What are the prospects for democracy in Syria? Is this the right question to ask? What do we need to better understand about Syria’s new leader, its civil society, and the challenges it faces in a new era for Syria? Join Rana Khoury, Daniel Neep, and Emily Scott for this special joint episode of the Localization in World Politics and People, Power, Politics podcasts.

Rana B. Khoury is assistant professor of political science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her work explores conflict processes, civil action, and humanitarianism, particularly in the Middle East and Syria. Her book, Civilizing Contention: International Aid in Syria’s War, is forthcoming from Cornell University Press and available for pre-order here.

Daniel Neep is nonresident fellow at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University. He is interested in conflict and state-building, as well as processes of political, institutional, and social transformation in the Middle East, in Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan. His book A History of Modern Syria is forthcoming with Penguin Books and is available for pre-order here.

Check out their contributions to the Journal of Democracy Special Section, Syria After Assad, can be found here!

Emily K. M. Scott is Associate Professor at the University of Birmingham and co-host of the Localization in World Politics Podcast. Her most recent publication, “Negotiating for Autonomy: How Humanitarian INGOs Resisted Donors During the Syrian Refugee Response” can be found here.

The People, Power, Politics podcast brings you the latest insights into the factors that are shaping and re-shaping our political world. It is brought to you by the Centre for Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation (CEDAR) based at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. Join us to better understand the factors that promote and undermine democratic government around the world and follow us on Twitter at @CEDAR_Bham!

Click here for a transcript of this episode

As authoritarian leaders attack democracy from all sides, and the rights of women, ethnic minorities and the LGTBQI+ community are increasingly threatened, civil resistance is more important than ever. But what forms of resistance are most effective, and how can we build movements so that they have the greatest chance of success? Join the People, Power, Politics podcast as we talk to Erica Chenoweth, author of Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know, to discuss these issues and so much more!

Guest:

Erica Chenoweth is the Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment at Harvard Kennedy School and a Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at Harvard's Radcliffe Institute. They are widely known as one of the most important and influential voices on civil resistance and what makes for successful popular mobilization, and have authored a number of path-breaking books including Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford UP, 2021) and On Revolutions (2022).

Presenter:

Dr Nic Cheeseman is the Professor of Democracy and International Development at the University of Birmingham and Founding Director of CEDAR.

The People, Power, Politics podcast brings you the latest insights into the factors that are shaping and re-shaping our political world. It is brought to you by the Centre for Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation (CEDAR) based at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. Join us to better understand the factors that promote and undermine democratic government around the world and follow us on Twitter at @CEDAR_Bham!

For a long time many (although by no means all) scholars saw the relationship between capitalism and democracy as mutually reinforcing: economic competition and growth were expected to sustain democratic competition and improve governance and public good delivery for citizens, in turn creating a better environment for capitalist competition to flourish. But as capitalism has changed and has in many respects freed itself from the constraints of the state and of democratic processes, it has unleashed a new era of extreme wealth accumulation, deregulated markets, weak states, unresponsive political elites, and choiceless democracies. In this episode, CEDAR host Licia Cianetti talks to Rachel Riedl about her recent essay on “Neoliberalism and the Third Wave” to better understand why and how this happened and what we can do about it. This episode is part of PPP’s ongoing collaboration with the Journal of Democracy.

Rachel Beatty Riedl is Professor of public policy and government at Cornell University and the Peggy J. Koenig '78 Director of the Brooks Center on Global Democracy. Her latest co-edited book is entitled Global Challenges to Democracy: Comparative Perspectives on Backsliding, Autocracy, and Resilience (CUP 2025).

Licia Cianetti is Lecturer in Political Science and International Studies at the University of Birmingham and Deputy Founding Director of CEDAR. Her latest publication is “What is a “regime”? Three definitions and their implications for the future of regime studies” (Democratization, 2025).

The People, Power, Politics podcast brings you the latest insights into the factors that are shaping and re-shaping our political world. It is brought to you by the Centre for Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation (CEDAR) based at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. Join us to better understand the factors that promote and undermine democratic government around the world.

It has been 10 years since the Paris Agreements of 2015 and – despite the initial enthusiasm – global investment in fossil fuels has increased and we seem to be on course to overshoot the limit of 1.5 degrees warming. Why is this happening? In this episode Licia Cianetti talks with Wim Carton about his book (co-authored with Andreas Malm) Overshoot: How the World Surrendered to Climate Breakdown (Verso 2024), which provides some of the answers. In this conversation, we bust a few myths: that we are gradually (if slowly) moving in the right direction, that climate denialism is the only obstacle to change, that we are at the cusp of a green capitalist revolution, and that carbon capture technologies will save the day. We also try to imagine a way forward.

Wim Carton is a Senior Lecturer at Lund University’s Centre for Sustainability Studies.

Licia Cianetti is Lecturer in Political Science and International Studies at the University of Birmingham and Deputy Founding Director of CEDAR.

The People, Power, Politics podcast brings you the latest insights into the factors that are shaping and re-shaping our political world. It is brought to you by the Centre for Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation (CEDAR) based at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. Join us to better understand the factors that promote and undermine democratic government around the world.

The attack in democracy under President Donald Trump in the United States is both broader and deeper than you think. In this timely conversation with Carl LeVan, Professor and Chair of Politics, Governance, and Economics at American University – but speaking only in his personal capacity – we hear about the way that the government has attempted to silence critical voices by intimidating a remarkably wide range of institutions from law firms to universities and on to civil society groups and the media. This new challenge has led to the emergence of fresh sites of resistance, with new alliances and coalitions being formed outside of old structures. This podcast is therefore an essential guide not only to size and scale of the threat to democracy in Africa today, but also to the shape of the fightback to come.

Guest:

A. Carl LeVan is Professor and Chair of Politics, Governance, and Economics at American University. A policy engaged researcher who has experience on both sides of the divide, Carl’s research centers on political institutions, democratization, and governance. He authored Contemporary Nigerian Politics: Competition in a Time of Transition and Terror (Cambridge 2019) and co-edited The Oxford Handbook of Nigerian Politics (2018). His work also includes Constituents before Assembly (2017) and studies on Boko Haram, East African power-sharing, and U.S. political trust. LeVan is a Research Associate at the University of Pretoria’s Centre for the Study of the United States and serves on the editorial boards of Governance and Journal of Modern African Studies. Before his PhD from UC San Diego, he advised Nigeria’s National Assembly and worked in the U.S. Congress, giving him distinctive insights into the most important political struggles of our time.

Presenter:

Dr Nic Cheeseman is the Professor of Democracy and International Development at the University of Birmingham and Founding Director of CEDAR.

The People, Power, Politics podcast brings you the latest insights into the factors that are shaping and re-shaping our political world. It is brought to you by the Centre for Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation (CEDAR) based at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. Join us to better understand the factors that promote and undermine democratic government around the world and follow us on Twitter at @CEDAR_Bham!

Globally, the liberal international order has been under pressure for quite some time, but we often tend to discuss this in relation to big international players such as the United States and China. But how do small states like Singapore navigate and shape this increasingly contested space? Join Petra Alderman as she talks to Dylan Loh about Singapore’s understanding of the liberal international order, its position on liberal democratic values and human rights, its relations with big international players, and the ways in which this small city state seeks to uphold and modify the liberal international order, so it better aligns with its own interests.

Read Dylan’s article ‘Singapore's conception of the liberal international order as a small state’ in International Affairs.

*** This episode was originally recorded in November 2024. ***

Dylan Loh is an Assistant Professor at the Public Policy and Global Affairs programme, at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He studies China’s foreign policy, international diplomacy, and ASEAN regionalism. He is the author of a recently published book ‘China's Rising Foreign Ministry: Practices and Representations of Assertive Diplomacy’ which was published by Stanford University Press (2024).

Petra Alderman is a researcher, CEDAR affiliate, and a manager of the LSE Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre.

Democracy scholars often assume that ethnic homogeneity is good for democracy. Politically mobilised ethnic minorities, the assumption goes, stoke divisions and can destabilise democracy. In his latest book Ethnic Minorities, Political Competition, and Democracy: Circumstantial Liberals (Oxford UP 2024), Jan Rovny turns this assumption on its head and argues that not only minorities are not bad for democracy but in fact they can help strengthen and protect it. In this episode, he talks with host Licia Cianetti about why this is the case, under what circumstances, and how the book’s lessons from minorities in Central and Eastern Europe can travel well beyond the region and might even provide insights to interpret recent voting patterns in the US.

Jan Rovny is Professor of Political Science at the Center for European Studies and Comparative Politics at Sciences Po, Paris.

Licia Cianetti is Lecturer in Political Science and International Studies at the University of Birmingham and Deputy Founding Director of CEDAR. Her book on these themes is The Quality of Divided Democracies: Minority Inclusion, Exclusion and Representation in the New Europe (University of Michigan Press, 2019).

The People, Power, Politics podcast brings you the latest insights into the factors that are shaping and re-shaping our political world. It is brought to you by the Centre for Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation (CEDAR) based at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. Join us to better understand the factors that promote and undermine democratic government around the world.

In this episode Licia Cianetti talks to Johannes Gerschewski about his book The Two Logics of Autocratic Rule (Cambridge UP, 2023). We discuss how autocrats try to either hyper-politicise or de-politicise their rule in order to stay in power, whether the word “fascist” is useful today, and what the two logics identified in the book might tell us about politics in contemporary autocratising democracies. As we recorded during Johannes’s stay at Thomas Mann House in LA, soon after the US 2024 elections, a lot of this had unavoidably to do with Trump. *This episode was recorded soon after the US elections, before the LA fires and Trump's second inauguration*

Johannes Gerschewski is research fellow at the WZB and academic coordinator of the Theory Network at the Cluster of Excellence SCRIPTS. In his research, he works both theoretically and empirically on questions of legitimacy, stability, and crisis proneness of democratic and autocratic regimes.

Licia Cianetti is Lecturer in Political Science and International Studies at the University of Birmingham and Deputy Co-Director of CEDAR. Her most recent work on these themes is “What is a “regime”? Three definitions and their implications for the future of regime studies” (with Gianni Del Panta and Catherine Owen) published in Democratization in 2025.

The People, Power, Politics podcast brings you the latest insights into the factors that are shaping and re-shaping our political world. It is brought to you by the Centre for Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation (CEDAR) based at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. Join us to better understand the factors that promote and undermine democratic government around the world and follow us on Twitter at @CEDAR_Bham!

The argument that authoritarian governments are better at dealing with the climate emergency is gaining ground, fuelled by the idea that undemocratic states face fewer constraints and so can operate more efficiently and effectively. Some are even arguing that this isn’t just a necessary evil but a legitimate policy response to pending environmental catastrophe. Yet the data suggests that on average authoritarian governments do not perform better, and on many measures actually do worse than democracies. So why does this idea persist? Join Nic Cheeseman as he talks to Nomi Claire Lazar and Jeremy Wallace about their new article on Resisting the Authoritarian Temptation. Why is democracy not delivering? Why is authoritarianism not the answer? And what new models exist that can be used to deliver a greener and more inclusive future?

This podcast is part of our regular collaboration with the Journal of Democracy.

Guest:

Nomi Claire Lazar is a Professor of Politics in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa. Her work looks at crises from a range of perspectives, including emergency powers, constitutional legitimacy and climate politics. Author of the books States of Emergency in Liberal Democracies (Cambridge 2009) & Out of Joint: Power, Crisis and the Rhetoric of Time (Yale, 2019), Nomi currently co-leads the British Academy’s Global Convening Programme, “The Times of a Just Transition.” She served in 2022-23 on the Rouleau Commission investigating the Federal Government’s use of the Emergencies Act in the trucker convoy crisis, and in 2024 was appointed by Justice Marie-Josée Hogue to Canada’s Foreign Interference Commission. She is at work on a book on apocalyptic politics, and is a frequent contributor of commentary to news outlets around the world.

Jeremy Wallace is the A. Doak Barnett Professor of China Studies at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). He researches the political economy of China’s decarbonization, including the book Phenomenal World which investigated the carbon implications of its growth model for land, finance, and real estate. Jeremy has also written on a wide range of issues relating to cities, climate change, environmental information flows, and social media. He is also an editor at Good Authority and writes the China Lab newsletter, and his latest book is Seeking Truth and Hiding Facts: Information, Ideology, and Authoritarianism in China.

Presenter:

Dr Nic Cheeseman is the Professor of Democracy and International Development at the University of Birmingham and Founding Director of CEDAR.

The People, Power, Politics podcast brings you the latest insights into the factors that are shaping and re-shaping our political world. It is brought to you by the Centre for Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation (CEDAR) based at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. Join us to better understand the factors that promote and undermine democratic government around the world and follow us on Twitter at @CEDAR_Bham!

This is a special episode that features a conversation between Sonia Bussu and Hans Asenbaum on democracy, capitalism, climate and the practices and prospects of participatory, deliberative and more-than-human democracy to transform their relationship. Can we rethink democracy beyond the liberal-democratic institutions that were created as part of the bargain for fossil-fuel-driven, Western-centric economic growth? What does and could democratic participation look like? What does it mean to include the non-human in our understanding of democracy?

Sonia Bussu is Associate Professor in Public Policy at the University of Birmingham. She researches participatory democracy and in her work she uses participatory and creative methods for research and public engagement. She has led on projects on youth participation to influence mental health policy, youth employment policies, as well as coproduction of research on health and social care integration, and leadership styles within collaborative governance. She is scientific coordinator of a Horizon Europe project on participatory policymaking, INSPIRE. She is co-editor of Reclaiming Participatory Governance: Social Movements and the Reinvention of Democratic Innovation. Routledge.

Hans Asenbaum is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance at the University of Canberra. His research interests include radical democracy, queer and gender studies, digital politics, and participatory research methods. In 2022 he received the ECPR Rising Star Award. Hans is the author of The Politics of Becoming: Anonymity and Democracy in the Digital Age (Oxford University Press, 2023) and co-editor of Research Methods in Deliberative Democracy (with Ercan, Curato and Mendonça, Oxford University Press, 2022). His work has been published in the American Political Science Review, New Media & Society, Politics & Gender, and the International Journal of Qualitative Methods.

The People, Power, Politics podcast brings you the latest insights into the factors that are shaping and re-shaping our political world. It is brought to you by the Centre for Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation (CEDAR) based at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. Join us to better understand the factors that promote and undermine democratic government around the world and follow us on Twitter at @CEDAR_Bham!