New Books in Political Science

What explains voting behavior in local elections? More specifically, what explains how ethnic and racial blocs vote in local elections, especially when the candidate may be of a different race or ethnicity? These are the main question animating the research in Racial Coalition Building in Local Elections: Elite Cues and Cross-Ethnic Voting (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Political Scientist An...

In Disordered Violence: How Gender, Race and Heteronormativity Structure Terrorism (Edinburgh University Press, 2020), Caron Gentry looks at how gender, race, and heteronormative expectations of public life shape Western understandings of terrorism as irrational, immoral and illegitimate. Gentry examines the profiles of 8 well-known terrorist actors. Gentry identifies the gendered, racial, and sex...

The phenomenon of dehumanization is associated with such atrocities as the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and the Holocaust in World War II. In these and other cases, people are described in ways that imply that they are less than fully human as a prelude to committing extreme forms of violence against them. In On Inhumanity: Dehumanization and How to Resist It (Oxford University Press, 2020), David Livi...

Today’s begins a new set of podcasts from New Books in Political Science called POST-SCRIPT. Lilly Goren and I invite authors back to the podcast to react to contemporary political developments that engage their scholarship. In a podcast devoted to the concerning political developments in China, four scholars -- from political science, history, and particle physics(!) -- provide insights into the...

As we enter the third decade of the 21st century, American nuclear policy continues to be influenced by the legacies of the Cold War. Nuclear policies remain focused on easily identifiable threats, including China or Russia, and how the United States would respond in the event of a first strike against the homeland. In their new book, The Button: The New Nuclear Arms Race and Presidential Power fr...

Despite the devastation caused by the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and 60-foot tsunami that struck Japan in 2011, some 96% of those living and working in the most disaster-stricken region of Tōhoku made it through. Smaller earthquakes and tsunamis have killed far more people in nearby China and India. What accounts for the exceptionally high survival rate? And why is it that some towns and cities in t...

Kathleen Klaus, Assistant Professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco has written a terrific book, Political Violence in Kenya: Land, Elections, and Claim-Making published in 2020 by Cambridge University Press. Kathleen’s book is richly researched and beautifully written. She draws on 15 months of survey and interview methods to center the politics of elites in crafting land narrative...

Why did the DREAM Act (for the Development, Relief, and Education of Alien Minors) never pass Congress – even though it was popular with Republicans and Democrats? What does the political and legal history tell us about American federalism? How is the legal history of the DREAM ACT and DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) tied to the legal bureaucracy of residence? In Perchance to DREAM:...

A democracy should reflect the views of its citizens and offer a direct connection between government and those it serves. So why, more than ever, does it seem as if our government exists in its own bubble, detached from us? In reality, our democracy is not performing as it should, which has left us fed up with a system we no longer trust. Moreover, we lack a mechanism to fix what’s broken, becaus...

In her new book, The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution (Harvard University Press, 2020), historian Lindsay M. Chervinsky traces the origins of the President’s cabinet in American government. Chervinsky combines the history of the American Revolution with studies of early American political institutions to illustrate how the cabinet developed. Exploring the cabi...

In his book The Hidden History of International Law in The Americas: Empires and Legal Networks (Oxford University Press, 2017), Juan Pablo Scarfi shows the central role of a coterie of elite Latin American jurists and intellectuals in constructing a Pan-American inflected conception of international law. In exploring the rise of so-called “American” international law, Scarfi’s monograph contribut...

National concern about income inequalities. Race relations at a boiling point. Riots in the streets. Cries on the left for massive allocations of federal money for housing and poverty reduction programs. Social scientists and professional activists touting theories and pet proposals for projects that will supposedly eradicate poverty if only enough money is thrown at them. Tensions between local a...

Before Ronald Reagan appointed Sandra Day O’Connor to the Supreme Court in 1981, nine highly qualified women were on the shortlist. What do the stories of these women tell us about the judiciary? Gender? Feminism? Race? In Shortlisted: Women in the Shadows of the Supreme Court (NYU Press, 2020), Renee Knake Jefferson (professor at the University of Houston Law Center) and Hannah Brenner Johnson (V...

In The History of the Civil War in Tajikistan (Lexington Books) Iraj Bashiri provides an overview of the Civil War in Tajikistan that emerged amidst the collapse of the Soviet Union. Based on personal observations, interviews, and a variety of primary and secondary publications, Bashiri places the conflict in a broader historical context, paying careful attention to longstanding tensions that came...

The Unforgettable Queens of Islam: Succession, Authority and Gender (Cambridge University Press, 2020) by Shahla Haeri (Associate Professor of Anthropology at Boston University) is a captivating book on the biographies of Muslim women rulers and political leaders. Drawing from extensive historical archives as well as from ethnographic research, Haeri reflects on the legacy of the hadith that says,...

In the United States, each election cycle reminds us that younger voters vote at much lower rates than their older counterparts. This discrepancy is often chalked up to apathy or lack of interest in politics among younger voters. In their new book, John B. Holbein and D. Sunshine Hillygus analyze this conventional explanation along with the political science literature about voting behavior among...

Gulf scholar Sigurd Neubauer’s The Gulf Region and Israel: Old Struggles, New Alliances makes a significant contribution to our understanding of what drives shifting alliances in the Middle East, an ever more volatile part of the world. Shunned by Arab states for much of its existence, Israel has become in recent years a key factor in efforts by Gulf states to punch above their weight, shape the g...

Undocumented youth activists are at the forefront of the present-day immigrant rights movement. This is especially true surrounding the activism of the recent SCOTUS decision on DACA issued on June 18, 2020. Professor Kevin Escudero’s book, Organizing While Undocumented: Immigrant Youth’s Political Activism Under the Law (New York University Press, 2020), depicts just how undocumented immigrant yo...

How should we understand and combat injustice? Is it only the responsibility of those who suffer the consequences or perpetrate the harm? When it comes to addressing injustice, for many the first step is assigning blame – usually satisfied through a specific individual or thing. Although compartmentalism and blame may make our problems seem smaller and seemingly easier to address, Thomas J. Donahu...

The key question in The Struggle for Democracy in Mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong: Sharp Power and its Discontents (Routledge, 2020), is to what extent political activists in these three domiciles have made progress in their quest to liberalize and democratize their respective polities. Taking a long historical perspective, the book compares the political trajectory in the three regions from...

The United States takes pride in its democratic model and the idea that citizens deliberate in a process to form political opinions. However, in recent years, division and partisanship have increased while deliberation and the actual discussion of competing ideas have decreased. More and more, citizens are siloed, interacting only with those with whom they agree, and there is more negative animus...

Dismal spending on government health services is often considered a necessary consequence of a low per-capita GDP, but are poor patients in poor countries really fated to be denied the fruits of modern medicine? In many countries, officials speak of proper health care as a luxury, and convincing politicians to ensure citizens have access to quality health services is a constant struggle. Yet, in m...

In 1999, the Organization of African Unity cited dissatisfaction with the solely “global” approach that the UN had applied in their International Decade for Disabled Persons (1983–1992), and declared an African Decade of Persons with Disabilities (1999–2009) to explore “local” approaches. Was the UN’s approach truly detached from the ground reality? In this podcast, Sam De Schutter discusses his a...

By the time Bolivian President Evo Morales was deposed in December 2019, it had become increasingly clear that Latin America’s Pink Tide – the wave of left-leaning, anti-poverty governments which took hold of the region in the mid-2000s – was fast receding. Many have attempted to explain the rise and fall of that extraordinary historical movement, but few have done it with the historical depth, et...

Sandie Holguín speaks with Jennifer L. Holland about her book, Tiny You: A Western History of the Anti-Abortion Movement (University of California Press, 2020). In addition to her book, Dr. Holland has recently published an article in Feminist Studies, “‘Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust’: Children and Young Adults in the Anti-Abortion Movement.” Dr. Holland is Assistant Professor of History at...