What actually happened during the 1970s?

By Matt Myers

Working-class politics is back in vogue in the West, but for whom does it speak? An AfD candidate in Germany won over 14% of the vote after claiming the SPD was ‘no longer a workers’ party in the classic sense’ and that his organisation was ‘taking on this role’. The US Vice President, JD Vance, emphasises he is a ‘a working-class boy, born far from the halls of power’ and promises to reshore industrial jobs. Marine Le Pen claims to lead the ‘party of French workers’ and Fratelli d’Italia wins a majority of manual workers after asking if ‘the Left is now no longer in the factories and amongst the workers, where can you find it?’ (its answer: a Pride parade).

Towards dynamic accountability

By Bob Tricker

Accountability is a fundamental component of governance, whether the governed entity is a country, a company, or indeed any other corporate entity, including charities, cooperatives, the NHS, or universities.

We the Men

By Jill Elaine Hasday

Amidst the flurry of headlines about the Trump administration’s first weeks in power, who will notice that the federal government’s largest agency no longer celebrates Black History Month or Women’s History Month? The Department of Defense’s January 31 guidance declaring “Identity Months Dead at DoD” may have been lost in the news cycle.

Making economics more human

By Bart Wilson

As the “official doctrine of neoclassical economics, enshrined in all respectable textbooks,” the esteemed game theorist Ken Binmore says, revealed preference theory “succeeds in accommodating the infinite variety of the human race within a single theory simply by denying itself the luxury of speculating about what is going on inside someone’s head. Instead, it pays attention only to what people do.”

Moby-Dick and the United States of Aggrievement

By David Haven Blake

Like the white whale itself, Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick (1851) seems ubiquitous across time. For nearly a century, readers have turned to Captain Ahab’s search for the whale that took his leg to understand American crises. Donald Trump’s return to the presidency offers a different question about Melville, domination, and US political life: How do Americans gain power by claiming that they have been wronged?

“My fellow Americans” [timeline]

By Lynsay Williams

Every four years, the incoming president of the United States delivers an inaugural address in a tradition that dates back to 1789, with the first inauguration of George Washington. The address reiterates to Americans—and peoples around the world—what the country has been and what it has the potential to become.

Beyond the paycheck

By Valeria Pulignano

In the age of gig economy, remote work, and juggling multiple jobs, unpaid labour is no longer confined only to the domestic sphere or volunteerism. It is now an insidious undercurrent in paid employment, eroding worker rights and deepening inequality.

Theories of Global Politics meet International Relations theories

By Georg Sørensen and Jørgen Møller

The study of world politics developed via a series of famous encounters, sometimes called the ‘great debates’. The first major encounter, dating to the early twentieth-century, was between utopian liberalism and realism; the second between traditional approaches and behaviouralism; the third between neorealism/neoliberalism and neo-Marxism.

Meaningful economics

By Bart Wilson

Human beings mean. We just do. Human beings contemplate the importance or significance of everything, be it a person or a place, an action or a consequence, a possession or an idea, a relationship or our well-being, an experience or our connection to something greater than ourselves.

Migration, colonization, and the shifting narratives of ancient Andean origins

By R. Alan Covey

In the Quechua-speaking highlands where the Incas built their empire more than 500 years ago, farmers and herders used the concept of pacha—movement across space and time—to shape local identities.

Rethinking migrations in late prehistoric Eurasia

By Manuel Fernández-Götz, Courtney Nimura, Philipp Stockhammer, and Rachel Cartwright

People move. Whether at an individual or group level, migrations have been a constant and fundamental component of the human journey from its very beginnings to the present.

A look behind the curtain at the best books of 2024

By Sarah Butcher

Every year, Oxford University Press’s trade program publishes 70-100 new books written for the general reader. The vast audience for these trade books comprises everyone from history buffs, popular science nerds, and philosophy enthusiasts pursuing intellectual interests, as well as parents and caregivers seeking crucial advice or support—all readers browsing the aisles of their local bookstore (or the Amazon new releases) for literature that deepens their insight into the world around them.

What does democracy look like?

By Robert B. Talisse

“This is what democracy looks like!” is a popular rallying cry of engaged democratic citizens across the globe. It refers to outbreaks of mass political action, episodes where large numbers of citizens gather in a public space to communicate a shared political message.

That we associate democracy with political demonstration is no surprise. After all, democracy is the rule of the people, and collective public action is a central way for citizens to make their voices heard. As it is often said, democracy happens “in the streets.”

Understanding fossil-fuel propaganda: a Q&A with Genevieve Guenther

By Genevieve Guenther and Sarah Butcher

2024’s UN climate summit in Azerbaijan is a key moment for world leaders to express their convictions and plans to address the escalating stakes of the climate crisis. This month we sat down with Genevieve Guenther—author of The Language of Climate Politics, and founder of End Climate Science to discuss the current state of climate activism and how propaganda from the fossil fuel industry has shaped the discourse.

The crisis in the palm of our hand: smartphones in contexts of conflict and care

By Jethro Norman, Matthew Ford, and Signe Marie Cold-Ravnkilde

The rapid global proliferation of smartphones and their associated information infrastructures has been a defining feature of the past decade’s global crises. Yet, while the digital is now a topic of keen interest for scholars working on virtually everything that constitutes the international, the smartphone as an object of study in and of itself has been largely elusive.

Is Boris Johnson like James Bond—or more like Homer Simpson? [long read]

By Murray Smith

The question may seem like an odd one, so let me approach it by sketching some context. 2024 has been a year of elections worldwide, with voters around the globe hitting the ballot boxes, from India (the most populous country in the world, with the largest electorate) to Venezuela to the UK. And needless to […]