James Davison Hunter, "Democracy and Solidarity: On the Cultural Roots of America's Political Crisis" (Yale UP, 2024)

James Davison Hunter, "Democracy and Solidarity: On the Cultural Roots of America's Political Crisis" (Yale UP, 2024)

Liberal democracy in America has always contained contradictions—most notably, a noble but abstract commitment to freedom, justice, and equality that, tragically, has seldom been realized in practice. While these contradictions have caused dissent and even violence, there was always an underlying and evolving solidarity drawn from the cultural resources of America’s “hybrid Enlightenment.” James Davison Hunter, who introduced the concept of “culture wars” thirty years ago, tells us in Democracy and Solidarity: On the Cultural Roots of America's Political Crisis (Yale UP, 2024) that those historic sources of national solidarity have now largely dissolved. While a deepening political polarization is the most obvious sign of this, the true problem is not polarization per se but the absence of cultural resources to work through what divides us. The destructive logic that has filled the void only makes bridging our differences more challenging. In the end, all political regimes require some level of unity. If it cannot be generated organically, it will be imposed by force. Can America’s political crisis be fixed? Can an Enlightenment-era institution—liberal democracy—survive and thrive in a post-Enlightenment world? If, for some, salvaging the older sources of national solidarity is neither possible sociologically, nor desirable politically or ethically, what cultural resources will support liberal democracy in the future? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

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Lauren M. MacLean, "Negotiating Power and Inequality in Ghana: Electricity and Citizenship as Reciprocity (Indiana UP, 2026)

Lauren M. MacLean, "Negotiating Power and Inequality in Ghana: Electricity and Citizenship as Reciprocity (Indiana UP, 2026)

In Ghana, much as in other parts of the Global South, postcolonial leaders aimed for industrial growth through the establishment of affordable hydroelectric power. However, in the current rapidly chan...

15 Maalis 1h 20min

Pepper Culpepper and Taeku Lee, "Billionaire Backlash: The Age of Corporate Scandal and How it Could Save Democracy" (Bloomsbury, 2026) 

Pepper Culpepper and Taeku Lee, "Billionaire Backlash: The Age of Corporate Scandal and How it Could Save Democracy" (Bloomsbury, 2026) 

Giant companies, launch rockets into space, control satellite communication and develop era-defining AI technologies. But they are also seen as promoting misinformation, undermining democracy and viol...

14 Maalis 1h 7min

Suzanne Mettler and Trevor E. Brown, "Rural Versus Urban: The Growing Divide That Threatens Democracy" (Princeton UP, 2025)

Suzanne Mettler and Trevor E. Brown, "Rural Versus Urban: The Growing Divide That Threatens Democracy" (Princeton UP, 2025)

How the urban-rural divide drives partisan polarization Why have Americans living in different places come to experience politics as a battle between “us” and “them”? In Rural Versus Urban: The Growin...

14 Maalis 40min

Wendy Brown, "States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity" (Princeton UP, 2025)

Wendy Brown, "States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity" (Princeton UP, 2025)

A sympathetic critique that attempts to free Left politics from its own snares, States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity (Princeton University Press, 2025) explores how woundedness became...

12 Maalis 41min

Katelyn E. Stauffer, "The Politics of Perception: How Beliefs About Women’s Inclusion Shape Democratic Legitimacy in the U.S." (Oxford UP, 2025)

Katelyn E. Stauffer, "The Politics of Perception: How Beliefs About Women’s Inclusion Shape Democratic Legitimacy in the U.S." (Oxford UP, 2025)

Katelyn Stauffer, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Georgia, has an excellent new book focusing on how voters and citizens perceive the legitimacy and functionality of poli...

12 Maalis 35min

Sari Hanafi, "Against Symbolic Liberalism: A Plea for Dialogical Sociology" (Liverpool UP, 2025)

Sari Hanafi, "Against Symbolic Liberalism: A Plea for Dialogical Sociology" (Liverpool UP, 2025)

In an era of deepening polarization, Sari Hanafi examines how social scientists often reproduce the very injustices they seek to challenge, taking entrenched positions while dismissing alternative per...

11 Maalis 50min

Populism, Polarization and Politics: Hungary on the Eve of Elections

Populism, Polarization and Politics: Hungary on the Eve of Elections

How and why do leaders like Hungary’s Viktor Orban not only come to power, but remain in power for so long (in Orban’s case 16 years)? And why does the impending election provide a serious challenge t...

10 Maalis 1h 8min

Stuck: How Money, Media and Violence Prevent Change in Congress

Stuck: How Money, Media and Violence Prevent Change in Congress

Fifty years of changemaking and reform haven't fixed Congress—what does that reveal about American democracy? In Stuck: How Money, Media and Violence Prevent Change in Congress, Maya Kornberg chronicl...

10 Maalis 54min

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