Liberal Democratic Standards Are Not Just an Opinion – Karolina Wigura on Polish Politics, Liberal Emotions, and Her Major Concerns

The European Council brings together all of the heads andstates of government of the European Union in order to drive policy.  In the last decade the EU has faced crises of the economy, membership, values, and migration. This conversation between our co-managing editor Oliver Garner and Dr .Martina Vass considers these issues through the lens of the latter's monograph "LeadershipStyles in the European Council: How Leaders Behave Behind Closed Doors" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024).

Is democracy sustainable without informed, virtuous, and engaged citizens? Can political institutions shape the kind of citizenry democracy needs? These questions lie at the heart of Democracy Tamed: French Liberalism and the Politics of Suffrage, the compelling new book by political theorist Gianna Englert, who joins us in this episode of RevDem.As contemporary anxieties grow over the future of liberal democracy and the rise of populism, Englert turns our attention to 19th-century France, where liberal thinkers grappled with similar dilemmas in the wake of the French Revolution.Englert reconstructs how a generation of French liberals—including Benjamin Constant, François Guizot, Alexis de Tocqueville, Édouard Laboulaye, and Ernest Duvergier de Hauranne—sought to chart a path toward democraticinclusion that did not compromise their liberal commitments to individual freedom, institutional stability, and rational governance. Central to their efforts was the idea of political capacity: the belief that suffrage should be tied to a citizen’s ability to exercise it responsibly. Englert argues that political capacity emerged as a flexible and evolving standard—shaped by France’s shifting social and economic realities—which enabled liberals to reconcile democratic expansion with their core political principles.In our conversation, Englert reflects on the transnationalinfluences that shaped this capacitarian discourse, the moral and educational ambitions of liberal reformers, and the ongoing relevance of their ideas in an age of democratic uncertainty. Tune in for a rich exploration of a forgottenliberal tradition that still speaks to the challenges confronting democracy today.

What happens when war leaves millions stranded, stateless, and unwanted? In this episode of the Review of Democracy podcast, host Imogen Bayley discusses with renowned historian Sheila Fitzpatrick her latest book, LostSouls: Soviet Displaced Persons and the Birth of the Cold War. Drawing from newly uncovered archival research, Fitzpatrick explores the lives of Soviet displaced persons—those who found themselves outside the USSR at the endof World War II and refused to return, despite intense Soviet pressure. Their fates became entangled in Cold War politics, as Western governments redefined them from war victims to symbols of anti-communist resistance. From forcedrepatriations and identity manipulation to the geopolitical power struggles that shaped global refugee policy, this discussion reveals how history’s displaced individuals exercised agency in ways that continue to shape modernmigration debates. Listen to our podcast on exile, political propaganda, and the lasting impact of Cold War resettlement strategies. Sheila Fitzpatrick is the author of many books, including On Stalin’s Team: The Years of Living Dangerously in Soviet Politics (Princeton), The Shortest History of the Soviet Union, and The Russian Revolution. She is professor of history at the Institute of Humanities and Social Science at the AustralianCatholic University and Distinguished Service Professor Emerita at the University of Chicago. Imogen Bayley: Imogen Bayley is a historian and migration studies scholar who earned her PhD in ComparativeHistory from Central European University and is currently, as a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. Her book, Postwar Migration Policy and the Displaced of the British Zone in Germany, 1945–1951.Fighting for a Future, was recently published by Palgrave Macmillan.

In this conversation with Paul McGarr, we discuss hislatest book, Spying in South Asia (Cambridge, 2024). From the influence of espionage on international relations to the role of conspiracy and rumor in shaping domestic politics, McGarr highlights the complexities of intelligence dynamics between the West and India. He reveals how during theCold War, democratic aspirations in the Global South were often dismissed by American and British intelligence and foreign policy establishments.Challenging the widely held belief that the Western powers championed democracy in the region, McGarr argues that Cold War geostrategic priorities frequently undermined democratic movements in South Asia. Yet, despite these external pressures, local actors and political institutions in India played a crucial role in shaping intelligence outcomes, resisting imposed narratives, and asserting their own democratic agency.  

In the latest episode of our Democracy After 2024 series, Karolina Wigura discusses Poland’s currentrole in Europe and the changing polarization between liberal and illiberal forces; analyzes the role of emotions in contemporary liberal politics; reflects on how we distinguish between agendas of accountability, onthe one hand, and of retribution and revenge, on the other; and explains what she will watch particularly closely in the coming months.Karolina Wigura is a historian of ideas, sociologist, and journalist. She is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Liberal Modernity in Berlin and a member of the Board of the Kultura Liberalna Foundation in Warsaw. She is alecturer at the Institute of Sociology at Warsaw University and a member of the European Council on Foreign Relations. In her research, Karolina Wigura focuses on the political philosophy of the 20th century, on emotions in politics as well as on the sociology and ethics of memory and, more particularly, on questions of transitional justice, historical guilt, and reconciliation.

In the latest RevDem podcast our co-managing editor DrOliver Garner discusses processes for becoming an MP today in Europe with Dr. Emiljana Krali.Dr Krali is a generalist Equity Research Analyst who has experience in telecommunications, fintech, software,and hardware among other fields. She holds degrees from the University of Bari in physics and from the University of Surrey in nanotechnology. Her Ph.D. was obtained from Imperial College London. She is currently undertaking the selection process to become a candidate for the governing Socialist Party in Albania.

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.