RevDem Podcast

In this conversation at the Review of Democracy, Leah Hunt-Hendrix – co-author, with Astra Taylor, of the new book Solidarity. The Past, Present, and Future of a World Changing Idea – shows what makes solidarity so essential in social movements that advance and expand democratic ambitions; explains why philanthropy should be adapted to grassroots movements rather than vice versa; discusses how solidaristic organizing could become more transformative in the future; and reflects on the intellectual historical context of their book. Leah Hunt-Hendrix is a political theorist with a PhD, an activist, and a movement builder who has organized around issues of social and economic justice. She has co-founded progressive organizations such as Way to Win, Solidaire, and the Emergent Fund. She also serves on the board of directors and acts as advisor to several prestigious organizations. Leah Hunt-Hendrix and Astra Taylor’s Solidarity. The Past, Present, and Future of a World Changing Idea has been published by Pantheon.   The conversation has been conducted by Ferenc Laczo. Lucie Hunter has edited the recording.

In this conversation with RevDem editor and a re:constitution fellow Kasia Krzyżanowska, Krzysztof Izdebski (Batory Foundation) and Bartosz Pilitowski (Court Watch Poland) discuss all the current challenges the Polish government is facing with the legal legacy left by the Law and Justice party. How to restore trust in the judicial institutions? How to deal with the irregularly established Constitutional Tribunal and the National Council of the Judiciary? What should be the role of the judges in designing the judicial system?

Introduction (Alexandra Medzibrodszky): Welcome all to this episode of the Review of Democracy podcast. I’m Alexandra Medzibrodszky, and it is a great pleasure to have with us today Una Bergmane to discuss her book "Politics of Uncertainty: the United States, the Baltic Question, and the Collapse of the Soviet Union". So, first of all, thank you, Una, for accepting our invitation and being here with us. Before we start discussing your book, let me introduce our guest today. Una Bergmane’s main research interests are the history of the Soviet collapse, the Baltic states, diasporas, transnational networks, collective memory, and the post-Cold War transitions in the Baltic Sea region. She is currently an Academy of Finland research fellow at the Aleksanteri Institute in Helsinki. Before joining the Institute, she held various fellowships across the world; she was a postdoctoral fellow at Cornell University in the US, a teaching fellow at the London School of Economics, and a postdoctoral researcher at the Academy of Finland-funded BALTRANS project. She obtained her Ph.D. from Sciences Po in Paris. The focus of our podcast today is Una’s first book, which was published by Oxford University Press in 2023. As already mentioned, the title of the book is "Politics of Uncertainty: the United States, the Baltic Question, and the Collapse of the Soviet Union". In a nutshell, the book tells the story of how Cold War superpowers tried to deal with the Baltic question at the end of the 1980s, but also how marginal actors can find strategies to gain recognition and visibility on the international stage during periods of deep historical change. Let’s have a closer look at the ideas and arguments of your book.

The question of how to reverse illiberal backsliding after regime change is becoming live within Europe and beyond. This Rule of Law section podcast between Oliver Garner and András Sajó (Professor at the Central European University and Senior Research Fellow at the CEU Democracy Institute) considers this dilemma through the recently published lens of the CEU DI working paper ‘Militant Rule of Law and Not-So-Bad Law’.

For most of its existence the Spanish party system has been dominated by the Socialist Party, PSOE, and the People’s Party, PP. Accordingly, and somewhat unusually in Europe, the governments tended to be based on a single party. However, parties have been repeatedly forced to cooperate in parliament and since 2020 they must share office in government. This change is obviously related to the fact that recently new actors have appeared on the scene, challenging the center-right and the center-left. This podcast between Zsolt Enyedi and Fernando Casal Bertoa discusses inter-party relations in Spain. Fernando Casal Bertoa is Associate Professor at the University of Nottingham and the co-director of the Research Center for the Study of Parties and Democracy.

In this interview with RevDem editor Kasia Krzyżanowska, Rochelle Terman discusses her most recent book The Geopolitics of Shaming: When Human Rights Pressure Works—and When It Backfires published with Princeton University Press (2023). Rochelle Terman -- an assistant professor of the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago. Her first book, The Geopolitics of Shaming: When Human Rights Pressure Works—and When It Backfires, was published in 2023 with Princeton University Press.

In conversation with RevDem editor Lucie Hunter, Joachim Häberlen discusses his latest book, Beauty is in the Street: Protest and Counterculture in Post-War Europe (Allen Lane, 2023). Joachim Häberlen, Ph.D., is a historian of modern Europe and a writer focused on protest movements in post-war Europe and the experiences of Afghan and Syrian refugees in Germany. He received his academic training at the University of Chicago, where he graduated with a Ph.D. in Modern European History in 2011. Some of his publications include The Emotional Politics of the Alternative Left: West Germany, 1968-1984 (Cambridge University Press, 2018), Citizens and Refugees: Stories from Afghanistan and Syria to Germany (Routledge, 2022), and Beauty is in the Street: Protest and Counterculture in Post-War Europe (Allen Lane, 2023).

In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Van Jackson – author of the new book Grand Strategies of the Left. The Foreign Policy of Progressive Worldmaking – explains what distinguishes progressives from liberal internationalists; clarifies why he thinks that the tradition of grand strategy might be worth rescuing by and for progressives; discusses the three main progressive grand strategies that are recurrently articulated in the US these days, what they priorities are, and what risks they respectively contain; distils the main consensual points of progressive worldmaking; and reflects on what a global starting point for agendas comparable to his own might lead to. Van Jackson is a political scientist and a scholar of international relations who specializes in East Asian and Pacific security, critical analysis of defense issues, and the intersection of working-class interests with foreign policy. He is a Senior Lecturer in International Relations at Victoria University of Wellington. He also acts as a Senior Research Scholar at Security in Context where he co-directs the “Multipolarity, Great-power Competition, and the Global South” project. He is the author of four books, has made contributions to a wide range of international media, and runs The Undiplomatic Podcast. Grand Strategies of the Left. The Foreign Policy of Progressive Worldmaking has been published by Cambridge University Press. In collaboration with Lucie Hunter.

The guest for the latest RevDem Rule of Law podcast is Professor Jeff King. He is a Professor of Law at University College London and he is the Director of Research at the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law. He has previously acted as a legal adviser to the House of Lords Select Committee on the Constitution. The conversation with Oliver Garner discusses Jeff’s 'regulatory’ conception of the Rule of Law and its application to contemporary challenges.

In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Matthew Longo – author of the new book The Picnic. A Dream of Freedom and the Collapse of the Iron Curtain – discusses what motivated him to research the Pan-European Picnic of 1989; why he places such an emphasis on the uncertainty of the situation in those crucial days; and what conclusions he has drawn regarding the meaning of freedom in 1989 – and how that meaning has changed since. Matthew Longo is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Leiden University. The Picnic. A Dream of Freedom and the Collapse of the Iron Curtain has been published by W.W. Norton & Company.   In collaboration with Lucie Hunter.