New Books in Political Science

Project Europe made waves when it was published in German in 2018 (CH Beck) and was soon translated into English as Project Europe: A History (Cambridge UP, 2020).

A clue to its crossover appeal can be found in its original subtitle: "A Critical History." Avoiding the traps of euro-'Whig' or eurosceptical histories, Patel rethinks the development of the European Communities and the European Union from first principles.

He concludes that they were just one model among many postwar associations but proved the most evolutionarily fit; that they benefited from peace more than they contributed to it; and that "disintegration and dysfunctionality" were embedded in their design.

Having taught at Maastricht University and at the European University Institute in Florence, Kiran Klaus Patel is now professor of European history at Ludwig Maximilian University Munich.

*Patel's book recommendation is The Capital by Robert Menasse (MacLehose Press, 2019).

Tim Gwynn Jones is an economic and political-risk analyst at Medley Global Advisors.

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The thematic research question in The Inclusion Calculation: Why Men Appropriate Women’s Representation (Oxford UP, 2019) is whether there is a distinction between women’s power itself and the strategic value of having women in power, and, within this distinction, what is it that men get out of women in power. This is a fascinating interrogation because it approaches the idea of women’s power – particularly what we consider to be political power – from a somewhat novel perspective, the rational calculus of those in power (not women) about what this might mean and how it might impact those in power. Melody Valdini considers the question of the “inclusion calculation” by asking how men might benefit from including women in elected political or appointed office. From a rational choice perspective, this makes sense: what are the trade-offs for including women, for allocating power to women, for advocating for the election or appointment of women? What benefit does this bring to men—this is the calculation that has been made in the United States and around the world by politicians and those in power as the advocacy for greater female representation has been made in quite a few different ways and by different constituent groups. Valdini notes in her research that this is a kind of fascinating blind spot in the literature and research on women and politics and power.

The Inclusion Calculation fills in this space in our understanding not so much of men and how they react to women, but in terms of considering how and where this idea of inclusion finds purchase. There is a great deal of important and diverse research on women in politics, and on women and power, but Valdini notes that there is this kind of cost/benefit analysis that was never really evaluated in terms of the give and take of power as women have moved into politics and into power. The Inclusion Calculation outlines a clear calculus to evaluate the various dimensions of the costs and benefits in terms of integrating women, and also sheds light on the side of the equation that just keeps admonishing women to work and try harder in order to achieve the same political outcomes or achievements as men. The Inclusion Calculation looks at this issue quite broadly, and notes some patterns in various political systems, especially in response to corruption, when women candidates are recruited to “clean things up.” This is a fascinating and important addition to the literature on women and politics, keeping the focus on women and power, and analyzing how and where women do and don’t fit into the political landscape and why.

Stayed tuned to the interview to also learn a bit about the cover art for the book, which helps to tell the story about why men appropriate women’s representation.

Lilly J. Goren is professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012), as well as co-editor of Mad Men and Politics: Nostalgia and the Remaking of Modern America (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015).

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Although World War II had been largely remembered in the People’s Republic of China as an experience of victimization since its founding in 1949, that view has been changing since the Deng Xiaoping era in the 1980s. Rana Mitter’s newest book on modern China, China’s Good War: How World War II Is Shaping a New Nationalism (Harvard University Press 2020), traces this transformation in the Chinese interpretations of the war from one marked by humiliation to one that celebrates victory. This change in the discourses surrounding the war began with a changing historiography led by Chinese academia in the 1980s, when research on a variety of previously forbidden areas of historical study was encouraged. Then, through local and public attempts at reviving and celebrating war memories through museums, TV, film, and the online space, WWII has been increasingly narrated in these different arenas as China’s “good war.” What came out of these new narratives, Mitter points out, is an attempt to rehabilitate Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalists war efforts, which allows the PRC “to re-create an identity it was forging in the 1930s and 1940s, as a rising power that took a cooperative and powerful role at a time of immense global crisis...” In doing so, Mitter argues that China is able to create a subtle corollary, the idea that China is also a postwar state that is both one of the creators and protectors of the postwar international order.

Daigengna Duoer is a PhD student at the Religious Studies Department, University of California, Santa Barbara. Her dissertation researches on transnational and transregional Buddhist networks connecting twentieth-century Inner Mongolia, Manchuria, Republican China, Tibet, and the Japanese Empire.

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In the past few years isolationism, which had long been derided in the national discourse, has been making a comeback as a political force. In Isolationism: A History of America’s Efforts to Shield Itself from the World (Oxford University Press, 2020), Charles A. Kupchan traces the history of the concept in American politics and considers its future influence on American foreign policy. As he demonstrates, isolationism was long dominant in shaping American foreign policy, as for decades political leaders heeded George Washington’s advice to steer clear of entangling alliances. By the end of the 19th century, however, America’s growing engagement with the world sparked policy shifts as various forms of internationalism were introduced. Though isolationism remained a powerful influence on foreign policy, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 publicly discredited isolationism for millions of Americans, paving the way for the adoption of Franklin Roosevelt’s approach of “liberal internationalism.” While this remained the consensus approach through the Cold War, Kupchan shows how the post-Cold War overreach of American foreign policy offered new life to isolationist concepts, giving it a renewed influence shaping America’s relationship with the world.

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Amy Schiller, who spent a number of years working in both political and major gift fundraising, has a new book detailing some of the fundamental problems currently afflicting American philanthropy and how to correct some of these problems. Schiller, a political theorist currently at Dartmouth College’s Society of Fellows, brings two important perspectives to her research in The Price of Humanity: How Philanthropy Went Wrong—And How to Fix It (Melville House, 2023)—combining her experience in the philanthropic world with her training and expertise in political theory, especially democratic theory. The Price of Humanity also provides the reader with a vital history of philanthropy and giving, especially in the West, and how thinking about the role of supporting others as part of the common good has shifted over the course of more than two millennia. Schiller makes an important point about how St. Augustine, in his teachings on donations and giving, shifted the framing and understanding of giving from a community-based common good to a global approach to donating, tying the act of giving to individual salvation. This approach not only highlighted suffering and need and stratified those who give from those who are in need, but it also disconnected the philanthropic experience from the immediate community while objectifying those who are in poverty or generally in need.

The Price of Humanity doesn’t dwell in the past but provides this important lens that continues to apply to our contemporary thinking about giving. This more disconnected approach is also overlaid, in our current environment, with the demand that non-profits and philanthropies product quantifiable goods: how many cases of malaria have been eradicated, how much food has been provided to those experiencing scarcity, how are the dollars donated spent and by whom and in what ways? Thus, in so many ways, philanthropic organizations have to report out their successes in the same ways that private corporations need to detail their fiscal health to their boards of directors and shareholders. All of these approaches tend to disconnect the act of giving from the world in which we live, according to Schiller, and this disconnection makes the reason for giving much more attenuated, distancing us from each other, our communities, and the real role of the common good. Instead of linking individuals together in our shared love for one another and humanity as a whole—which is actually what the word philanthropy means in the original Greek—we live in a philanthropic world that separates and isolates. The Price of Humanity spotlights different approaches to giving, with discussions of the Gates Foundation, Effective Altruism, Robber Barons and the Gilded Age, and other forms of the business of giving. Schiller also focuses on modern examples of philanthropy as the common good, which brings it into the realm of democratic theory, as a means to provide the flourishing of humanity, not merely fulfilling the desperate needs of individuals. This is a fascinating and valuable interrogation of the idea of giving to others, and how we need to reconsider our thinking about the act of giving itself and the role that this act plays in our community and in our democracy.

Lilly J. Goren is a professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-host of the New Books in Political Science channel at the New Books Network. She is co-editor of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (University Press of Kansas, 2022), as well as co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012). She can be reached @gorenlj.bsky.social

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