New Books in Political Science

Rule of law faces serious threats to its viability in many countries. It has become a recurring topic in the media and is affecting our daily lives. To understand better the meaning of rule of law, the stakes, and how governments and citizens can respond to today’s challenges, we must return to first principles.In Law’s Rule (Oxford U. Press, 2022), eminent philosopher of law Gerald Postema draws on a lifetime of research and thought to articulate and defend a comprehensive, coherent, and compelling conception of the rule of law and defend it against serious challenges to its intelligibility, relevance, and normative force. The rule of law's ambition, Postema argues, is to provide protection and recourse against the arbitrary exercise of power using the distinctive tools of the law. Law provides a bulwark of protection, a bridle on the powerful, and a bond constituting and holding together the polity and giving public expression to an ideal mode of association.Two principles immediately follow from this core: sovereignty of law, demanding that those who exercise ruling power govern with law and that law governs them, and equality in the eyes of the law, demanding that law's protection extend to all bound by it. Animating law's rule, the ethos of fidelity commits all members of the political community, officials and lay members alike, to take responsibility for holding each other accountable under the law.Postema’s work is theoretically rigorous while addressing the myriad practical considerations in building and maintaining the rule of law.Gerald Postema is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, University of North Carolina had has widely published in legal and political philosophy and ethics. He earned a BA degree from Calvin College (1970) and PhD (1976) from Cornell University. He began his teaching career at Johns Hopkins University (1975-1980). From 1980 until his retirement in 2019, he taught philosophy and law at UNC-Chapel Hill, since 1996 as Boshamer Distinguished Professor of Philosophy.He is interviewed by Thomas McInerney, an international lawyer, scholar, and strategist, who has worked to advance rule of law internationally for 25 years. He has taught in the Rule of Law for Development Program at Loyola University Chicago School of Law since 2011. He writes the Rights, Regulation and Rule of Law newsletter on Substack. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Even before its rebirth as a nation in the 1990s, Serbia had acquired a reputation abroad as Russia’s stalwart Slavic ally in the Western Balkans.Yet, as Vuk Vuksanović argues in Serbia’s Balancing Act: Between Russia and the West (Bloomsbury, 2025), two centuries of history and the 25 years since the fall of Slobodan Milošević tell a more nuanced story."When it comes to Russia's interests,” he writes, “there are no sacred cows in Serbia-Russia relations". Governments in Belgrade will be courted and then discarded depending on Moscow’s needs, and they know it. For their part, the Serbs depend on Russian political support in their campaign for a face-saving settlement of the long-running Kosovo dispute but know their economic success hinges on their ties to the EU and the US. Belgrade must "manipulate the superpower rivalry to secure economic resources from both superpowers and its political strategic autonomy".Vuk Vuksanović is a foreign policy expert at the Belgrade Centre for Security Policy, an associate of the Central and South-East Europe Programme at LSE IDEAS, and a prominent media commentator on strategy in the Balkans.*His book recommendations were Rival Power: Russia in Southeast Europe by Dimitar Bechev (Yale University Press, 2017) and Why War? by Christopher Coker (Hurst, 2021).Tim Gwynn Jones is an economic and political risk analyst at Medley Advisors, who also writes and podcasts on Substack at 242.news. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

This week on Madison’s Notes, we continue our discussion with Stephen Macedo, co-author of In COVID’s Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us (Princeton UP, 2025). The book examines the institutional failures during the pandemic, including the politicization of science, inconsistent messaging, and the disproportionate impacts of policies.We cover key questions: What did “following the science” mean before COVID-19? Macedo explains that science is inherently uncertain, but this nuance was often lost during the pandemic, leading to unrealistic expectations. He also highlights how poor communication about scientific uncertainty eroded public trust.The conversation addresses contradictory messaging about the origins of COVID-19, with public statements often differing from internal expert discussions. Macedo notes how this disconnect fueled skepticism. He also raises concerns about potential conflicts of interest among health officials and the dangers of concentrating decision-making power in a few unchecked individuals.Macedo discusses the politicization of masking, which overshadowed scientific evidence and deepened divisions. He advises individuals to seek reputable sources, embrace uncertainty, and remain critical of simplistic narratives. Finally, he stresses the importance of accountability, open debate, and a commitment to democratic values like tolerance and truth as essential for navigating future crises.This episode offers a concise yet powerful reflection on the lessons of the pandemic and the need for stronger, more transparent governance. Tune in for the full conversation.Madison’s Notes is the podcast of Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions.Contributions to and/or sponsorship of any speaker does not constitute departmental or institutional endorsement of the specific program, speakers or views presented. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Marilyn Nissim-Sabat and Neil Roberts have edited a new collection of essays, Creolizing Hannah Arendt. This edited volume dives into Hannah Arendt’s thinking while also pushing the understanding and ways that Arendt has influenced political theory, philosophy, and politics. The idea of “creolizing,” especially philosophic or theoretical work, is to explore a thinker’s work from more pluralistic perspectives, often pushing the ideas and their analysis beyond the northern and western position in which that work was generally created. Arendt’s work, which comes to us in a number of forms, was written in the context of the Holocaust and the world before and after that trauma. The contributing authors to Creolizing Hannah Arendt build on Arendt’s considerations and analysis, taking and applying her work to other situations, to determine what we can learn in a distinct situation or in context of other theoretical frameworks. Creolizing is an engagement where two or more elements come into discourse with each other, rethinking the ways those in western political thought are positioned, or see the world. This process questions, on some level, the entire notion of the “canon” and the design of borders that hem in thinking, or disciplinary lines.Creolizing Hannah Arendt is a sophisticated collection of essays that brings forth Hannah Arendt’s thinking about freedom and individuals while also integrating other theorists who have interpreted Arendt’s work over the last century. Arendt focused some of her early work on the notion of being an outsider, of having a kind of double consciousness (for her, it was her Jewish identity in Europe during the Holocaust and afterwards in the United States.) But double consciousness was originally posited as an understanding and perspective by W.E.B. Dubois and Sylvia Wynter in their work, specifically the experience of African Americans, and that Paget Henry analyzes in the chapter “Sylvia Wynter, Political Philosophy, and the Creolization of Hannah Arendt.” Thus, putting these ideas in conversation with each other is an example of creolization, and an example of the kind of analysis in this edited volume.This is a fascinating book, opening up spheres of thinking not just about Arendt, but about so many other important theorists. And putting these ideas into conversation with each other. Creolizing Hannah Arendt does not intend to proselytize on behalf of Hannah Arendt, as Nissim-Sabat and Roberts note in our conversation, but to truly interact act with Arendt’s thinking and her ideas about freedom and unfreedom, double consciousness, revolution, and the concept of humanity.Lilly J. Goren is a professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-editor of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (University Press of Kansas, 2022), as well as co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012), Email her comments at lgoren@carrollu.edu or tweet to @gorenlj. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

From Cape Town to Bristol and Richmond, statues have become sites of resistance and contestation of our imperial past and postcolonial present. The Psychic Lives of Statues by Rahul Rao offers an insightful exploration of these global controversies, demonstrating that beneath their surface lie deeper struggles over race, caste, and the politics of decolonisation.Rao takes readers on a journey through South Africa, England, the US, Ghana, India, Australia, and Scotland, revealing how statue controversies have dramatically rearranged the canon of anticolonial political thought. By examining these debates through a personal and literary lens, Rao addresses the multifaceted issues of justice, cultural memory, and belonging.The Psychic Lives of Statues (Pluto Press, 2025) examines both the toppling of colonial statues and the raising of postcolonial ones, demonstrating that the statue form as a medium of representation and a bid for immortality is by no means obsolete. Engaging with artists, scholars, and activists, Rao provides fresh perspectives on how societies grapple with and reinterpret the past and present through iconography.About the Author: Rahul Rao is a Reader in International Political Thought in the School of International Relations at the University of St Andrews, and Professorial Research Associate at SOAS University of London. He is the author of two books – Third World Protest: Between Home and the World (2010) and Out of Time: The Queer Politics of Postcoloniality (2020), both published by Oxford University Press. He is a member of the Radical Philosophy editorial collective.About the Host: Stuti Roy has recently graduated with an MPhil in Modern South Asian Studies from the University of Oxford. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Economist Bryan Caplan has written—and artist Ady Branzei has illustrated—this new graphic novel about housing regulation (if ‘novel’ can be applied to an imaginative essay on a nonfiction topic), Build Baby Build: The Science and Ethics of Housing Regulation (Cato Institute, 2024). The thesis of the work is that regulation has driven up the cost of housing and ‘manufactured scarcity.’ Regulation is always well intentioned but often ill considered, as Caplan shows, and every benefit—‘free’ parking, zoning restrictions, environmental considerations—is provided by a hidden cost to the consumer and the tax-payer, disproportionately born by the poor (ironically the people they are supposed to be helping).This conversation touched on other areas where free-market principles conflict with government interventions: bike lanes, environmental policy, immigration, and public education, especially at the taxpayer-supported university, a topic that Bryan Caplan discussed last time he was on the New Books Network, in his 2018 interview with Editor-in-Chief Marshall Poe when they discussed his earlier book, The Case Against Education.Bryan Caplan is a professor of economics at George Mason University, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center, an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute; his blog on Substack is called Bet on It.Krzysztof Odyniec is a historian of Medieval and Early Modern Europe; his dissertation is a forthcoming book, published by Brepols: Dantiscus: Diplomat and Traveller in Sixteenth-Century Europe. He is a regular host on the New Books Network also the host of the 'Almost Good Catholics' podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Investigative reporter Bob Woodward once noted that assassination was the Scarlett letter of American politics because targeted killings challenge the image of the United States as a liberal democracy and the driving force behind a rules-based international order. In his new book, Luca Trenta documents how assassination and assassination attempts have been a persistent feature in US foreign policy. The US government has relied on a variety of direct methods as well as more indirectly laying the groundwork for local assassins. Using primary documents and interviews, The President’s Kill List meticulously documents how policymakers decided on assassination and the level of Presidential control over these decisions. The book analyzes the evolution of assassination policies and reveals how successive administrations - through private justifications and public legitimations - ensured that assassination remained an available tool. The podcast includes insightful comments on assassination and the Trump administration. The paperback is coming out in May 2025.Dr. Luca Trenta is an Associate Professor of International Relations in the Department of Political and Cultural Studies at Swansea University. His previous publications include an earlier book, Risk and Presidential Decision-making: The Emergence of Foreign Policy Crises (Routledge, 2016) and he hosts Out of the Shadows, interviewing authors and experts in intelligence and covert operations. In his public-facing scholarship, Dr. Trenta has appeared in a History Channel documentary called Secret Wars Uncovered (2020) and he regularly contributes to and collaborates with media outlets such as the BBC.Mentioned: Joseph Burkholder Smith, Portrait of a Cold Warrior (1976) John Frankenheimer, The Manchurian Candidate (1962) The Ford-Colby-Kissinger meeting is at page 35 here and Luca’s story about the meeting is here “Family Jewels” document of CIA employee responses to James Schlesinger asking to report activities outside CIA charter (1973) Rebecca Sanders, Plausible Legality: Legal Culture and Political Imperative in the Global War on Terror (2018) The Church Committee Report (Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (1976) Hugh Wilford, The CIA: An Imperial History (2024) Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (2008) Tim Weiner, The Mission: The CIA in the 21st Century (2024) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

How does nuclear technology influence international relations? While many books focus on countries armed with nuclear weapons, this volume puts the spotlight on those who have the technology to build nuclear bombs but choose not to. These weapons-capable countries, such as Brazil, Germany, and Japan, have what is known as nuclear latency, and they shape world politics in important ways.Matthew Fuhrmann navigates a critical yet poorly understood issue by offering a definitive account of nuclear latency. He identifies global trends, explains why countries obtain nuclear latency and analyzes its consequences for international security. Influence Without Arms presents new statistical and case evidence that nuclear latency enhances deterrence, provides greater influence, and triggers conflict and arms races. The book offers a framework to explain when nuclear latency increases security and, when it incites instability, generates far-reaching implications for deterrence, nuclear proliferation, arms races, preventive war, and disarmament.Our guest is Matthew Fuhrmann, the Cullen-McFadden Professor of Political Science at Texas A&M University.Our host is Eleonora Mattiacci, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Amherst College. She is the author of "Volatile States in International Politics" (Oxford University Press, 2023). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

The 1832 Reform Act was a landmark moment in the development of modern British politics. By overhauling the country’s ancient representative system, the legislation reshaped constitutional arrangements at Westminster, reinvigorated political relationships between the center and the provinces, and established the political structures and precedents that both shaped and hindered Britain’s slow lurch towards democracy by 1928.Mapping the State: English Boundaries and the 1832 Reform Act (U London Press, 2024) leads to a fundamental rethinking of the 1832 Reform Act by demonstrating how boundary reform and the reconstruction of England’s electoral map by the little-known 1831–1832 boundary commission underpinned this turning point in the development of the British political nation. Eschewing traditional approaches to the 1832 Reform Act, it draws from a significant new archival discovery­­—the working papers of the boundary commission—and a range of innovative quantitative techniques to provide a major reassessment of why and how the 1832 Reform Act passed, its impact on reformed politics both at Westminster and in the constituencies, and its significance to the expansion of the modern British state. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

On January 20th, Donald Trump issued an executive order entitled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” The order announced that “It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female. These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality. Under my direction, the Executive Branch will enforce all sex-protective laws to promote this reality...”The enforcement of this executive order has rippled through the United States – and has included removing words and images from websites and papering over interpretive panels in museums. For example, material related to the Enola Gay -- a WWII Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber, named after Enola Gay Tibbets, the mother of the pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets – was removed because it contained the word “gay.” As a new joint statement from the American Historical Association and Organization of American Historians recounts, “Some alterations, such as those related to topics like the Tuskegee Airmen and the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, have been hurriedly reversed in response to public outcry. Others remain. The scrubbing of words and acronyms from the Stonewall National Monument webpage, for instance, distorts the site’s history by denying the roles of transgender and queer people in movements for rights and liberation. This distortion of history renders the past unrecognizable to the people who lived it and useless to those who seek to learn from the past.”To discuss how – and why – the Trump administration is censoring and removing historical materials, my guest is Dr. Wendy L. Rouse, Professor of History at San Jose State University where she is the program coordinator for the History/Social Science Teacher Preparation Program. Her research focuses on the history of gender and sexuality in the Progressive Era – and her publication for the National Park Service was changed after the executive order. She is the author of books and articles, including Public Faces, Secret Lives: A Queer History of the Women’s Suffrage Movement published by NYU Press in 2022. Susan’s NBN conversation with Wendy about the book is here.Mentioned in the Podcast: Organization of American Historians (OAH)’s Records at Risk Data Collection Initiative for individuals to report removed or changed material Reports by AP about scrubbing military websites and NPR on removal of photographs and mentions of trans and queer on National Park Service websites LBGTQ Historian statements and articles including letter signed by 360 historians Wendy’s blogposts on OutHistory and the NYU Press blog 5calls ap for connecting with senators and representatives GLBT Historical Association Multiple LGBTQ organizations, represented by Lambda Legal, have filed a lawsuit challenging the Trump Administration's executive orders attempting to erase transgender people and deny them access to services Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science