What's Different About the New Left

Only five years ago, most of us still believed what we had been taught in school about socialism, that it had peaked in popularity in the 1912 presidential election and was no longer a factor in American politics. Then came Bernie Sanders’ two presidential campaigns, along with socialist surges in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe, and the emergence of significant organizations and younger political stars like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. It turns out that socialism has a mass following

Is Progressive Nationalism a Thing?

Veteran reporter John B. Judis joins us to talk about his book, The Nationalist Revival, which examines the recent worldwide wave of nationalism

The Politics of Our Time

This is the second part of our conversation with John B. Judis. John B. Judis has brought out a book with Colombia Global Reports during each of the last three national political seasons: The Populist Explosion in 2016, The Nationalist Revival in 2018, and now The Socialist Awakening. Together, these books have charted a rise of a new and unexpected political mood produced by widespread dissatisfaction over results of the free-market policies that emerged in the late 20th century

The Populist Catharsis: On the Revival of the Political

The upsurge of populist movements and the entry of populist parties into parliaments and governments over the last decade has been condemned as being the cause of the sorry state of democratic politics in western societies. As populism erodes the liberal political culture of consensus-building through deliberation that achieves inclusive diversity, the verdict goes, it undercuts the very foundation of liberal democracies. Taking my distance from this diagnosis of our current predicament, I will argue that populism is not the cause of the erosion of diversity capital, it is its outcome. I will examine the hypothesis that populism is the symptom of a pathological state of the political in contemporary democracies. Focusing on the process of politicization of social grievances, I will offer a diagnosis of the state of the political in the early twenty-first century, in order to discern populism's capacity to reboot democratic politics

International Interventions and Normative Prudence as a ‘Forgotten’ Virtue of Statecraft

This article presents a case for making normative prudence key to the debates concerning international interventions and statebuilding. Despite a rich conceptual history, contemporary IR literature seems to have forgotten the concept. We address this gap by defining the virtue through the yardsticks of deliberation, caution, foresight, and knowing the limits of one's abilities. Applying these yardsticks to the cases of the Kosovo (1999) and Iraq wars (2003), we argue that once developed in the context of international interventions, the concept of normative prudence provides an invaluable platform for assessing interventions and, if employed robustly, it can help those undertaking the interventions to prepare for the ‘day after.

Modern American populism: Analyzing the economics behind the Silent Majority, the Tea Party and Trumpism

This article researches populism, more specifically, Modern American Populism (MAP), constructed of white, rural, and economically oppressed reactionarianism, which was borne out of the political upheaval of the 1960’s Civil Rights movement. The research looks to explain the causes of populism and what leads voters to support populist movements and politicians. The research focuses on economic anxiety as the main cause but also examines an alternative theory of racial resentment. In an effort to answer the question, what causes populist movements and motivations, I apply a research approach that utilizes qualitative and quantitative methods. There is an examination of literature that defines populism, its causes and a detailed discussion of the case studies, including the 1972 election of Richard Nixon; the Tea Party election of 2010; and the 2016 election of Donald Trump. In addition, statistical data analysis was run using American National Election Studies (ANES) surveys associated with each specific case study. These case studies were chosen because they most represent forms of populist movements in modern American history. While ample qualitative evidence suggested support for the hypothesis that economic anxiety is a necessary condition for populist voting patterns that elected Nixon, the Tea Party and Trump, the statistical data only supported the hypothesis in two cases, 2010 and 2016, with 1972 coming back inconclusive. The data also suggested that both economic anxiety and racial resentment played a role in 2010 and 2016, while having no significant effect in 1972 in either case. This suggests that further research needs to be conducted into additional populist case studies, as well as an examination into the role economic anxiety and economic crises play on racial resentment and racially motivated voting behavior