Political theorists and liberal states have reified “democracy” into a platitude, even as it breeds cynicism in the face of deepening inequality and ecological crisis. Our article of the week explores whether democracy can be saved.
By John Dunn in @global-ih.bsky.social
buff.ly/kfEwHCP
"It is too late to ask who will educate the educators. At this point we must educate ourselves together and heed the lessons of that education or we must and will die - not just each of us one by one, as we were always fated to do, but soon enough all of us and for ever"
Nineteenth-century painting by Philipp Foltz depicting the Athenian politician Pericles delivering his famous funeral oration in front of the Assembly.
Now out in OA: "Can Democracy be Rehabilitated?" by John Dunn (@thecambridgeschool.bsky.social): "[It] will be a heroic challenge... The stakes in meeting it are the possibility of democracy itself, a citizenry that has recovered the capacity to keep itself free" www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10....
The cover of the book. An image of soldiers carrying paintings is visible in the bottom part of the cover.
Now online! Johan Hjelte (Gothenburg) reviews "The Art of Status: Looted Treasures and the Global Politics of Restitution" by @jelenasubotic.bsky.social (@academic.oup.com, 2025) www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
We were very happy to facilitate this forum on "Erased: A History of International Thought Without Men" by Patricia Owens @whitproject.bsky.social. In due course, the collection will emerge as a print special issue. Huge thanks to all the contributors!
Global Intellectual History @global-ih.bsky.social organsied a Special Issue on Erased, including a reply. I'm so grateful to Helen M. Kinsella, Joseph MacKay, Christine Sylvester, Immi Tallgren, and Tarak Barkawi for their commentaries. Links to each below...
The cover of the book that features a photo of Martinu sitting beside a piano in suit and tie with a cigarette
Online! Elena Yi-Jia Zeng (@kingscollegelondon.bsky.social) reviews "Martinů and His World" (@uchicagopress.bsky.social, 2025), edited by Aleš Březina and Michael Beckerman, a collection of essays and documents illuminating the work of Bohuslav Martinů (1890-1959) www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
What is planetary politics? My short essay is now published in Global Perspectives, in a really interesting forum.
@ucpress
doi.org/10.1525/gp.2...
6/6 [...] Writing the article as part of a special issue spanning several countries pushed me to draw comparative connections between Ethiopia and other monarchies in Thailand and Iran." Read the original article here: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
5/6 This work was a cornerstone in the development of my forthcoming monograph on early twentieth-century Ethiopian political thought. [...]
4/6 I was interested in delineating how this anticolonial move generated its own contradictions, rigidifying Ethiopia’s internal hierarchies and setting Ethiopia aside from other African countries. [...]
3/6 The notion of an unbroken dynastic continuity was used to strengthen Ethiopia’s claims to sovereignty in history writing, public architecture, and legal texts. [...]
2/6 "This article traced the strategies through which Ethiopian leaders and intellectuals defended Ethiopia’s precarious independence in the colonial world of the early twentieth century. [...]
A quote from the below thread
1/6 Across 2025 we have posted highlights to celebrate our approaching 10th anniversary. For our final one we spoke to @saramarzagora.bsky.social (@kingscollegelondon.bsky.social), author of "Refashioning the Ethiopian Monarchy in the Twentieth Century" (2022; online 2020). Here are her thoughts:
The cover of the book
A special issue that I edited on "Erased: A History of International Thought Without Men" (2025) by Patricia Owens has gone to production – I look forward to seeing the collection published @global-ih.bsky.social! It includes five review articles and a reply article by @whitproject.bsky.social
My review article on R Bourke’s and Q Skinner’s anthology ”History in the Humanities and Social Sciences” is included in the latest issue of @global-ih.bsky.social. Open access!
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Many thanks to the editor @tomaashby.bsky.social and to the reviewer Laura André Lombard! It’s truly heartwarming to see years of work get noticed and read. Now, more than ever before, we live in dangerous times in great need of cosmopolitan republicanism.
5/5 [...] Paradoxically, however, it shows how the minorities that were the victims of these ideas also contributed to them, complicating standard accounts and demanding new frameworks." Here is the original article:
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
4/5 [...] It argues that decolonisation was defined by an “immediate” relation to sovereignty that was threatened by the apparently mediating presence and function of minorities, who were often expelled or exiled in the early post-colonial period. [...]
3/5 [...] I have since developed these arguments into a monograph provisionally titled “Vanishing Mediators: A History of Decolonisation,” which narrates that tumultuous but conceptually fertile period from the vantage point of its ostensible victims. [...]
2/5 "That article and the special issue "Refusing Minority, Recasting Islam" was an attempt to think comparatively about how minorities remade Islam in the twentieth century, usually by recourse to universalist claims." [...]
A quotation from the below text
1/5 For our monthly highlight in November, approaching our 10th anniversary next year, we spoke with Taushif Kara (Cambridge, now @kingscollegelondon.bsky.social) author of “Provincializing Mecca? (1924–1969)”, published in 2022 (online 2021). Here is what he had to say about this work:
The cover of the book, featuring a historic portrait of Cloots
Now online! Laura André Lombard (Université Panthéon Assas) reviews "The Political Thought of Anacharsis Cloots: A Proponent of Cosmopolitan Republicanism in the French Revolution (@degruyterbrill.bsky.social, 2023) by @fepoulsen.bsky.social www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
The cover of the Black Pepper Books version
The cover of the Cambridge version
9/9 The issue comes to close with a book review. K. Shaheen (Kannur University) reviews "The Islamic Law in Circulation: Shāfiʿī Texts across the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean" (Black Pepper Books / @universitypress.cambridge.org, 2022) by Mahmood Kooria www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Detail from a painting that includes Blagoev
8/9 Boris Popivanov (Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski) looks into the legacy of Dimitar Blagoev (1856–1924), a key founder of Bulgarian socialism www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Detail from a historic portrait photo of Ferri
7/9 Following this, @lucaspoy.bsky.social (@vuamsterdam.bsky.social) investigates "The Influence of Enrico Ferri in Late-Nineteenth Century Argentine Socialism" www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
The cover of the book, featuring a mushroom cloud
Now online: Eric Loefflad (University of Kent) reviews "Catastrophic Technology in Cold War Political Thought (@edinburghup.bsky.social, 2024) by @carolineashcroft.bsky.social www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
A twentieth-century painting modeled on Liberty Leading the People with themes from Turkish politics
6/9 Banu Turnaoğlu (Sabancı Üniversitesi / University of Cambridge) writes on "Early Socialism and the Impact of the Paris Commune on the Ottoman Political Imagination in the Nineteenth Century" www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Detail from a portrait painting of Robert Owen
5/9 "Owen and the Engineers" - Claudia Roesch (@uni-konstanz.de) looks into "Cross-Fertilization between Engineering and Early Socialism in the Owenite Tradition" www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
An illustration of the phalanstère
4/9 Next up, Stanisław Knapowski (UAM Poznań) explores the phalanstère of Charles Fourier (1772-1837) in "The Social Palace as a Medium for the Transfer and Transformation of Ideas in Early Socialism" www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....