RevDem Podcast

Zsolt Enyedi discusses party cooperation with Danica Fink-Hafner, professor and Head of the Political Science Research Programme at University of Ljubljana, and expert on party politics, European integration, nation-building, interest-representation and democratization. Slovenia has one of the most fragmented party systems in Europe. In the past its coalitions often contained more than five parties. In the 1990s and 2000s the Liberal Democrats had a dominant role in the governments, due to their relatively large size, centrist ideological position and pragmatic politics. After their decline no similar party emerged, even though the Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS), one of the oldest Slovenian parties, maintained a leading position in the polls and provided the prime minister across many years. The parliamentary elections took place six weeks ago, and the new government was installed one week ago. The reconfiguration of the government allows us to have a fresh look at the interparty dynamics.

In this conversation conducted by Vilius Kubekas, Anna von der Goltz discusses her recent book The Other ‘68ers: Student Protest and Christian Democracy in West Germany (Oxford University Press, 2021). The conversation touches on how 1968 was experienced by center-right student activists in West Germany; their intellectual influences; how they dealt with the Nazi past; the conservative brand of feminism that they embraced; and the legacies that the combativeness of student protest left on German Christian Democracy.

In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Daniel Treisman – co-author, with Sergei Guriev, of Spin Dictators: The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st Century – discusses how ‘spin dictatorships’ differ from ‘fear dictatorships’; why such a new form of dictatorship has emerged and spread in recent decades; what might explain the at times notable popularity of such regimes and whether they are likely to represent the wave of the future; and why an informed citizenry should be seen as crucial to the defense of liberal democracy.

In this conversation with Bence Bari and Orsolya Sudár, editors Ferenc Laczó and Bálint Varga and contributor Dóra Vargha discuss the new volume Magyarország globális története, 1869-2022 (A Global History of Hungary, 1869-2022). The conversation focuses on some of the innovative questions posed by trying to reconceptualize the history of a Central and Eastern European country in a global frame; how the subjects of the volume’s one hundred chapters have been selected; the relation of this new book to other narratives of Hungarian history; and the more political stakes of releasing such a publication today. László Bence Bari is a doctoral candidate at the History Department of the Central European University. Ferenc Laczó is an assistant professor with tenure (universitair docent 1) in history at Maastricht University. He is also an editor at the Review of Democracy. Orsolya Sudár is a doctoral candidate at the History Department of the Central European University. Bálint Varga is a research fellow at the Center for Humanities in Budapest. Dóra Vargha is professor of history and medical humanities at the University of Exeter and Humboldt University, and is a visiting scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin.

In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Jacob Mchangama discusses central ideas of his new monograph Free Speech: A Global History from Socrates to Social Media. The conversation reflects on how to write a global history of this subject; contrasts egalitarian and elitist conceptions of free speech; explores facets of the free speech recession experienced in the early 21st century; and explains why the counterintuitive principle of free speech should be seen as essential.

In a conversation with our editor Kasia Krzyżanowska, professor Tommaso Pavone discusses his newly published book The Ghostwriters. Lawyers and the Politics behind the Judicial Construction of Europe[CUP 2022]. He challenges the judicial empowerment thesis leveraging empirical data obtained from the EU national judiciaries; explains the role that the local Euro-lawyers played in the judicial construction of  Europe; and traces the evolutions of European lawyering, the role of contemporary legal academics, and the implications of his research for understanding the EU’s rule of law crisis.

In this conversation with guest contributor Nikola Pantić, Davide Rodogno discusses his new book Night on Earth: A History of International Humanitarianism in the Near East, 1918-1930 (Cambridge University Press, 2021). The conversation focuses on the reasons why the Middle East became a popular destination for Western humanitarian agencies in the first decades of the twentieth century, how these agencies operated among the local populations, what role religion played in these missions, and the ways in which the writing of history can give some agency to those whose voices have been omitted in the archives of these humanitarian institutions.

In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Wolfgang Merkel describes key decisions and non-decisions of the new German government led by Olaf Scholz and addresses the question of continuities with the Merkel era; he discusses the main issues and dilemmas that have been raised in the German debates regarding the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine and reflects on the reasons that led him to sign the recent Open Letter to Chancellor Olaf Scholz; and considers the perceptions and attitudes that guide Germany in its complex international environment but also the blind spots and mistakes of the country’s recent Russia policy. Wolfgang Merkel is a Senior Research Fellow at the CEU’s Democracy Institute. Between 2004 and 2020, he acted as Professor of Political Science at the Humboldt University in Berlin and as the Director of the department “Democracy and Democratisation” at the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung. He is a member of several prestigious academic bodies and has held visiting professorships at universities on various continents. He is also a non-party member of the Basic Values Commission of the Executive Committee of the German Social Democratic Party.

In a conversation with RevDem editor Kasia Krzyżanowska, professor Ewa Thompson (University of Rice) elaborates on imperialistic motifs in Russian literature from the end of 18th century up until today. 

In this interview for the Rule of Law section, RevDem Editor Oliver Garner converses with Niels Kirst about the state of the Rule of Law in the USA and the EU. They discuss the recently-leaked Supreme Court draft Opinion which, if passed, would overturn the constitutional right to abortion, and whether this constitutes a form of regression; if the principle of non-regression would prevent EU Member States from following suit; what lessons the EU can learn from how the USA went about establishing a federal government; how the U.S. Supreme Court interprets the “constitutional identity” of the USA; whether or not the EU should engage in similar constitutional interaction to that seen in the USA immediately following the leaked draft Opinion; and if a mechanism akin to the “federal guarantee” clause would work for the EU.