Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchPostscript: All talk and no action? How political scientists respond to racism and authoritarianism?
Episode 32
After the murder of George Floyd, the United States had the largest protests in the nation’s history. Other public and private responses included cor…
1 year, 1 month ago
Abby Innes, "Late Soviet Britain: Why Materialist Utopias Fail" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
Episode 515
Why has the United Kingdom, historically one of the strongest democracies in the world, become so unstable? What changed? Late Soviet Britain: Why Ma…
1 year, 1 month ago
Jørgen Møller and Jonathan Doucette, "The Catholic Church and European State Formation, AD 1000-1500" (Oxford UP, 2022)
Episode 38
Generations of social scientists and historians have argued that the escape from empire and consequent fragmentation of power - across and within pol…
1 year, 1 month ago
Coup Attempts and Democratic Resistance: Lessons from Brazil
Episode 162
As Brazil moves toward trying former president Jair Bolsonaro for plotting a coup against democracy, the United States grapples with constitutional c…
1 year, 1 month ago
Christian Gerlach, "Conditions of Violence" (de Gruyter, 2024)
Episode 220
Mass violence comes not only from states, but also from people. By analyzing mass violence as social interaction through survivor accounts and other …
1 year, 1 month ago
Jeffrey A. Lenowitz, "Constitutional Ratification Without Reason" (Oxford UP, 2022)
Episode 241
Constitutional Ratification Without Reason (Oxford UP, 2022) focuses on constitutional ratification, the procedure in which a draft constitution is s…
1 year, 1 month ago
John Boswell et al., "The Art and Craft of Comparison" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
Episode 22
There are many books giving advice about research methods on the market, but The Art and Craft of Comparison (Cambridge UP, 2019) is the first monogr…
1 year, 1 month ago
Timothy P. R. Weaver, "Inequality, Crime, and Resistance in New York City" (Temple UP, 2025)
Episode 201
Looking closely at New York City's political development since the 1970s, three "political orders"--conservativism, neoliberalism, and egalitarianism…
1 year, 1 month ago
Ian G. Baird, "Champassak Royalty and Sovereignty: Within and Between Nation-States in Mainland Southeast Asia" (U Wisconsin Press, 2024)
Episode 155
Before the creation of the European colonial states in the nineteenth century, Southeast Asia had hundreds of royal families, large and small. Today,…
1 year, 1 month ago
Omar Dahbour, "Ecosovereignty: A Political Principle for the Environmental Crisis" (Routledge, 2024)
Episode 366
Part of what makes the challenges that collectively are called the “environmental crisis” so difficult is that the vocabulary we deploy in thinking a…
1 year, 1 month ago