New Books in European Politics

Today I talked toTraian Sandu about his bookCeausescu:Le dictateur ambigu(Perrin, 2023). Born in January 1918, Nicolae Ceauşescu began his apprenticeship in Bucharest and discovered the social struggle and its repression at the age of fifteen within the Romanian Communist Party. In 1948, the Stalinist Gheorghiu-Dej, his mentor, having taken power, he took the opportunity to quickly climb the ranks of the party and the state. Installed in power in March 1965, Ceauşescu inherited the policy of his predecessor: avoiding de-Stalinization by playing the nationalist card. Its beginnings were popular thanks to a certain cultural liberalization, the beginning of a consumer society and an opening towards the West. However, the oil shocks and the détente between the United States and the Soviet Union in the mid-1970s deprived him of the resources needed to pursuehis policy. His role as a bridge between East and West, his industrialization policy based on Western capital and technologies and his popularity within Romanian society collapsed at the turn of the 1980s. The beginning of social and political opposition (strikes and dissidence), the decision to repay the debt to Western institutions (IMF and World Bank) which led to cruel shortages and the end of the Cold War with the arrival of Gorbachev sounded the death knell for his regime which collapsed in three days in December 1989. The one who called himself the "genius of the Carpathians", or even the "Danube of thought", was executed with his wife, Elena, at the end of a particularly hasty trial, ending a strange revolution in which many saw the hand of the Soviet "big brother". Between autocratic drift and reformist desires, nationalism and submission to the USSR, growing paranoia and all-consuming megalomania, the man remained a mystery. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Wojtek Soczewica has led the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation since 2019, near the site of the killing fields. The Foundation aims at the preservation of the remains of the concentration and extermination camp and of all the personal items that belonged to victims and survivors. Today they serve as material witnesses of the tragic history safeguarding “the place of Auschwitz in human memory.” In this episode of International Horizons, he speaks with John Torpey, director of the Ralph Bunche Institute, about the work of the Foundation and its role not only in contemporary Poland but in today’s turmoil. He reflects on the role of memorials and museums and how they serve as mirrors to help us to ask ourselves the difficult questions. Additionally, Soczewica attempts an answer concerning the relationship between politics and history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Contemporary politics is characterized by the rise (and fall) of many new parties. But what tools do political scientists have to map and measure electoral volatility? How can we best capture this change? And what insights can political scientists draw from other disciplines? Join host Tim Haughton for a discussion with Allan Sikk and Philipp Köker, the authors of a new book,Party People: Candidates and Party Evolution(Oxford University Press, 2023). Their book draws on a database of 200 000 electoral candidates from over 60 elections across nine democracies. Allan Sikkis Associate Professor at University College London’s School of Slavonic and East European Studies. Philipp Kökeris Lecturer and Research Fellow at Leibniz University in Hannover. Tim Haughtonis Professor of Comparative and European Politics and a founding co-director of CEDAR at the University of Birmingham. The People, Power, Politics podcast brings you the latest insights into the factors that are shaping and re-shaping our political world. It is brought to you bythe Centre for Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation(CEDAR) based at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. Join us to better understand the factors that promote and undermine democratic government around the world and follow us on Twitter at @CEDAR_Bham! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Anticommunism in French Society and Politics, 1945-1953(Oxford UP, 2023)evaluates the prevalence of anticommunism among the French population in 1945 to 1953, and examines its causes, character, and consequences through a series of case studies on different segments of French society. These include the scouting movement; family organisations; agricultural associations; middle-class groups; and trade unions and other working-class organisations. Aaron Clift contends that anticommunism was more widespread and deeply rooted than previously believed, and had a substantial impact on national politics and on these social groups and organisations. Furthermore, he argues that the study of anticommunism allows us a deeper understanding of the values they regarded as the most important to defend. Although anticommunism was a diverse phenomenon, this work identifies common discourses, including portrayals of communism as a threat to the nation; the colonial empire; the traditional family; private property; religion; the rural world; and Western civilisation. It also highlights common aims (such as the rehabilitation of wartime collaborators) and tactics (such as the invocation of apoliticism). While acknowledging the importance of the Cold War, it rejects the assumption that anticommunism was an American import or foreign to French society and demonstrates links between anticommunism and anti-Americanism. It concludes that anticommunism drew its strength from the connection or even conflation of communism with perceived negative social changes that were seen to threaten traditional French civilisation, interacting with the postwar international and domestic environment and the personal experiences of individual anticommunists. Aaron Clift received his doctorate from the University of Oxford in 2022, following a Master's at the University of Toronto and a Bachelor's at the University of Victoria. After a stint as a Postdoctoral History Scholar at the University of Calgary, Dr. Clift is now a Fellow at the London School of Economics where he teaches and researches on the Cold War period. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of International Horizons, RBI director John Torpey interviewsGabriele Mazzini, a lawyer and officer of the European Commission and expert in AI regulation. Mazzini discusses the means through which European countries have found agreement on the definition of AI and how to regulate it. Moreover, Mazzini stresses that the fears of an apocalyptic AI revolution taking over humankind are not well-grounded. He also comments on the United States case and how it differs from Europe when it comes to regulating AI, acknowledging that there's been big progress in legislation in this area. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Charles Dallara, managing director of the Institute of International Finance from 1993–2013, talks about his crisis memoir:Euroshock: How the Largest Debt Restructuring in History Helped Save Greece and Preserve the Eurozone(Rodin Books, 2024). Dallara, who co-led a small team who negotiated a €100-billion write-off of Greek debt in 2011-12, discusses how it felt to be an American "interloper", crippling European indecision, and performative politicians. Produced by Emin Fikić atdavidstudio. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visittwentyfourtwo.substack.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ukraine Vis-à-Vis Russia and the EU: Misperceptions of Foreign Challenges in Times of War, 2014-2015(Ibidem Press, 2023) investigates the making of Ukraine’s foreign policy towards the European Union and Russia between February 2014 and February 2015. To contextualize the events of the first year of the Russian-Ukrainian War, Nychyk lays out the history of the EU-Ukraine-Russia triangle since 1991 and draws lessons relevant for the 2022 Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The book is based on her doctoral research and rests on a game-theory-inspired approach to foreign policy analysis. It relies on 38 elite interviews, official documents, and media reports. Nychyk uncovers various mutual misperceptions in EU-Ukraine-Russia relations. Looking at Ukraine’s ‘side of the story’, her analysis shows how Russian assertiveness and the EU’s passivity, but also Ukrainian leaders’ limited crisis management experience and erroneous policy decisions contributed to worse outcomes for Ukraine. The latter included poor analysis of foreign interlocutors, trust in their good intentions, and corruption. After 2015, a persistence—although with certain changes—of some of these pathologies left Ukraine in a weaker position in the face of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Governing the Displaced: Race and Ambivalence in Global Capitalism(Cornell UP, 2024)answers a straightforward question: how are refugees governed under capitalism in this moment of heightened global displacement?To answer this question, Ali Bhagat takes a dual case study approach to explore three dimensions of refugee survival in Paris and Nairobi: shelter, work, and political belonging. Bhagat's book makes sense of a global refugee regime along the contradictory fault lines of passive humanitarianism, violent exclusion, and organized abandonment in the European Union and East Africa.The bookhighlights the interrelated and overlapping features of refugee governance and survival in these seemingly disparate places. In its intersectional engagement with theories of racial capitalism with respect to right-wing populism, labor politics, and the everyday forms of exclusion, the book is a timely and necessary contribution to the field of migration studies and to political economy. Ali Bhagat is a PhD in Political Studies (Queen's University) and works largely on the topic of global displacement in relation to racial capitalism. As an international political economist, he is interested in the intersections of race, class, and sexuality and has worked on issues pertaining to LGBTQ+ refugees in particular. His work is based in qualitative methods drawing from interviews, policy analysis, and other ethnographic techniques. Ali’s work cuts across the everyday political economy of housing, work, finance, and political belonging. Lamis Abdelaatyis an associate professor of political science at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. She is the author ofDiscrimination and Delegation: Explaining State Responses to Refugees(Oxford University Press, 2021). Email her comments [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Eastern Orthodox Churches in post-communist Eastern Europe are embroiled in long-running conflicts over ownership of territory, saints, sites, nations, and history. These often violent conflicts reflect political and national rivalries, most explicitly in former Yugoslavia and Ukraine. They are often understood as simplified ethnic-national tensions with religious overtones, but, as this book demonstrations, such an assessment overlooks the deeper theological and historiographical framework. Emil Hilton Saggau's bookNationalisation of the Sacred: Orthodox Historiography, Memory, and Politics in Montenegro(Peter Lang, 2023)offers a detailed analysis of the theological backdrop behind these conflicts. It analyses how various strands of Eastern Orthodoxy have adapted to the contemporary political context, a process where history, memory, and politics are transformed to fit the needs of rival nations and churches. The book provides an in-depth analysis of this process and the transformations in church-related conflicts in post-communist Montenegro, where the Serbian Orthodox Church has been pitted against a rival Montenegrin church and Montenegrin government. Additionally the book provides an up-to-date and unique analysis of Eastern Orthodox historiography, modern Serbian theology, religion in Montenegro more broadly, and the roots of the violent clash between Orthodox believers and the Montenegrin government in 2019-2021. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Picnic: A Dream of Freedom and The Collapse of the Iron Curtain(Norton, 2024)is a truly fascinating narrative—exploring a little-known event that happened in the border area between Hungary and Austria in August of 1989, and ultimately contributed to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain. This Pan-European Picnic, attended by Hungarian pro-democracy advocates and East German vacationers on one side, and Austrians on the other, took place in the shadow of the Iron Curtain that had cut through Europe since the onset of the Cold War. This Iron Curtain between East and West was militarized, dangerous, and, as the title makes clear, iron in quality. The border, during the Cold War, between the Eastern Bloc and the West was one that operated more to keep citizens inside as opposed to trying to keep others out. Longo’s work here is distinct from his previous work on the U.S./Mexico border and the way that borders are distinct wherever we encounter them.The Picnicis still exploring borders, but it is an examination of a particular event at this hardened and ideological border, and how that event, in the planning for it, and the repercussions from it, led to the opening of many borders, both real and mythical. Longo also takes a different approach to his writing and narrative inThe Picnic, providing the reader with an understanding of all of these events from the words and experiences of those who lived through the events and some who had a hand in them as well. The thread that traces through the entire story inThe Picnicis this more elusive and complex idea of freedom. Freedom was at the heart of the activities that were planned and took place in August 1989, since the Hungarians and the East Germans were hoping to push on the literal and figurative constraints under which they lived in these Eastern Bloc countries. The understanding of the Cold War, at least from many in the West, was the denial of individual freedom, liberty, and autonomy—to have one’s life circumscribed by the state. And as we consider what happened in 1989—in June in Tiananmen Square, at this picnic in the backwoods of Hungary in August, and in the streets of Berlin in November—we often consider these events as the human drive towards freedom and against confinement. Longo tells part of this story, but through the words of those who were advocating for these political and ideological changes. The narratives also reflect on what happened after the end of the Cold War in Europe, what freedom ushered in, some of which was just as had been imagined. But there is also the underbelly that came with these openings of borders—the inflow of predatory capital, the rocky shifts away from socialism that have led, in a variety of places including Hungary, to a different form of authoritarianism.The Picnic: A Dream of Freedom and the Collapse of the Iron Curtainweaves together a variegated narrative telling a particular story from 1989 but also a longer, more complex consideration of the idea of freedom and liberty and the power of the state. Lilly J. Gorenis a professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-host of theNew Books in Political Sciencechannel at the New Books Network. She is co-editor ofThe Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe(University Press of Kansas, 2022), as well as co-editor of the award winning book,Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics(University Press of Kentucky, 2012). She can be [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices