RevDem Podcast

In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Till van Rahden – author of the new Vielheit. Jüdische Geschichte und die Ambivalenzen des Universalismus (Multitude. Jewish History and the Ambivalences of Universalism) – discusses why the relationship between equality and difference is so crucial from the liberal democratic point of view; what new insights conceptual history can offer that t...

In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Gaia Vince – author of the new book Nomad Century. How to Survive the Climate Upheaval – sketches the transformations climate change and the accompanying rise in global average temperature are likely to bring in the coming decades; reflects on the most promising innovations when it comes to mitigating temperature rise and moving towards a circu...

In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Joseph Wong – co-author with Dan Slater of the new monograph From Development to Democracy. The Transformations of Modern Asia – discusses when and why regimes have chosen to democratize in modern Asia; how come types rather than levels of development have shaped country’s democratic prospects; why Singapore and China remain significantly less...

In conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Sally Hayden – author of My Fourth Time, We Drowned: Seeking Refuge on the World's Deadliest Migration Route – discusses the various detention centers across Libya and sketches the profiles of the people detained in them; reflects on her ambition of centering the voices of the victims and her dilemmas concerning what to release and what not to relea...

In this conversation with RevDem guest contributor Norman Aselmeyer, Andreas Eckert – author of German-language overviews of the history of colonialism and of slavery – presents his approach to the history of colonialism and how the study of this subject has evolved in the early 21st century; reflects on the special challenges of composing a global history of slavery; shares his views on the ongoi...

In this extended conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Franziska Exeler – author of the new monograph Ghosts of War: Nazi Occupation and Its Aftermath in Soviet Belarus – discusses the extremely violent history of Belarus during the Second World War; analyses the various choices people made under the dire constrains of the Nazi German occupation and the challenges of drawing on Soviet sour...

In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, three authors of the new collective monograph  Socialism Goes Global. The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the Age of Decolonisation , Péter Apor, James Mark, and Steffi Marung, dissect the relationship between eastern Europe and the extra-European world in the age of decolonization; explain how key East European traditions of...

In this conversation with RevDem section heads Vera Scepanovic and Ferenc Laczó, Fritz Bartel – author of the new The Triumph of Broken Promises. The End of the Cold War and the Rise of Neoliberalism – explains how the notion of breaking promises cancapture developments of the late Cold War period and why democracies proved more successful at doing so; argues that a structural explanation of the r...

In this conversation with RevDem editor Kasia Krzyżanowska, Peter Verovšek — author of “Memory and the future of Europe. Rupture and integration in the wake of total war” — discusses the importance of foundational stories for communities; explains the influence of personal experience on the European integration; shows differences in remembering the past in West and East Europe and ponders on the c...

In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Charlotte Wiedemann – author of the just released German-language volume Den Schmerz der Anderen begreifen. Holocaust und Weltgedächtnis (To Grasp the Pain of Others. Holocaust and Global Remembrance) – explores the inequalities of the reigning “economy of empathy”; discusses ways to connect the histories of National Socialism and global coloni...

Teodora Miljojkovic, RevDem assistant editor, interviews Professor John Shattuck, international legal scholar, diplomat, human rights leader and previous CEU rector. In his early career, Professor Shattuck was a visiting lecturer at the Woodrow Wilson School of Politics at Princeton University and lecturer at the Harvard Law School. In the early post-Cold War years, Professor Shattuck, while servi...

In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Fabio Wolkenstein – author of the new book Die dunkle Seite der Christdemokratie. Geschichte einer autoritaeren Versuchung (The Dark Side of Christian Democracy. The History of an Authoritarian Temptation) – sketches the broad variety of Christian politics across modern Europe; discusses the types of political Catholicism and explains how Chris...

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 partie...

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; t...

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 t...

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; h...

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; a...

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...

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...

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 l...

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 Membe...

The idea of a liberal international order originated from the critique of imperialism, secret diplomacy, and the lack of state accountability. It proposed the institutionalized cooperation of nation-states. Its main elements, ranging from self-determination to minority rights, were developed in a particularly impressive manner in the circles of British and French liberal intellectuals around the F...

RevDem Editor László Bence Bari in conversation with Éva Fodor, Professor at the Gender Studies and Pro-Rector of the Central European University about her latest book “The Gender Regime of Anti-Liberal Hungary”. In this book, she argues that the anti-liberal government of Hungary has established a specific kind of gender regime, the ’carefare’ policy which allows the government to stabilize and e...

In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Ian Merkel – author of Terms of Exchange: Brazilian Intellectuals and the French Social Sciences – discusses why Brazil in the 1930s offered such a precious opportunity to innovate in the social sciences; shows the ways in which Brazilians were crucial interlocutors for French social scientists; explores how the terms of exchange between French...