RevDem Podcast

In this conversation with Kasia Krzyżanowska, Zoltán Gábor Szűcs discusses his newest book Political ethics in illiberal regimes. A realist interpretation. He explains the internal logic of an illiberal regime, the importance of studying its ethics, discusses the role of the policy experts, civil servants and judges in illiberal regimes, and elaborates on the problem of playing hardball by illiberal politicians. In collaboration with Lucie Hunter.

“What we ended up with in recent decades are fragmented structures: educators who are not listening to academic knowledge production because their time is just spent on reproducing knowledge; researchers who don't feed back their knowledge into the educational sphere because they are bought out or are buying themselves out from education; civil society which is not listening to academic knowledge production because it generates its own professionalization, the dynamic of which has nothing to do with academic reflection; and academics who are not paying attention to the usability of their ideas in real life.” This is how Balázs Trencsényi, Professor at the CEU History Department and Lead Researcher at the CEU Democracy Institute, describes the larger challenge that the projects he is currently involved in aim to address. Delving into the research conducted at the Democracy in History group of the CEU Democracy Institute and ongoing initiatives such as the Invisible University for Ukraine and the Academics Facing Autocracy Program with Lucija Balikić, Trencsényi provides historically informed insights into the modalities of relinking these structures and offers inspiring reflections on their potential for strengthening democratic societies across the globe. 

In this episode of the party cooperation series, Zsolt Enyedi talks with Murat Somer, professor at Koç University working on polarization, religion, ethnic conflicts, democracy, and democratic erosion. He is an advisor to various civil society organizations and opposition political parties.   Turkey is a country with a long experience of cooperation among parties both in the government and outside of it. At the same time, Turkish politics is deeply polarized. The party system is dominated by AKP, the Justice and Development Party, led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the country’s president. AKP is supported by the so-called People’s Alliance. The opposition party with most governmental experience is CHP, the Republican People’s Party. CHP leads the Nation Alliance, which is also called the “Table of Six”, having currently five other members. The Pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party, HDP, is at the head of a third, smaller alliance. The parliamentary and presidential elections are scheduled to take place on 14th of May, six weeks from now.  

In this conversation with RevDem assistant editor Lorena Drakula, Michael Freeden – leading political theorist and author of the new book Concealed Silences and Inaudible Voices in Political Thinking – discusses the various forms of political silences; the problems of superimposing and inventing voices; the effects of the unnoticeable and the unknowable in political thinking, with the aim of understanding the complex and often hidden aspects of silence that shape our political beliefs and actions.

In this conversation with Kasia Krzyżanowska, Johannes Voelz discusses his theory of the aesthetics of populism, explains how Pierre Bourdieu and Norbert Elias can help us understand contemporary populism, elaborates on the concept of a (Trump) rally, talks about the culture of a dichotomized world, and shares his insights on the role of culture in helping to ease the deep political conflicts.

In this conversation with Kasia Krzyżanowska, Martin Loughlin discusses his newest book Against Constitutionalism (Harvard University Press 2022).

In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Aakar Patel – author of The Anarchist Cookbook. A Toolkit to Protest and Peaceful Resistance – discusses why he considers dissent essential to improving society; what lessons we can draw from successful recent examples of protest; which options activists have to amplify and maximize their efforts; and how egregious laws on the book, practices of denying rights, and the extreme disparities of Indian society have shaped activists’ possibilities and agenda.

In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Tara Zahra – author of the new monograph Against the World: Anti-Globalism and Mass Politics Between the World Wars – discusses the common features of anti-globalist agendas between the 1910s and the 1930s; explains what the main phases of anti-globalism looked like and how its various forms related to globalization; shows why centering women – as key actors as well as objects – and focusing on Central Europe amount to fruitful approaches; reflects on the long-term consequences of interwar anti-globalism – and how our present predicament may help us reconsider this history. In cooperation with Lucie Hunter.

In this latest RevDem Rule of Law podcast, Oliver Garner speaks to Jakub Jaraczewski about the European Commission’s latest actions to defend the EU’s values against backsliding Member States. Jakub is a Research Coordinator at Democracy Reporting International, a Berlin based NGO, and one of the coordinators of the “re:constitution” programme.

In the conversation with Vilius Kubekas, Jerry Z. Muller discusses the life of German Jewish intellectual Jacob Taubes. In his newest book Professor of Apocalypse: The Many Lives of Jacob Taubes (Princeton University Press, 2022), Muller develops an in-depth interpretation of Taubes, the person and the intellectual, uncovering the extensive intellectual networks Taubes contributed to, and clarifying his role as a  facilitator of ideas across different   national and intellectual milieus. The book offers a close examination of European intellectual life during the 20th century with a particular focus on German and Jewish intellectuals.