Rural consciousness has redefined the nature of identity politics as it shifts the dominant political conflicts from class to place. This is the second part of a series on political identity and its place within democratic theory. Rural Communities in Political Conflicts The divide between those dependent on an agricultural economy and an industrial economy... Continue Reading →
Only in the last ten years have scholars begun to think of the working class as a political identity rather than simply an economic status. The thoughts below are the first on a series of posts based on political identity. Justin Kempf reflects on working class as a political identity through a reflection of Arlie Russell... Continue Reading →
The definitive work on Belarus remains the work of Andrew Wilson. Published in 2012, his book Belarus: The Last European Dictatorship is the best source for its history including the rise of Alexander Lukashenko. The recent protests will likely spark new scholarship into Belarus, but they will all begin with this book for the foreseeable... Continue Reading →
Agonism is a key component in the philosophy of radical democracy. Chantal Mouffe explains this concept in her work Agonistics: Thinking the World Politically. Its publication in 2013 developed her theory of Agonism beyond her earlier works such as Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, The Return of the Political, The Democratic Paradox, and On the Political. The discussion... Continue Reading →
Recently the Democracy Paradox featured three episodes about the Global Ascendance of China on its podcast. David Shambaugh's China Goes Global offers an early examination of this topic. So much has happened since its publication in 2013, but it remains a highly influential work to the study of China. The discussion below represent the thoughts and... Continue Reading →
Military Missions in Democratic Latin America was first published in 2016. It offered an examination of the new roles the military had begun to handle in recent years. Its author, David Pion-Berlin, is a widely known scholar of civil-military relations in Latin America. In this book, he went beyond traditional civil-military relations to consider the... Continue Reading →
Early in my life I was drawn to power to impose my ideas onto the world. It was only natural to believe leaders were able to change organizations, businesses or even geopolitics to their whim. But I found my implicit sense of power was entirely wrong. There is a tradeoff between authority and influence. Leadership... Continue Reading →
There is no more important work in comparative politics in the last ten years than Competitive Authoritarianism. Its ideas completely disrupted conceptual expectations about democracy. Some of the intellectual currents existed before its publication. Indeed, Levitsky and Way had published an article which outlined their ideas as early as 2002 in the Journal of Democracy.... Continue Reading →
Francis Fukuyama established his reputation with the publication The End of History and the Last Man, but it is his two-volume work on political order which is his masterpiece. It is this work which realizes ambitions which were implied but never attempted in his earlier writings. And both its achievements and flaws originate from his... Continue Reading →
Inequality was a hot topic within political and economic conversations before Piketty wrote Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Yet the publication of this landmark work gave intellectual context to the criticisms of the gaps within wealth and income. Branko Milanovic explores inequality on a wider scale than Piketty. Indeed, he handles the questions Piketty purposely... Continue Reading →
