it is a place where criticisms of
    actually existing democracy are intense and strident. In recent years,
    the trope of victimized people suffering at the hands of a predatory
    elite and political dysfunction has reaped rewards. The populist
    language of redemptive outsiders pledging to combat a corrupt system has
    been harnessed in successful electoral campaigns, like the majoritarian
    regime of Narendra Modi.

    Tracking the shift from postcolonial nation-building to

    democracy-rebuilding, Srirupa Roy shows how the political outsider came
    to be a valorized figure of late-twentieth century Indian democracy,
    tasked with the urgent mission of curing a broken democratic system—what
    Roy terms "curative democracy." Drawing attention to an ambivalent
    political field that folds together authoritarian and democratic forms
    and ideas, The Political Outsider: Indian Democracy and the Lineages of Populism (Stanford University Press, 2024) argues
    that the long 1970s were a crucial turning point in Indian politics,
    when democracy was suspended by the declaration of a national emergency
    and then subsequently restored. By tracing the crooked line that
    connects the ideals of curative democracy and the political outsider to
    the populist antipolitics and strongman authoritarian rule in present
    times, this book revisits democracy from India, and asks what the Indian experience tells us about the trajectory of global democratic politics.

    Dhiren Swain is a MIPA PhD Candidate, affiliated to The University of

    Melbourne and IIT Madras. His current research focuses on the Urban
    Policies and Community Politics in India and South Asia.

    He can be reached at [email protected]

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    53 min
  • Catherine Reyes-Housholder, "How Women Win Presidential Elections in Latin America" (Temple UP, 2026)

    Between 1990 and 2020, women candidates won only 6% of the world’s presidential races. How Women Win Presidential Elections in Latin America (Temple University Press, 2026) explains the factors, strategies, and perceptions

    that help (or hinder) women to democratically access their country’s
    highest political office. Dr. Catherine Reyes-Housholder introduces a
    theory of gendered incentives and perceived potential to reveal why a
    political party would break with tradition and nominate a woman. She
    also shows how citizens respond when women candidates are running in
    incumbent parties or competing to displace those in power.

    Drawing on comparative research on the presidency and gender, How Women Win Presidential Elections in Latin America

    examines the successful campaigns of Michelle Bachelet in Chile and
    Dilma Rousseff in Brazil, as well as why Blanca Ovelar lost her
    presidential race in Paraguay. Dr. Reyes-Housholder’s findings indicate
    that voter sexism is not a major factor; however, women do not triumph
    in these elections in the same ways that men do. Rather, the central
    unknown factor behind women’s victories is how they become candidates of
    major parties—and gender profoundly influences who parties nominate.

    This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book

    focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty
    negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative
    analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find
    Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. 

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    56 min
  • Paul Johnson, "Challenging Inequalities: How We Got Stuck and Where We Go Next" (Princeton UP, 2026)

    There is a widespread sense throughout the developed world that

    progress towards a better society has stalled. Many countries, including
    the UK, have experienced persistent economic stagnation accompanied by
    declining trust in institutions. Governments are struggling to respond
    not only to traditional economic problems but also to newer challenges
    posed by climate change, migration and technological change. Challenging Inequalities: How We Got Stuck and Where We Go Next (Princeton
    University Press, 2026), written by Paul Johnson and coauthors, drawing
    on the findings of the six-year IFS Deaton Review, connects these
    conditions to inequality—inequality not just of income and wealth but of
    health, political participation and opportunity. It not only offers a
    detailed analysis of the different forms of inequalities but also an
    in-depth consideration of why inequalities matter, how they have changed
    and what can, or should, be done about them.

    The book explains

    the enduring effects of early life experiences and education and
    examines the trends in employment and earnings over recent decades. It
    argues that economic stagnation since the financial crises of 2008–2009
    has exposed inequalities originating in the 1980s. Not only have incomes
    stagnated, but so has progress towards reducing health inequalities and
    dealing with inequalities across gender, ethnicity, geography, age and
    educational level. The combination of earnings inequality and economic
    stagnation has led to the growing importance of wealth, the increasing
    concentration of economic power in an older generation and a decline in
    social mobility. Economic inequalities have also resulted directly in
    dangerous differences between regions and in political power across
    groups.

    The need to address inequality has never been more urgent. Challenging Inequalities offers

    a road map for how we have arrived at such a perilous spot—and how we
    can change course to achieve better outcomes for all.

    Paul Johnson

    is provost of the Queen’s College, University of Oxford, and former
    director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS). He is the author of
    the Sunday Times bestseller Follow the Money.

    Morteza Hajizadeh

    is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New
    Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory;
    Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies;
    18th
    and 19th Century British Literature.

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    51 min
  • After Putin: A Discussion with Political Scientist Julian G. Waller

    Russian leader Vladimir Putin, at 73 years old, is still very much alive, yet the “After Putin” conversation is an active one inside and outside of Russia. What could come next and how to think about that question? My guest is Julian G. Waller, a political scientist at George Washington University and author of a recent Foreign Affairs article “After Putin: Russia’s Coming Succession Crisis.” In our discussion, Waller anchors the “After Putin” question in historical context, as to how succession played out after Stalin’s death in the 1953. And we talk about how the current political environment in Moscow, shaped by Putin’s protracted war in Ukraine, is informing the “After Putin” discussion. Could a revolutionary scenario play out? How bodily safe is Putin? Waller is author of Autocrats Can't Always Get What They Want: State Institutions and Autonomy under Authoritarianism (University of Michigan Press, 2024).

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    52 min
  • Edward Goldring, "Purges: How Dictators Fight to Survive" (Cornell UP, 2026)

    Purges: How Dictators Fight to Survive

    (Cornell University Press, 2026) by Dr. Edward Goldring delves into one
    of the key tactics that autocrats deploy to maintain power: the removal
    of individuals from within the regime.

    From Kim Jong Un's

    execution of his uncle to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's removal of over a
    hundred Turkish generals, purges bear significant consequences for the
    survival and endurance of autocrats. Yet much remains unknown about why
    dictators use purges and whether they achieve their intended effects.

    Drawing

    on an original global dataset on civilian and military elite purges in
    dictatorships in addition to case studies spanning North and South Korea
    as well as Turkey, Dr. Goldring examines the logic behind purges and
    their consequences. He shows that dictators purge to consolidate power,
    punish disloyalty, and scapegoat elites to alleviate popular threats.
    But even as purges help dictators consolidate power early in their
    tenure, purges actually weaken
    their position when they have been in power for a long time, prompting
    pushback. In the face of an increasing global shift toward authoritarian
    norms, Purges offers critical insight into how autocrats maintain—and sometimes lose—power.

    This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book

    focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty
    negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative
    analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find
    Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. 

    Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science


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    38 min
  • Mark Leonard, "Surviving Chaos: Geopolitics When the Rules Fail" (Polity Press, 2026)

    "Expansive visions. Universal institutions. Ideas of progress. It

    was on the back of these that the West surged ahead and built a global
    order. I was born into that world. But my children have entered a world
    of Un-order."

    We live in an explosive world. Trump is blowing up political order.

    Xi Jinping is scrambling the economy. And Putin is redrawing the map of
    Europe. At a time when every crisis bleeds into the next — from
    pandemics and wars to climate shocks and AI revolutions — the old rules
    of global order are collapsing. Mark Leonard reveals how geopolitics is
    being rewritten in an age of "Un-Order," where no one agrees on the
    rules, and even the concept of order itself is up for debate. Drawing on
    years of conversations with leaders and thinkers from Beijing to
    Washington, Leonard argues that we are witnessing a new divide in
    international politics between the grand "architects" who try to build a
    stable global system and the nimble "artisans" who adapt, improvise,
    and survive amidst disruption. China, he shows, has embraced the
    "artisan's" mindset while Europe and the West cling to the fading
    certainties of the "architects". Part analysis, part manifesto, ⁠Surviving Chaos: Geopolitics When the Rules Fail⁠ (Polity Press, 2026) offers
    a bold new framework for understanding power in the twenty-first
    century — and a call for leaders to stop defending yesterday's world and
    start learning how to thrive in tomorrow's.

    Mark Leonard is co-founder and director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, the first pan-European think–tank.

    Lucas Tse is Examination Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford.

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    1 hr 1 min
  • Seth Masket, "The Elephants in the Room: How Trump Voters Seized the Party from Republican Leaders" (Cambridge UP, 2026)

    Political Scientist Seth Masket’s new book, The Elephants in the Room: How Trump Voters Seized the Party from Republican Leaders (Cambridge UP, 2026) is a companion book to his earlier work, Learning from Loss: The Democrats, 2016-2020 (Cambridge University Press, 2020). In researching both these works, Masket spends time with party leaders throughout the United States, discussing the loss at the presidential level (for Democrats in 2016, for Republicans in 2020) and seeking to understand what the lessons might be for each party from their electoral loss. The Elephants in the Room focuses in on the idea and trajectory of nominating Donald Trump for the third time in as many election cycles, as the local party leaders of the Republican Party considered what to do in the lead up to the 2024 election cycle. Masket is able to regularly survey Republican Party chairs (state chairs, local chairs, county chairs) during the period leading to the 2024 nomination cycle. He also interviewed many of these same chairs, especially the ones in New Hampshire, Iowa, Nevada, and other early primary states. The Elephants in the Room: How Trump Voters Seized the Party from Republican Leaders analyzes the thinking among these party leaders—not necessarily at the national level, but certainly long-standing and engaged local-level leaders—and their concern that nominating Trump again would lead to another presidential election loss for the GOP.

    One of the key points Masket makes both in the book and in our conversation is that these leaders had built, over time, a political party that they could no longer lead. These leaders are also distinct from the voters themselves, who may be adherents to the party, but are not part of the political party in the same way. Thus, the voters were much more interested in and attracted to the populism that has long lurked within American politics, and, of late, Republican politics, while the partisan leaders were not nearly as drawn to this strain of politics. We discuss the recent history of populist politics in the GOP, with Pat Buchanan’s 1992 presidential run and convention speech as a key point within the historical trajectory. Trump, in 2015, entered partisan politics building on this already existing faction within the GOP. This is part of the post-2020 election framing, but Masket makes an important point in how the Republican Party differed from the Democrats in learning from a loss at the presidential level. For the Republicans, it was very difficult to learn much from the results of the 2020 election because so few Republicans were or are willing to acknowledge that Trump actually lost the 2020 election. It is quite difficult to learn a lesson from an event that didn’t happen.

    Seth Masket, Learning from Loss: The Democrats 2016-2020, Cambridge University Press, 2020.

    The Tattered Cover Bookstore in Denver, CO has copies of The Elephants in the Room.

    Lilly J. Goren is a professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-host of the New Books in Political Science channel at the New Books Network. She is co-editor of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Volume I: The Infinity Saga (University Press of Kansas, 2022), and of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Volume II: Into the Multiverse (University Press of Kansas, 2025) as well as co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012). She can be reached @gorenlj.bsky.social

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    46 min
  • Deborah Mayersen, "Genocide Prevention: An Evidence-Based Approach" (Cambridge UP, 2026)

    There has never been a more promising time for genocide prevention. More resources and research are being focused on prevention than ever before. Yet we still lack vital knowledge as to the most effective ways to stabilise and reduce the risk of genocide in current at-risk societies. Genocide Prevention: An Evidence-Based Approach (Cambridge UP, 2026) offers a compelling new approach: to understand how to prevent genocide, we need to examine societies in which genocide has been prevented. It is in these societies - in which a demonstrably high risk of genocide was present, but in which genocide did not occur - that we can potentially find key factors that promote resilience to genocide. The volume explores six such case studies, spanning three continents and seven decades. Through careful analysis it identifies eleven factors that have contributed to preventing genocide in multiple cases, and which have the potential to inform current approaches to prevention. Collectively, these offer a new, evidence-based approach to preventing genocide.

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    1 hr 6 min

About New Books in Political Science

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This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field.