Thomas Piketty is best known for the publication of Capital in the Twenty-First Century. It changed how the intellectual community thought about the problem of inequality. Despite the fact it may not have changed many opinions, it is one of the most influential books on economics in the past quarter century. It provided a language... Continue Reading →
Daniel Brinks joins the podcast to discuss his new book The Politics of Institutional Weakness in Latin America. He is the coeditor along with Steven Levitsky and María Victoria Murillo. Dan is a professor of Government and of Law at the University of Texas at Austin and a Senior Researcher & Global Scholar of the Centre... Continue Reading →
What is Institutional Weakness? Over the past few years political science has woken up to the importance of state capacity in the construction of stable governments. Unfortunately, scholars have not paid the same level of attention to the strength of institutions. It’s easy to take for granted that improvements in state capacity will naturally... Continue Reading →
Executive Power in Democracies Democratic theory rarely reflects on executive power or the administrative state. Deliberative theory, for example, emphasizes the legislative process where representatives have an opportunity to discuss and deliberate among each other. Of course, few people expect the civil service to deliberate before every email, phone call, or decision. It’s just not... Continue Reading →
Aldo Madariaga joins the podcast to discuss how neoliberalism can undermine democracy. He is a Professor of Political Science at Universidad Diego Portales, and Associate Researcher at Center for Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies (COES). He is also the author of Neoliberal Resilience: Lessons in Democracy and Development from Latin America and Eastern Europe. ... Continue Reading →
Michael Miller joins the podcast to offer a novel theory of democratization. We discuss his new book Shock to the System: Coups, Elections, and War on the Road to Democratization. This is the 52 episode of the podcast. So many cases of democratization start with these episodes and this period of elite political violence where... Continue Reading →
Chris Bickerton defines the concept of technopopulism. He is the author, alongside Carlo Invernizzi Accetti, of Technopopulism: The New Logic of Democratic Politics. That tension between the politics of the whole and the politics of the part, that tension between the politics of generality and the politics of particularity, is really at the heart of... Continue Reading →
Elizabeth (Liz) Nugent discusses how polarization affects the process of democratization through her experience in Tunisia and Egypt. Her recent book After Repression: How Polarization Derails Democratic Transition. Her work considers how legacies of repression create the conditions for polarization. The focus on the individual people involved in this moment and their preexisting relationships for... Continue Reading →
Nic Cheeseman and Gabrielle Lynch discuss their book The Moral Economy of Elections in Africa. The podcast explores how Africans think about democracy from three country case studies including Ghana, Kenya, and Uganda. Their research for the book was wide and comprehensive including comparative analysis, historical accounts, surveys, and on the ground field research. The... Continue Reading →
My most impressive professor at Truman State University was Dr. John Ishiyama. He was a professor of political science but his specialization was Post Soviet Politics. He was widely regarded as our most accomplished political scientist not simply for his knowledge of the region, but his familiarity with political science methodology. Indeed, he did not... Continue Reading →
