Episodios

  • Trump, the UN Charter, and the Strange Politics of International Law

    Trump, the UN Charter, and the Strange Politics of International Law
    Feb 17 2026
    International law scholars are often among the sharpest critics of the Trump administration—but what if the usual story misses something essential? In this episode, RBI interim director Eli Karetny speaks with NYU international law professor Robert Howse about Trump’s complicated relationship with the UN Charter system, from Gaza to Venezuela and Iran. The conversation also turns to political theory: Leo Strauss’s reputation as a neoconservative godfather, the shadow of Carl Schmitt, and how today’s MAGA New Right recycles older anxieties about liberalism, virtue, and masculinity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science
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    1 h y 4 m
  • Lisa Björkman, "Drama of Democracy: Political Representation in Mumbai" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)

    Lisa Björkman, "Drama of Democracy: Political Representation in Mumbai" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)
    Feb 17 2026
    In Drama of Democracy: Political Representation in Mumbai (U Minnesota Press, 2025), Lisa Björkman invites our attention to political form and how they allow us to appreciate the various mediums through which representation is negotiated. Drawing on a decade of research in the city of Mumbai closely following the movements of corporation election candidates, protesting crowds, political rally organisers, and social workers, the book maps the linguistic, visual, sonic, and semiotic tools used to construct the spectacle of democracy. It asks: how does the figure of the crowd subvert what euromodern conceptions of political representation? How do films and their constructions of the public, the organising of rallies, election season cash flows, garlanding, placards and slogans in protests inform new meanings of representation? Through this richly engaging and genre-breaking work, Bjorkman offers new ways – originating from Mumbai – to explain the reorganisation of political authority around the world. Lisa Björkman is an Associate Professor in Urban and Public Affairs at the University of Louisville. She is the author of Pipe Politics, Contested Waters: Embedded Infrastructures of Millennial Mumbai, Waiting Town: Life in Transit and Mumbai’s Other World-Class Histories, and Bombay Brokers. Lisa is also a research associate at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle. Raghavi Viswanath is a postdoctoral researcher and teaching fellow at SOAS, University of London. Her research, supported by the Leverhulme Trust, examines how pastoralists claim grazing rights under India’s Forest Rights Act 2006 and how the everyday processes of staking such claims has been impacted by the authoritarian turn in India. LinkedIn. Email:rv13@soas.ac.uk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science
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    1 h y 22 m
  • Alexis Lerner, "Post-Soviet Graffiti: Free Speech in Authoritarian States" (U Toronto Press, 2025)

    Alexis Lerner, "Post-Soviet Graffiti: Free Speech in Authoritarian States" (U Toronto Press, 2025)
    Feb 16 2026
    Post-Soviet Graffiti: Free Speech in Authoritarian States (University of Toronto Press, 2025) is an empirically grounded ethnographic study of how graffiti and street art can be used as a political tool to circumvent censorship, express grievances, and control public discourse, particularly in authoritarian states. For more than a decade, Dr. Alexis M. Lerner combed the alleyways, underpasses, and public squares of cities once under communist rule, from Berlin in the west to Vladivostok in the east, recording thousands of cases of critical and satirical political street art and cataloging these artworks linguistically and thematically across space and time. Complemented by first-hand interviews with leading artists, activists, and politicians from across the region, Post-Soviet Graffiti provides theoretical reflection on public space as a site for political action, a semiotic reading of signs and symbols, and street art as a form of text. The book answers the question of how we conceptualize avenues of dissent under authoritarian rule by showing how contemporary graffiti functions not only as a popular public aesthetic, but also as a mouthpiece of political sentiment, especially within the post-Soviet region and post-communist Europe. A purposefully anonymous and accessible artform, graffiti is an effective tool for circumventing censorship and expressing political views. This is especially true for marginalized populations and for those living in otherwise closed and censored states. Post-Soviet Graffiti reveals that graffiti does not exist in a vacuum; rather, it can be read as a narrative about a place, the people who live there, and the things that matter to them. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science
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    46 m
  • How Corporate Lobbyists are Capturing EU Institutions

    How Corporate Lobbyists are Capturing EU Institutions
    Feb 16 2026
    Brussels is full of lobbyists. Over decades, big companies have been using their financial might not only to influence EU policies but even to shape how EU institutions are designed and what their key goals are. Host Licia Cianetti talks to Kenneth Haar, who for almost two decades has been conducting research on corporate lobbying in the EU for Corporate Europe Observatory. Kenneth explains how corporate lobbying works, what lobbyists want, and how a sketchily defined “competitiveness” agenda is driving a far-reaching deregulation drive by the European Commission, which endangers hard fought for environmental, social, health, and labour protections.  Guest: Kenneth Haar is a researcher and campaigner at Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO). His freely downloadable book, A Europe of Capital, details how corporate lobbyists got to the core of the European project. Corporate Europe Observatory is an advocacy and investigative research group. Their many reports, articles, and infographics on corporate lobbying in the EU are available on the CEO website. You can download their alternative tourist guide to Bussels here: “Lobby Planet – Brussels”. CEO’s podcast EU Watchdog Radio is also highly recommended! Presenter: Licia Cianetti is Associate Professor at the University of Birmingham and Founding Deputy 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science
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    33 m
  • India’s Democratic Republic in Flux

    India’s Democratic Republic in Flux
    Feb 15 2026
    In this episode of Democracy Dialogues, co-host Maya Tudor speaks with Yogendra Yadav – political thinker, activist, and one of India’s most prominent voices on democratic reform. A former academic and party leader, Yadav has led influential research initiatives, built new political movements, and worked at the intersection of grassroots activism and national politics. Their conversation explores the forces shaping India’s current democratic crossroads. Yadav reflects on global perceptions of India’s democratic decline, the meaning of its 2024 election results, and the interplay between national and state-level politics. He addresses the erosion of institutional independence – from the electoral commission to the media – and the growing impact of religious polarization on governance. Drawing on decades of experience in social movements, Yadav considers what drives political mobilization, the role nationalism plays in supporting or undermining democracy, and the strategies citizens can use to protect democratic values in turbulent times. From the “thousand small cuts” undermining India’s democracy to the enduring potential of grassroots activism, this episode offers both a candid diagnosis of India’s political challenges and a call to action for anyone committed to safeguarding democratic principles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science
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    45 m
  • Himanshu Prabha Ray ed., "Recentering Southeast Asia: Politics, Religion and Maritime Connections" (Routledge, 2026)

    Himanshu Prabha Ray ed., "Recentering Southeast Asia: Politics, Religion and Maritime Connections" (Routledge, 2026)
    Feb 15 2026
    Recentering Southeast Asia: Politics, Religion and Maritime Connections (Routledge, 2026) assesses the impact of European colonization in the late 19th and early 20th century in ‘restructuring’ the shared past of India and Southeast Asia. It provides case studies that transcend colonial constructs and adopt newer approaches to understanding the shared past. The authors explore these developments through the lens of political figures like Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964) and re-examine themes such as the Greater India Society (1926–1959) established in Calcutta, and the role of Buddhism in post-World War II connections, as the repatriation of the mortal remains of Japanese soldiers killed in Burma (Myanmar) acquired urgency. Drawing on a diverse range of sources including archaeology, Buddhist texts, the afterlives of the Hindu temples, maritime networks, and inscriptions from Vietnam and central India, the book will be an essential read for scholars and researchers of history, Buddhism, archaeology, heritage studies, cultural studies, and political history as well as South and Southeast Asian history. Guest: Himanshu Prabha Ray Interviewer: Natali Pearson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science
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    1 h y 4 m
  • Nadine Gordimer: “Living in South Africa’s Interregnum” James Lecture, October 14, 1982

    Nadine Gordimer: “Living in South Africa’s Interregnum” James Lecture, October 14, 1982
    Feb 15 2026
    In today’s episode from the Vault, we revisit Nadine Gordimer’s James Lecture on the political landscape of South Africa, presented at the New York Institute for the Humanities on October 14, 1982. In 1982, resistance to South Africa’s apartheid was growing increasingly militant, and the state’s brutal repression heightened this tension. In her lecture, Gordimer speaks directly to this political landscape, describing the period as an “interregnum." She discusses the crisis of white identity in South Africa, the relationship between art and politics, the urgency for an alternative political left working toward what she calls a democracy without economic and military terror. This lecture was the basis of Gordimer’s essay “Living in the Interregnum,” published in the New York Review of Books in January of 1983. Nadine Gordimer was a South African writer and political activist. She authored fifteen novels, including The Conversationalist, Burger’s Daughter and July’s People, over two hundred short stories, and several volumes of essays. She was awarded the Booker prize for the Conversationalist in 1974 and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1991. She died in 2014 at the age of 90 in Johannesburg, South Africa. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science
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    1 h y 9 m
  • Competing Visions for International Order

    Competing Visions for International Order
    Feb 13 2026
    Are we living in an era of competing international orders? A new book, entitled Competing Visions for International Order: Challenges for a Shared Direction in an Age of Global Contestation (Routledge, 2025) edited by Ville Sinkkonen, Veera Laine, Matti Puranen addresses the ultimate question. In this episode of the Nordic Asia Podcast, Prof. Julie Yu-Wen Chen from the University of Helsinki talks to Ville Sinkkonen (Finnish Institute of International Affairs), Matti Puranen (Finnish National Defense University and University of Helsinki), and Bart Gaens (Finnish Institute of International Affairs and the International Centre for Defense and Security) about the ambition of this new book and several key takeaways concerning particularly the US, China, and India from this book. The book’s analysis also offers normative prescriptions on how to avoid a tragic race to the bottom – a fragmented world of competing orders where states are unable to address shared global crises and challenges such as pandemics, cross-border crime, climate tragedies, and armed conflict. With this, it concludes by recognising the importance of agency as well as political imagination in navigating the crisis-ridden ordering moment of the international system. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students in global order studies and governance, geopolitics, regional studies, foreign policy analysis as well as more broadly to international relations and security, political history, human geography, and policymakers. Julie Yu-Wen Chen is Professor of Chinese Studies and Asian studies coordinator at the Department of Cultures at the University of Helsinki (Finland). The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the following academic partners: Asia Centre, University of Tartu (Estonia), Asian studies, University of Helsinki (Finland), Centre for Asian Studies, Vytautas Magnus University (Lithuania), Centre for East Asian Studies, University of Turku (Finland), Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University (Sweden) and Centre for South Asian Democracy, University of Oslo (Norway). We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science
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    29 m