RevDem Podcast

RevDem assistant editor Giancarlo Grignaschi in conversation with Dóra Piroska, assistant professor at CEU in Vienna at the department of International Relations, about her chapter on financial nationalism in the Elgar Handbook of Economic Nationalism, edited by Andreas Pickel.

In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Shadi Hamid – author of the new book The Problem of Democracy: America, the Middle East, and the Rise and Fall of an Idea – addresses democratic dilemmas that cannot be wished away; explains how he distinguishes between liberalism and democracy and why he proposes a democracy-first strategy; assesses the democratic record of Islamist political movements and parties; and discusses how the US could use its leverage in the Middle East to support or even foster democratic change.

In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Dan Stone – author of the new book The Holocaust: An Unfinished History – discusses various ways the history of the Holocaust has been misunderstood; addresses the challenges of narrating the Holocaust and clarifies his own interpretative framework; sketches the European dimension of the genocide and how German and non-German perpetrators interacted to execute it; and reflects on how perspectives on the Holocaust have changed over time and what studying it meant in the current moment. Dan Stone is a professor of Modern History at Royal Holloway, University of London, and director of its Holocaust Research Institute. He is a historian of ideas who works primarily on twentieth-century European history. The Holocaust: An Unfinished History is published in Penguin’s Pelican series.

In this conversation, our guest contributor Alexandra Medzibrodszky talks with Zoltán Boldizsár Simon and Lars Deile, the co-editors of the recently published volume Historical Understanding: Past, Present, and Future (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022). The conversation focuses on the theory of history, reflecting on our changing perceptions of historical time; the relationship between the past, present, and future; the concept of the Anthropocene and its importance for historians; as well as on the legacy of Reinhart Koselleck and the extent to which he remains significant to contemporary debates on the theory of history.

In autumn 2023, Polish parliamentary elections will take place 8 years after the Law and Justice Party came to power and the “Rule of Law crisis” with the EU commenced. In this first RevDem Rule of Law podcast of the year our editor Oliver Garner discusses the “8th season of the Polish telenovela” with Dr. Anna Wójcik. Anna is an assistant professor at the Institute of Law Studies at the Polish Academy of Sciences and she has co-founded two Rule of Law monitoring projects in Poland – the Wiktor Osiatyński Archive and the “Rule of Law in Poland”.

The podcast is based on the conference and the special issue of Politics and Governance, No. 3 in 2022 edited by Matthijs Bogaards (CEU Department of Political Science, CEU Democracy Institute) and Andrea Pető (CEU Department of Gender Studies, CEU Democracy Institute). The first major exploration of the relationship between illiberalism and gender focuses on a region where gender progress is under threat from de-democratization: post-communist Europe. The authors of the papers in the podcast investigate the gendered working of illiberal institutions as well as the policies, mechanisms, and discourses through which the very notion of gender is constructed as a threat to increasingly populist and nationalist views of the polity, society, family, and individual. The contributions examine illiberalism’s impact on gendered issues in a broad range of social, economic, and political spheres, including the labor market, culture, academia, the legal system, foreign policy, and security. They do so from a variety of perspectives and a diversity of academic backgrounds, together building the first systematic examination of the relationship between illiberalism and gender in post-communist Europe. Speakers include: Andrea Pető, Weronika Grzebalska. Zuzanna Madarova, Karolina Zbytniewska, Lubomir Zvada, Judit Takács, Matthijs Bogaards,  Jazgul Kochkorova, Barbara Gaweda, Alina Dragolea, Katalin Parti.

In this conversation with RevDem editor Kasia Krzyżanowska, Bruce Robbins discusses his newest book Criticism and Politics. A Polemical Introduction. He tackles the influence the democratic movements had on literary criticism; discusses the nostalgic paradigm of literary studies; ponders on the role of critics in society; and argues against populist approaches to the literature.

In this conversation with RevDem assistant editor Lorena Drakula, Filip Milačić – author of the book Stateness and Democratic Consolidation. Lessons from Former Yugoslavia – discusses the effects unresolved issues of stateness can have on the trajectories of democratic consolidation; how political actors can instrumentalize polarization in society to justify authoritarian measures; and what can be learned for democracy promotion projects today.

In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Beverly Gage – author of the new biography G-Man. J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century – discusses how Hoover built and shaped the FBI and what made him enjoy such an exceptional and long-lasting career; dissects his contradictions, reflecting on the sources of his popularity and why his reputation got so badly damaged; and explains what original sources and innovative scholarship a new biography of him can utilize and what placing him at the center of the American Century can teach us. Beverly Gage is Professor of 20th-century U.S. history at Yale University. G-Man. J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century is published by Viking.

In a special edition of the RevDem podcast, our editors Laszlo Bruszt, Oliver Garner, Kasia Krzyżanowska, Ferenc Laczo, Michał Matlak, and Renata Uitz discuss their favorite RevDem content, best books and articles they have read, most important political events of 2022 and more. At the end of the episode, they are joined by the authors of the most popular piece of 2022 published by RevDem: an op-ed by Elżbieta Krzyżanowska and Pavel Skigin “The discourse of privilege: Western Europe and the Russian War against Ukraine.”