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Seven books for philosophical perspectives on politics [reading list]

By OUP Philosophy Team

2020 has come to be defined by widespread human tragedy, economic uncertainty, and increased public discourse surrounding how to address systemic racism. With such important issues at stake, political leadership has been under enormous scrutiny. As the US election approaches, we’re featuring a selection of important books exploring politics from different philosophical perspectives, ranging from interrogating the moral duty to vote, to how grandstanding impacts public discourse.

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Voter fraud and election meddling [podcast]

By Steven Filippi

The topic of voter fraud and electoral meddling has been at the forefront of many a conversation over the last four years. Are foreign powers trying to sway our election in 2020? Is mail-in-voting safe from meddling? Will fear of COVID-19 decrease voter turnout?

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Oxford Bibliographies

Is gerrymandering “poisoning the well” of democracy?

By Ryan Williamson

Every ten years, the federal government administers the Census to determine the size of the population as well as how that population is distributed within and across states. These figures are then used to allocates seats within the US House of Representatives. States that grow faster than the rest of the country typically gain seats, necessarily at the expense of states that have lost residents or have experienced the slowest growth.

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Oxford Research Encylopedias: Communications

The fight against fake news and electoral disinformation

By Bente Kalsnes

Just as COVID-19 is a stress test of every nation’s health system, an election process is a stress test of a nation’s information and communication system. A week away from the US presidential election, the symptoms are not so promising. News reports about the spread of so-called “fake news,” disinformation, and conspiracy theories are thriving as they did in 2016.

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Disorienting Neoliberalism

What COVID-19 tells us about global supply chains

By Benjamin L. McKean

President Trump is not the only one bewildered by global supply chains today. Over the past 40 years, it has become normal for the production of many goods to be disaggregated and outsourced around the world. Transnational supply chains now represent 80% of global trade; they’re inextricable from our daily lives. Most people aren’t exactly surprised when their t-shirt comes from the other side of the globe or when their phone contains components from 43 countries, even if we can’t ever quite shake the feeling that there’s something uncanny about the contrast between these extraordinary distances and the ordinary purposes these goods serve.

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MI5, the Cold War, and the Rule of Law

MI5 and Russian interference, now and then

By Keith Ewing, Joan Mahoney, and Andrew Moretta

On 21 July 2020, the UK parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee published its long-delayed report on “the Russian threat to the UK.” Although heavily redacted, the report was wide-ranging and dealt with a number of issues, including the threat to democracy, highlighting concerns about potential Russian interference in the Scottish referendum in 2014, the EU […]

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The Puzzle of Prison Order by David Skarbek

Smaller prisons are smarter

By David Skarbek

There is a growing consensus across the political spectrum that the United States incarcerates far too many people and that this has tragic and unjust consequences that fall disproportionately on disadvantaged socioeconomic and minority communities. Yet, not only do we lock up too many people, but all too often they are incarcerated in prisons that […]

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Winston Churchill and the media in the 1945 British general election

By Richard Toye

Seventy-five years ago this week, the House of Commons in Britain began debating the legislative programme of Clement Attlee’s Labour government, elected by a landslide at the end of the previous month. John Freeman, one of the fresh intake of socialist MPs, declared boldly: “Today, we go into action. Today may rightly be regarded as […]

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The technocratic politics of the American right

By Jason Blakely

Conservatives today often present themselves as populists running against a left said to be out of touch with the common people and enamored of technocratic rule by experts. This is, in fact, a longstanding critique found not only in grassroots ideological discourse but also in the work of conservative philosophers like Michael Oakeshott, who suggested that the left was […]

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It’s cheaper to preserve the Amazon than we might think

By Eduardo Souza Rodrigues

“The cattle need ladders to graze here.” That is what my wife’s relatives used to tell her after they moved to the Amazon rainforest. She visited their farm when she was 13, and the planted grass was taller than she was. Grass grows tall there because of the substantial amount of nutrients left on the […]

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Writing a non-fiction historical thriller

By Jonathan Schneer

The distinguished biographer, Ben Pimlott, used to say that historians should try to write like novelists. To my knowledge, he never developed the thought, but what he meant was clear. While the historical monograph may make a significant contribution to knowledge, too often it is boring to read. He wanted us to deploy the skills […]

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What the United States can learn from Portuguese politics

By Robert M. Fishman

Donald Trump’s Independence Day attack on the culture of inclusion and equality highlights a problem long with us. Far from being united by principles enshrined in the country’s origins, America has long suffered deep discord over what lessons to draw from the nation’s history and how to tell the story of our past. Conflict over the treatment of […]

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