Beyond Narratives, Personas and Spectacles: A Conversation on Illiberal and Authoritarian Practices

In this episode, we explore the newly published book Texts and Contexts from the History of Feminism and Women’sRights in East-Central Europe, Second Half of the Twentieth Century (CEU Press, 2024) edited by Zsófia Lóránd, Adela Hîncu, Jovana Mihajlović Trbovc, and Katarzyna Stańczak-Wiślicz. Our conversation with the editors delves intothe book's aim of highlighting the often-overlooked contributions of East Central European women to global feminist thought and activism. We discuss the selection processof a diverse range of texts and artworks that challenge the dominant politicaland intellectual canons, focusing on the importance of including works thatdon't necessarily self-identify as feminist but engage with themes of systemicoppression. The discussion also touches on how socialism and the post-socialisttransitions shaped feminist movements in the region, notable figures and textsfrom the volume, encountered controversies during the process of editing aswell as the books' reception, and finally, the book's potential to inspirefuture feminist research and activism in East-Central Europe.

In this episode of the Democracy After 2024 series, Dorjana Bojanovska Popovska hosts Marlies Glasius for adiscussion that goes beyond traditional regime-type classifications and the public/private divide, by looking at examples of illiberal and authoritarian practices that emerged or peaked in 2024 as well as their diffusion across different contexts.Dorjana Bojanovska Popovska is a Post-doctoral Fellow at the CEU Democracy Institute.Marlies Glasiu, is a Professor of International Relations at the University of Amsterdam, a Senior Core Fellow at the CEU Institute for Advanced Studies, and author of Authoritarian Practices in a Global Age (OUP 2023).

In this conversation with the Review of Democracy, Professor Leigh Payne, Dr. Julia Zulver, and Dr. Simon Escoffierdiscuss the development of right-against-rights movements that have grown in numbers, strength, and influence in recent years in Latin America. The discussion draws on their latest book, “The Right against Rights in Latin America,” published by Oxford University Press, in which they show that newanti-rights groups are intent on blocking, rolling back, and reversing social movements' legislative advances by obstructing justice and accountability processes and influencing politicians across the region. Their book containschapters that empirically explore the breadth, depth, and diversity of a new wave of anti-rights movements. It details why they are fundamentally different from previous movements in the region, and — perhaps more importantly — why it is of vital importance that we study, analyse, and understand them in a global context, as their impact extends far beyond Latin America.Leigh A. Payne is Professor of Sociology and Latin America at the University of Oxford, St Antony's College. She worksbroadly on responses to past atrocity. Together with Gabriel Pereira and Laura Bernal Bermúdez, she has published Transitional Justice and CorporateAccountability: Deploying Archimedes' Lever (Cambridge University Press, 2020) and a follow-up edited volume on Economic Actors and the Limits of Transitional Justice (Oxford University Press, 2022). Shehas also edited with Karina Ansolabehere and Barbara FreyDisappearances in the Post-Transition Era in Latin America (Oxford University Press, 2021) and with Juan Espindola Collaboration in Authoritarian and Armed Conflict Settings (Oxford University Press, 2022).Julia Zulver is a Wallenberg Academy Fellow at the Swedish Defence University, where she researches  feminist response to backlash in post-conflict settings in Latin America. She was previously a Marie Skłodowska-Curie research fellow between the Oxford School of Global and AreaStudies and the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. She earned her D.Phil. in sociology at the University of Oxford in 2018, where she studied how and why organisations of women mobilise in high-risk contexts – actions that exposethem to further danger. Her book High-Risk Feminism in Colombia: Women’s Mobilization in Violent Contexts was published in 2022. Her co-edited volume, Brave Women: Fighting for Justice in the 21st Century was published this February.Simón Escoffier is an assistant professor at the School of Social Work at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. He is the author of the book Mobilising at the Urban Margins: Citizenship and Patronage Politics in Post-Dictatorial Chile (forthcoming, 2023). He holds a doctorate from the Sociology Department and St Antony's College at the University of Oxford. His research sits at the intersection of social movements, citizenship, urban marginality, local governance, democracy, and Latin American studies. He teaches on sociological theory, politics, and social movements.

We are thrilled to bring you the newest episodeof our monthly special in cooperation with the Journal of Democracy. In the framework of this new partnership,authors discuss outstanding articles from the latest print issue of the Journal of Democracy.In this conversation, Richard Wike – director of global attitudes research at Pew Research Center – presents the key facts of the growing dissatisfaction with the way democracy works; discusses which parts of society support which kinds of change in the direction of more representativity; explores how people view the impact of social media on democracy; and reflects on how democracies of the future might look different from past versions and how they could empower citizens more. The conversation is based on Richard Wike’s article “Why the World Is Down on Democracy” which has been published in the January 2025 (36/1)bissue of the Journal of Democracy.

In this discussion with Manan Ahmed, we consider thepolitical history of South Asia from the perspective of one of its most vibrant and famed cities, Lahore. Drawing from his latest book, The Disrupted City: Walking the Pathways of Memory and History in Lahore (The New Press, 2024), we consider the various episodic and modular histories of citiesin the Global South, their role in forming new kinds of tactile consciousness towards politics, and their presence in colonial and postcolonial political imagination. Enchanting yet tragic, monumental yet fragmented, Lahore—as depicted by Ahmed—embodies a dual legacy. It bears the scars of the 1947 partition of South Asia into India and Pakistan while also reflecting its own vibrant, if imperfect, history of religious and cultural cosmopolitanism—a legacy sacrificed to the nationalizing imperatives of what Ahmed calls “Prophetic Pakistan.”Ahmed’s Lahore departs from the grand, romanticized, orientalist cities painted by Western writers. It is intimate and inhabited by ordinary emotions. Navigating the complexities of the city’s past, Ahmed alerts us to the diversevisions of toil and labor, violence and subterfuge that shapes Lahore as a city of celebration and disappointments.

In this episode of the Review of Democracy Podcast, host Alexandra Medzibrodszky talks to Tejas Parasher, Assistant Professor of Political Theory at UCLA, to explore the rich and often overlooked landscape of radical democratic thought in modern India. Drawing from his award-winning book, Radical Democracy in Modern Indian Political Thought, Parasher discusses the ideas of thinkers and activists from the1910s to the 1970s who challenged the colonial legacies of liberal, representative democracy. These figures envisioned participatory, federalist models of governance that resisted elitism and corruption, offering bold alternatives to the political status quo.Join us as we reflect on the value of these "paths not taken" in anti-colonial politics and consider what lessons they might hold for today’s democratic challenges. From familiar figures like Gandhi to lesser-known voices in Indian intellectual history, this conversation sheds light on a counter-tradition that critiques representative democracy and reimagines what “real” democratic participation can look like. Whether you're a student of political theory or simply curious about alternative democratic models, this episode promises fresh perspectives on both historical and contemporary governance.

In this episode of the Democracy After 2024 series, Denys Tereshchenko hosts Margarita Zavadskaya to discuss the asymmetries of power between the state and civil society in Russia, public attitudes toward the full-scale invasion of Ukraine among Russians inside and outside Russia, and the reasons behind the failure of anti-war protests.Margarita Zavadskaya is a senior research fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs (FIIA) and researcher at the Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki. Sheis the editor, most recently, of The Politics of the Pandemic in Eastern Europe and Eurasia. Blame Game and Governance (Routledge, 2024).Denys Tereshchenko is a doctoral researcher in History at the European University Institute, Florence. He previously studied Political Science, Public Policy, and Comparative History in Kyiv and Vienna. Together with Nadiia Koval, he co-edited Russian Cultural Diplomacy under Putin: Rossotrudnichestvo, the “Russkiy Mir” Foundation, andthe Gorchakov Fund in 2007–2022 (ibidem Press, 2023).

“The ability to shame depends foremost on the public sense of right and wrong. You can cite a human rights treaty but that is not going to be enough to persuade people. You got to be able to show them that the government’s conduct is wrong in a waythat they feel viscerally.”In this conversation at the Review of Democracy,Kenneth Roth – who is about to publish Righting Wrongs. Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abusive Governments – explains what has made the strategies of Human Rights Watch distinct in the world of humanrights-related advocacy and activism, and discusses cases where they managed to have a real impact; considers how the extension of the catalogue of human rights over time has shaped their interests and profile; reflects on HRW’s relationship with different types of governments; and explains how HRW has related to the question of humanitarian intervention and drawn on international humanitarian law across the decades.Kenneth Roth acted as the executive director of Human Rights Watch between 1993 and 2022.Righting Wrongs. Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abusive Governments is published by Knopf.

In the latest episode of our Democracy After 2024 series, Julia Ebner discusses major developments regarding the mainstreaming of extremist ideas; explains how social media platforms have contributed to radicalization processes and considers whether we might be experiencing a new turning point right now; and sketches effective counterstrategies – and reflects on what might be missingfrom our current toolbox.Julia Ebner is an award-winning author of three books who isknown for her expertise in online radicalization, conspiracy myths and threats to democracy. She is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue in London and a Postdoctoral Researcher and Group Leader at theViolent Extremism Lab, both at the University of Oxford. Julia Ebner was also the recipient, among other recent awards, of the Open Society Prize of the CEU.Her most recent book isGoing Mainstream. How Extremists Are Taking Over(2023).

The medical aid programs established by socialist states nuance the Cold War dichotomy regarding the transfer of knowledge. The latest RevDem Democracy and Culture podcast with Bogdan Cristian Iacob explores the legacy of socialist regimes in the transnational circulation of expertknowledge during the Cold War, with a particular focus on medical aid.Bogdan Cristian Iacobis a researcher at the Nicolae Iorga Institute of History at the Romanian Academy and at the Institute for Habsburg and Balkan Studies at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. His work focused on the relationship between state socialist countries and the Global South, the transnational circulation of expert knowledge, and the legacy of state socialism’s global entanglements in shaping the transformation of Eastern Europe. He is a co-author of the collective monographSocialism Goes Global.During its initial phase, the historiography of the socialist states labeled Eastern Europe as a disconnected region from the international transfer of knowledge. In this logic, the only possible knowledge exchange was from Western to Eastern Europe, due to the Iron Curtain. However, this initial paradigm has since been revisited and by now, historians provide amuch more nuanced perspective on this issue. Revisionist and post-revisionist historiography emphasize that Eastern and Central Europe were never completely isolated. Instead, exchanges, influences and mobilities occurred across threecore geographical axes – firstly, within the socialist bloc, another one with the West and finally, with the Global South. The decision-making process regarding international collaborations was far more complex than the Cold War dichotomy, as it involved domestic political pressures, as well as economic, social, and public health challenges. Bogdan Cristian Iacob favors this approach. Throughout his research, he sheds light on the public health programs created by the socialist states, situating them in the context of decolonization. This approach is highly relevant as it reframes Eastern Europe as an active participant in global public health strategies.Infectious disease eradication - a battlefield?The eradication of infectious diseases was a central debate in the post-war socialist states, as Bogdan Cristian Iacob argues in this podcast. He highlights the example of malaria. This disease was officially eradicated in Romania in 1963 and presented by the leadership as a unique and modern healthcare program, with the program later implemented in other countries. This case is relevant within the broader framework. The scope of malaria, typhus, and smallpox eradication was beyond individual countries, particular regions or one political regime. Based on such initial achievements, countries that engaged in the public healthcare competition exported medical knowledge to the postcolonial world.  Initially, in the 1950s the reason for this‘export’ was anticolonial solidarity for the newly independent countries. Yet, in the 1960s, the medical assistance programs from Eastern Europe were no longer driven by mere solidarity. Instead, competition emerged, as BogdanCristian Iacob argues. The reasons included access to naturalresources and new markets, as well as the emphasis on the supplying country's modernity. Within this competition, postcolonial governments leveraged rivalries between donor countries sending medical aid and healthcare experts toappeal to the 'modernity ego' of state socialist officials, as Iacob points out.Healthcare support - paternalism or solidarity?While postcolonial solidarity was one of the main driversof healthcare support from Eastern European countries, it did not prevent the emergence of hierarchies. As this podcast demonstrates, Eastern European healthcare experts often perceived postcolonial countries as economically underdeveloped and culturally backward. The paradox is that socialist medicine demonstrated its own form of paternalism that replicated colonial practices.Often, doctors failed to distance themselves racializing their patients.Balancing domestic public health and expertise exportIacob argues that three elements dominated thepublic healthcare competition: anti-colonial solidarity, regional economic interests, and ideological rivalry. This, in turn, created a problem in the mid-1970s, as medical workers were deployed to certain postcolonial countrieswhile domestic healthcare systems faced staff shortages. As a result, ‘healthcare export’ became both a political tool for legitimation and a source of revenue. One of the best examples of this is Cuba, as this podcast shows.RelevanceAccording to Iacob, this approach is relevant for both the historiography of socialist states and the history of medicine, as it highlights the multiple vectors of knowledgetransfer during the Cold War. However, within this debate, some questions remain unanswered. Iacob suggests three key questions for further examination. First, how do we further assess the relationship between Eastern European medicine and practices of racialization at home and those in global context? Second, how did global circulations of socialist medicine affect or influence specific medical fieldsback in the region? Lastly, how might the archival openings in the Global South might emphasize the agency of the postcolonial countries and change our current understanding about socialism and disease and in more broad terms, aboutemancipation?