Democracy, power and governance

Keith Dowding talks through the arguments in his book, It's the Government, Stupid, including looking at individualism, choice, and how governments have passed blame and responsibility onto citizens during COVID-19.…Read more

Keith Dowding, author of 'It’s the Government, Stupid', discusses the UK government's ‘war against obesity’ and how the cause of the obesity crisis is lack of government action on the root causes, not individual people's decisions.…Read more

Naomi Eisenstadt, co-author of 'Parents, Poverty and the State', explains some of the structural barriers academics face when trying to influence government, and offers some tips for overcoming them.…Read more

Leigh Gardner and Tirthankar Roy, authors of 'The Economic History of Colonialism', examine the relationship between colonialism and economic development, and challenge the assumption that the way colonial governments worked, and the effects that they left behind, had more to do with the aims and capacities of European states than with the regions they ruled over.…Read more

Andrew Ryder, author of 'Britain and Europe at a Crossroads', discusses the history that allowed Brexit to take place, and outlines a way forward from this point.…Read more

Harris Beider and Kusminder Chahal talk about their new book, The Other America: White Working Class Perspectives on Race, Identity and Change, covering the impact of the murder of George Floyd, white privilege, Trump's election and possibilities for building cross-racial coalitions.…Read more

John Morrissey, Associate Director of the Moore Institute for Humanities at the National University of Ireland, Galway, explores the flimsy construction of neoliberalism and argues that now is the time to take stock of what an economy is actually for.…Read more

The foreword by Albie Sachs to 'International Human Rights, Social Policy and Global Development Critical Perspectives', edited by Gerard McCann and Féilim Ó hAdhmaill.…Read more

Joshua Rozenberg explains Simon Dolan's proceedings against the government on whether the COVID-19 lockdown regulations are lawful and compares them to the two Brexit-related challenges brought by Gina Miller that he analyses in his new book, 'Enemies of the People?: How Judges Shape Society'.…Read more

Ligia Teixeira, co-editor of Using Evidence to End Homelessness, talks with Jess Miles from Bristol University Press about the book, homelessness and COVID-19, and the importance of a 'what works' approach to create a society in which any experience of homelessness is rare, brief and non-recurring.…Read more