In our latest episode of the special series produced in partnership with the Journal of Democracy, we discuss the recent article by Ghia Nodia, entitled “Georgia: Between Democracy and Autocracy” (Journal of Democracy, Vol. 37, No.2, April 2026)

Over the last couple of years, Georgia has frequently been in foreign news due to two related issues. Firstly, in 2024, the current Georgian government, after a failed initial attempt, has adopted the law “On Transparency of Foreign Influence,” thereby joining a global trend of countries adopting so-called “Foreign Agents Laws.” While facially claiming to protect a country against threats posed by foreign interference, such laws are often used by governments with authoritarian tendencies to suppress their country’s civil society. The second related issue is the long protests of Georgian civil society against the authoritarian tendencies of the incumbent party, Georgian Dream. Georgia is known for its vibrant and active civil society, which has often shown its willingness to take to the streets and confront its government. In a recent article in the Journal of Democracy, Ghia Nodia analyzes the hybridity of the Georgian state resulting from these opposing tendencies and asks in which direction the country is headed: Democracy or Autocracy.

Ghia Nodia is a professor of political science at Ilia State University and director of the Caucasus Institute for Peace, Democracy, and Development in Tbilisi, Georgia. He is a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Democracy. In 2008, Prof. Nodia served as Georgia’s Minister of Education and Science.

Are interethnic marriages bridges or fault lines in post-conflict societies? What happens when the politics of national identity enter the intimacy of home? Who were the main agents to oppose or promote mixed marriages in East-CentralEurope? Was it the Church? Was it the legal framework? Were it depending on local culture? Was it determined by class?

In our podcast in two parts, we discuss this topic with Karolina Lendák-Kabók and Lucija Balikić, around their research project called entitled “Mixed Families: Searching forIdentity and Belonging in Post-Conflict Societies”. Their research group emerges from the The Momentum (Lendület) 2025 project hosted at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE), Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of MinorityStudies and it is financed by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences – Flagship Program of the Academy.

By following marriages that crossed lines of language, confession, and social status, the research project “MixedFamilies: Searching for Identity and Belonging in Post-Conflict Societies” trace how states, churches, and communities sought to regulate intimacy long before theyregulated borders.

In our second part, we discuss why mixedness shouldbe treated as a long historical process instead of a simple past-present comparison. Legal norms, religious prescriptions, social expectations, and gendered assumptions shaped mixed families across generations. To unfold thiscomplex phenomenon, Karolina Lendák-Kabók and Lucija Balikić move between micro‑level family dynamics, meso‑level institutions such as schools and churches, andmacro‑level political frameworks to trace how mixedness is produced, negotiated, and transmitted over time.

The second part of this episode also explores theproject’s diverse source base: legal codes, canon laws,  minority association records, ego‑documents, and oral interviews. Finally, the conversation opens toward the future of the field. Karolina Lendák-Kabók and Lucija Balikić expand on emerging research avenues, including the understudied role of children in mixed families, the methodological challenges of combining quantitative and qualitative data, and the potential for expanding the geographical scope beyond Central and Southeastern Europe.

In the new episode of our series produced in collaboration with the Journal of Democracy, Ferenc Laczó speaks with James Loxton about his article, “Why We Elect Former Dictators and Their Children.”

James Loxton discusses prominent cases of former dictators or the children of former dictators being elected democratically as president or prime minister; how suchleaders deal with their authoritarian inheritance; what we might have misunderstood about democratization in the light of this rather widespread phenomenon;and how it might be countered more effectively in the future.

How did the First World War reshape the way we think about politics, economics, empire, and democracy? In this episode of the Review of Democracy podcast, we speak with Duncan Kelly, Professor of Politics at the University of Cambridge, about his book Worlds of Wartime: The First World War and the Reconstruction of Modern Politics, published by Oxford University Press. Kelly’s book explores the First World Waras one of the defining moments in the reconstruction of modern political and economic thought. Moving across Europe, the United States, Ireland, India, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire, it examines how intellectuals, public figures,revolutionaries, and political thinkers tried to understand a world transformed by war. The discussion highlights how debates about empire, geopolitics, federalism, global capitalism, national self-determination, and democracy werefar more interconnected than is often assumed.

The episode also introduces some of the central ideas of the book, including Kelly’s proposal for a “modernistintellectual history” of political and economic ideas, the role of “idea makers” beyond elite politicians and military leaders, and the problem of the “closed world” that shaped geopolitical and economic thinking during and afterthe conflict. It also asks why the First World War’s intellectual legacies still matter today, especially for understanding the limits and possibilities of modern democratic politics. At its core, the conversation shows that the First World War was not only a military or diplomatic rupture. It was also amoment when the political and economic futures of the modern world were imagined, contested, and reconstructed, with consequences that continue to shape our present.

Since assuming office at the beginning of 2025, Donald Trump’s administration has targeted numerous people in the U.S. Those who have suffered the most and are the most vulnerable to the administration’s policies are the ones Trump and his compatriots believe are unworthy of living their lives on U.S. soil in peace, especially so-called “illegal immigrants.” The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) has illegally chased and deported people and even brutally harmed and killed some who tried to resist them.

However, the Trump administration is also attempting to justify its agenda via legal means. In early 2025, the U.S. President issued an executive order aimed at ending birthright citizenship as it had been accepted since the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, adopted three years after the end of the Civil War in 1868. While it had long been uncontested that all children born on U.S. soil would gain the country’s citizenship, according to this order, this would no longer hold for children of illegal immigrants. Thus, large groups of people would be stripped of their rights. Currently, a case is pending at the U.S. Supreme Court that is supposed to define whether this executive order violates the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

In this conversation, Prof. Martha Jones explains the historical roots of birthright citizenship and the current U.S. administration’s attempt to undermine it.

Martha Jones is a professor of history at Johns Hopkins University and the author of various books, including Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America, which was published in 2018 by Cambridge University Press.

The interview was conducted by Konstantin Kipp. Alina Young edited the audio file.

This interview with historian Professor Xu Guoqi explores the major themes of his latest book The Idea of China ata moment marked by the weakening of the international order and the global resurgence of nationalism. We begin by tracing the changing meanings of “China” and “Chineseness.” The conversation then moves to thinking about Chineseuniversalism, its alignments and tensions with Western liberalism, conflicts between evolving historical identities and the projection of a stable national order, and the role of “cooked past” in constructing modern Chinese identity.We also discuss the importance of diasporas, foreign influences, sport, religion, and bodily discipline in shaping modern China beyond purely political or economic frameworks. Finally, the interview reflects on the relationshipbetween science, democracy, and governance in contemporary China, and what alternative histories of “Chineseness” might still remain possible.

Are interethnic marriages bridges or fault lines in post-conflict societies? What happens when the politics of national identity enter the intimacy of home? Who were the main agents to oppose or promote mixed marriages in East-CentralEurope? Was it the Church? Was it the legal framework? Were it depending on local culture? Was it determined by class?

In our podcast in two parts, we discuss this topic with Karolina Lendák-Kabók and Lucija Balikić, around their research project called entitled “Mixed Families: Searching forIdentity and Belonging in Post-Conflict Societies”. Their research group emerges from the The Momentum (Lendület) 2025 project hosted at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE), Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of MinorityStudies and it is financed by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences – Flagship Program of the Academy.

By following marriages that crossed lines of language,confession, and social status, the research project “MixedFamilies: Searching for Identity and Belonging in Post-Conflict Societies” trace how states, churches, and communities sought to regulate intimacy long before theyregulated borders.

Our first part begins by discussing the intellectualcuriosities that led to this project and the main research questions. Then, the discussion moves to a careful unpacking of the project’s main term, mixedness, and why it offers a productive lens for studying interethnic marriages.

The episode then turns to the choice of cases: Hungaryand the post‑Yugoslav space. Listeners will learn what makes these regions comparable, how their shared imperial and socialist legacies matter.

In our latest episode of the special series producedin partnership with the Journal of Democracy, we discuss therecent article by Susan Stokes, entitled “Why Elected Leaders Subvert Democracy” (Journal of Democracy, Vol. 37, No.2,April 2026). Democracy today faces many paradoxes. According to recent reports, democracy has regressed to the level of 1978, and the successes of the third wave of democratization have been eroded. More than two-thirds ofthe world’s population now lives in autocracies. At the same time, however, democracy seems almost hegemonic as a political idea. Today, even the most brutal dictators claim that they are, in fact, staunch democrats. Perhaps evenmore paradoxically, politicians who undermine democracy often come to power through free and fair elections. This seems to have replaced the military coup, which was the predominant form of change toward authoritarianism in the 20th century. In a recent article in the Journal of Democracy, Susan Stokes examines several questions that arise from this phenomenon: Why is there an increase in democratic erosion at this point in history? What factors leave some countriesmore at risk than others? And, perhaps most importantly, what can be done to counter these developments?

How can a democracy emerge from authoritarian rule when those who hold power fear what comes next?

In this episode of the Review of Democracy podcast, Gabriel Pereira speaks with José Ramón Morales-Arilla about the challenges of democratic transition in Venezuela.Drawing on economic theory and comparative experiences, Morales-Arilla argues that the key obstacle is not simply political disagreement, but a deeper problem of credibility: regime insiders may resist change if they expect sweeping retribution.

The conversation explores how concepts such as adverse selection and signaling help explain this dynamic, and what it would take for democratic leaders to build trust with keyactors. It also introduces a novel framework for transitional justice—one that differentiates between actors based on both responsibility and strategic importance.

At stake is a difficult but unavoidable question: can “imperfect justice” provide a realistic path toward democracy, or does it risk undermining its very foundations?

Of the many political ideologies that exist, perhaps oneof the most paradoxical ones is nationalism. It has been associated with various political currents. At the end of the eighteenth and during the nineteenth century, people who wanted to overcome monarchy were often staunchnationalists. In the first half of the twentieth century, nationalism is said to have been a root cause for the two world wars and the horrors of fascism. However, especially in the second half of the same century, nationalism was important inthe fight against imperialism and the struggle for decolonization of many countries in the Global South. Today, in almost the whole world, processes of democratic backsliding, autocratization, and a rise of the far-right can beobserved. Again, nationalism is said to play an important role in this. In this conversation, Filip Milačićconsiders the influence of nationalism on current processes of democratic backsliding and proposes counterstrategies.