RevDem Podcast

In conversation with RevDem editor Kasia Krzyżanowska, Dr. Stephanie DeGooyer discusses her recent publication Before Borders: A Legal and Literary History of Naturalization (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022).

Formal Rule of Law backsliding in Hungary and Poland has been well-publicized. Yet this is just the tip of the iceberg of a system of informal power connections that are undermining the Rule of Law and democracy. In this RevDem Rule of Law podcast Oliver Garner discusses this informal power with Edit Zgut-Przybylska.

In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, George Steinmetz – author of the major new monograph The Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought. French Sociology and the Overseas Empire – sketches the manifold entanglements of French sociology with the French Empire and colonialism; discusses the key ideas and innovations that have emerged in this context; dissects how indigenous scholars fared within the vast network of French institutions over time; illuminates his own approach to intellectual history he calls a historical socio-analysis of the social sciences; and reflect on how contemporary agendas of decolonization could be made more convincing and fruitful, not least by drawing on what French sociologists of colonialism have “partially and tentatively foreseen.” George Steinmetz is a historical sociologist of states and empires with a focus on modern Germany, France, and Britain and their colonies, and a social theorist especially interested in the history and philosophy of the social sciences. He acts as the Charles Tilly Professor of Sociology at the University of Michigan. The Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought. French Sociology and the Overseas Empire has been published by Princeton University Press.

In the latest RevDem Rule of Law podcast Oliver Garner discusses the work of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee. András Kádár is an attorney at law and co-chair of the Committee. Amongst other engagements and positions he is the Hungarian member of the European Network of Legal Experts in the Non-Discrimination field. Márta Pardavi is the other co-chair of the Committee and she also co-leads the Recharging Advocacy for Rights in Europe (RARE) program. Previously, she has been a policy leader fellow at the EUI School of Transnational Governance in Florence.

In the last months the Israeli public has demonstrated regarding a series of proposed judicial reforms. The protests led to the suspension of the government’s plans for the Passover break of the Israeli Parliament. The Knesset will reconvene this week and the next chapter of this saga will commence.   In this podcast, Assistant Editor of the Rule of Law section Teodora Miljojkovic discusses the reforms with Professor Adam Shinar, Associate Professor at Harry Radzyner Law School, Reichman University. Professor Shinar is a member of the Board of Directors of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, and he is an academic advisory board member of the Israel Supreme Court Project at Cardozo Law School, Yeshiva University.

In this conversation with assistant editor Lorena Drakula, Vjosa Musliu discusses her book Europeanization and State Building as Everyday Practices. Performing Europe in the Western Balkans (Routledge, 2021). The conversation critically examines mechanisms of Europeanization, discourses surrounding international interventions, and the processes of EU enlargement to the Western Balkans.

In this interview with RevDem assistant editor Giancarlo Grignaschi, Clara Mattei – Assistant Professor in the Economics Department of The New School for Social Research – talks about her new book The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism (University of Chicago Press, 2022). The manuscript explores the historical origins of austerity and its intellectual underpinnings in interwar Britain and Italy. During this interview, the author presents the main arguments of the book, the comparison between the two countries, the role of politics and the decline in electoral participation, the relationship between austerity and populism, and the recent problem of rising inflation.

In this conversation with Ferenc Laczó and Vera Scepanovic, Quinn Slobodian – author of the new book Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy – discusses the unusual legal spaces and peculiar jurisdictions that have multiplied in recent decades and the libertarian ideas that propelled their rise; dissects the relationship of such zones to existing states and their sovereignty; shows how legal unevenness of contemporary globalization relates to earlier forms of imperial and colonial rule; and reflects on the more normative  elements of his critique and on the future of the zones in an age of ‘de-globalization.’ Quinn Slobodian is a history professor at Wellesley College. Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy has been published by Penguin.

In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Daniel Chandler – author of the new book Free and Equal: What Would a Fair Society Look Like? – discusses key principles that a better and fairer society could be based on; shows what makes John Rawls’ ideas so exceptionally relevant today and how they could help improve the democratic process; explains how placing questions of power, control, dignity, and self-respect at the center of liberal economic thinking would foster new economic arrangements; and discusses where egalitarian liberalism has already been practiced and with what consequences. Daniel Chandler is an economist and philosopher based at the London School of Economics. Free and Equal: What Would a Fair Society Look Like? has just been published by Allen Lane.

In this conversation with RevDem editor Kasia Krzyzanowska, Aleksandra Lewicki discusses her recently published article “East-west inequalities and the ambiguous racialization of ‘Eastern Europeans’”. Lewicki elaborates on the racialized imaginary of the Western European discourses on migration, talks about how the stereotype of hard-working Eastern Europeans negatively impacts their labor conditions, and ponders on the influence of neoliberal policies on the precarization of labor.