RevDem Podcast

In this conversation, Pat Cox reflects on the new term of the European Parliament and the importance of the rise of the Right in the Union and its member states. He also discusses his work in Ukraine after 2012 – when he led a mission to free political prisoners imprisoned by President Viktor Yanukovych – as well as in more recent years when he has co-directed the Jean Monnet Dialogues which aim to build consensus between the main political parties represented in the Ukrainian Parliament. Pat Cox was President of the European Liberal Democrat Group between 1998 and 2002 and served as President of the European Parliament from 2002 until 2004. In what turned out to be the final phase of the Santer Commission in early 1999, he played a decisive role in establishing parliamentary accountability of the executive. Since 2015, he has been President of the Jean Monnet Foundation for Europe.

In this conversation at the Review of Democracy, Zack Beauchamp – author of the new book The Reactionary Spirit. How America’s Most Insidious Political Tradition Swept the World – discusses the specific kind of antidemocratic politics that emerges in countries with democratic institutions; shows how the United States might to said to have invented competitive authoritarianism; explains the conclusions he drew from comparing countries from different continents and how those conclusions may help us correct Western misperceptions; and reflects on the major intellectual inspirations behind his book. Zack Beauchamp is a senior correspondent at Vox where he covers challenges to democracy in the US and elsewhere, right-wing populism, and the world of ideas. He also acted as the host of Worldly, Vox’s weekly podcast on foreign policy and international affairs. The Reactionary Spirit. How America’s Most Insidious Political Tradition Swept the World is published by Public Affairs.

In this podcast, Silvia Márton, principal investigator within the ERC Project “Transnational Histories of ‘Corruption’ in Central-South-East Europe,” discusses the multiple understandings of the concept “corruption” in the context of Central-South-East Europe; the relevance of this debate in understanding the process of modernization between 1750 and 1850; factors that led politicians, scholars, travelers and writers to label Central-South-East Europe as “corrupt;” and how this team aims to challenge the main historiographical debates through the use of multiple sets of sources.

This latest RevDem Rule of Law podcast discusses the doctoral research of Dr. Maciej Krogel following the defence of his thesis “The intellectual sources of the European Union’s response to the rule of law crisis in the Member States”. Maciej is a lecturer at the University of Amsterdam and he completed a re:constitution fellowship in 2022/23. Oliver Garner: Your Ph.D. traces the intellectual sources of the EU's response to the Rule of Law crisis in certain Member States.  This is a topic that we have covered since the inception of RevDem.  Could you summarise your key findings for our listeners and readers? Maciej Krogel: Thanks a lot for asking me about it.  It is still brand new to me to be graduated from the EUI and I think you are the first person to ask me about my research in an interview.  So, indeed, I have written my thesis about the background conditions for the response of the European Union institutions to the Rule of Law crisis in the Member States.  A lot has been written about the Rule of Law crisis, about institutions, about judiciaries, and about the problems in the Member States in the recent years.  However, I think what was lacking, and what is lacking still, is the critical theory of the origins of what the European Union institutions are doing. We have some very specific critical accounts of, for example, the overly legalistic response or the democratic credentials of the response.  But I have decided to trace the origins of the Rule of Law response of the European Union to its earlier constitutional heritage, as I call it. What has been lacking most of all, I think, has been situating the Rule of Law reactions, and also scholarship, within the broader constitutional heritage, concepts, ideas, and discussions of the European Union from the past decades.   For instance, on topics such as constitutional pluralism, constitutional change, and membership in the European Union. These were the three main strands that I selected for tracing the origins in my thesis.

In this conversation, Gergő Medve-Bálint – co-editor, with András Bíró-Nagy of the new volume Húsz év az Európai Unióban. Magyarország uniós tagságának közpolitikai mérlege (Twenty Years in the European Union. A Balance Sheet of Hungary’s Membership and Public Policies) – discusses the achievements and shortcomings of Hungary’s EU membership; what continuities and ruptures there have been across these two decades; in what ways Hungary has been a reliable member of the club and where it has deviated from common agendas and policies; and what the case of Hungary may reveal about how the semi-peripheries have fared within the EU since 2004. Gergő Medve-Bálint is a Senior Research Fellow at the Department for Government and Public Policy, HUN-REN Center for Social Sciences. He also acts as an associate professor in political science at Corvinus University. Húsz év az Európai Unióban. Magyarország uniós tagságának közpolitikai mérlege (Twenty Years in the European Union. A Balance Sheet of Hungary’s Membership and Public Policies) has been published by Osiris Kiadó.

In this conversation at the Review of Democracy, Michael S. Roth sketches the main ways of being a student since ancient times; reflects on the process of learning “to be free”; explores the reasons behind the politicization of universities in the United States; considers what might be new about the adversarial relationship between students and university administrators these days; and sketches what “safe enough spaces” might look like in our turbulent times. Michael S. Roth is a historian, curator, author, and public advocate for liberal education. He has acted as President of Wesleyan University since 2007. He is the founding director of the Scripps College Humanities Institute. He formerly acted as the associate director of the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles and as president of the California College of the Arts. He is the author of eight books. The Student: A Short History is his newest book. The Student: A Short History is published by Yale University Press.

In this conversation with the Review of Democracy, Ho-fung Hung shares his eye-opening analysis of the internal contradictions and external limitations plaguing China’s export-led development model and offers novel insights into the difficulties its political leadership is encountering in challenging US hegemony and extending its global sphere of influence. While acknowledging China’s impressive achievements, Hung emphasizes China’s technological dependency and chronic industrial overcapacity, the impact of the rise of protectionism, the hegemony of the US dollar, and China’s lack of confidence in its military capabilities. At the same time, he forecasts the intensification of US-Chinese rivalry in connection with the gradual decoupling of the US and Chinese economies.   Ho-fung Hung is Henry M. and Elizabeth P. Wiesenfeld Professor in Political Economy at the Sociology Department of the Johns Hopkins University. His scholarly interests include global political economy, protest, nation-state formation, social theory, and East Asian Development. He is the author of the award-winning Protest with Chinese Characteristics (2011, Columbia UP), The China Boom: Why China Will not Rule the World (2016, Columbia UP) and the Clash of Empires: From “Chimerica” to the “New Cold War” (2022, Cambridge UP).

In this conversation at the Review of Democracy, Joshua Leifer – author of the new book Tablets Shattered. The End of an American Jewish Century and the Future of Jewish Life – analyzes the unravelling of the postwar American Jewish consensus and the reemergence of oppositional Jewish politics; discusses what he sees as the four main political-religious tendencies in our times and how his own relationship to them has evolved over the years; explores the radical potential of traditional Judaism; and reflects on how the diasporic double bind may be navigated today. Joshua Leifer is a journalist, editor, and translator whose essays and reporting have appeared widely in international publications, including The New York Review of Books, The New Statesman, and The Nation. Joshua is a member of the Dissent editorial board and is currently pursuing a PhD at Yale University which focuses on the history of modern moral and social thought. Tablets Shattered is Joshua Leifer’s first book. Tablets Shattered. The End of an American Jewish Century and the Future of Jewish Life will be released in August. It is published by Dutton.   The conversation was conducted by Ferenc Laczó. The recording has been edited by Lilit Hakobyan.

What are the most important legal and political challenges in rebuilding the Rule of Law in Poland? Polish Minister of Justice Adam Bodnar highlighted them in his lecture at the CEU Democracy Institute in Budapest. On May 27 the CEU Democracy Institute Rule of Law clinic was launched with an inaugural lecture from the Minister for Justice of Poland Adam Bodnar. The event provided a unique opportunity to hear a sitting member of an anti-illiberal government explain how the Rule of Law will be restored after nearly a decade of backsliding under the previous government. The key theme of the lecture was the endorsement of incrementalism over revolution as a means to rebuild a ‘sustainable’ Rule of Law.

In this conversation, Jannis Panagiotidis and Hans-Christian Petersen – authors of the new book Antiosteuropäischer Rassismus in Deutschland. Geschichte und Gegenwart (Racism Against East Europeans in Germany. History and the Present Day) – show why racism is an appropriate category when discussing stereotypes and prejudices against East Europeans; explain why there is a need for “an Eastern enlargement of the racism debate”; discuss how the most extreme, National Socialist forms of racism relate to what came before and after; consider how racism against East Europeans might be embedded in the larger, more global system of prejudices and domination; and reflect on the current stakes of their scholarly intervention.  Jannis Panagiotidis is the Scientific Director of the Research Center for the History of Transformations (or RECET), an institute of advanced research in Vienna. Hans-Christian Petersen is a staff member at the Federal Institute for Culture and History of the Germans in Eastern Europe (BKGE), which is based in the city of Oldenburg. Antiosteuropäischer Rassismus in Deutschland. Geschichte und Gegenwart has been published by Beltz Juventa. The conversation was conducted by Ferenc Laczó. Ádám Hushegyi and Lilit Hakobyan edited the audio recording.