New Books Network

Irish Digital Cultures: Identity, Contexts, Space (Routledge, 2025) explores how questions of Ireland and Irishness are represented in online environments, and what these phenomena say about contemporary Irish identities both within the country and globally. It will interest Irish Studies, Media Studies, Cultural Studies, Sociology, Race, Gender, Identity, and New Media.
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This week on Democracy Dialogues, host Rachel Beatty Riedl speaks with Kenneth Roberts and Paul Friesen, democracy experts at Cornell University, to unpack the takeaways of the newly released V-Dem 2025 Report “ 25 Years of Autocratization.” Drawing on the survey’s global measure of changes in regime status across the world, we discuss the dramatic decline of democracy in the United States, and what dimensions are driving that erosion. We also discuss other big moves, from declines in India and Indonesia, to improvements in Poland and Guatemala. We conclude with an analysis of some signs of hope and what to anticipate in the year ahead for ongoing contestation in the US around democratic rights and institutional sites of contention.

Links:

V-Dem Democracy Report 2025: here
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In his new book, The Political Economy of Security (Princeton University Press, 2026), Stephen Brooks provides a systematic empirical and theoretical examination of how economic factors influence security affairs. Empirically, he analyzes how various economic variables affect interstate war, terrorism, and civil war; in total, sixteen pathways are examined. 

Brooks shows that the relationship between economic factors and conflict is complex and multifaceted; discrete economic factors—such as international trade, economic development, and globalized manufacturing, to name a few—are sometimes helpful for promoting peace and stability, but at other times are detrimental. Brooks also develops a stronger theoretical foundation for guiding future research on the economics-security interaction.

Drawing on Adam Smith, he provides a more complete range of answers to the three key conceptual questions analysts must consider: how economic goals relate to security goals; what economic factors to focus on; and how economic actors influence security policies.Combining an innovative theoretical understanding with empirical rigor, Brooks’s account will reshape our understanding of the political economy of security.

Our guest is Professor Stephen Brooks, a Professor of Government at Dartmouth.

Our host is Eleonora Mattiacci, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Amherst College. She is the author of "Volatile States in International Politics" (Oxford University Press, 2023).
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In today’s world, it is almost impossible to go through the day without interacting with a bank—whether through a salary payment, a debit card, a credit card, or a digital ID used to access public services online. Yet this intimate relationship between households and banks is relatively recent.

In this episode of the New Books Network, I speak with Orsi Husz, Professor at Uppsala University, about her book Bankminded: Banks as Intimate Agents of Everyday Life in Welfare State Sweden. The book traces how, from the late 1950s onwards, banks gradually became embedded in the everyday routines of ordinary people. Through wage accounts, credit cards, financial advice, and identity documents, financial institutions reshaped how households handled money—and how they thought about finance itself.

Drawing on rich archival research, Husz shows that this transformation was not simply a story of technology or markets. It involved cultural shifts around class, gender, morality, and identity, as well as the surprising role of the welfare state in expanding everyday banking. The result was what she calls the “bankification” of everyday life—a process that laid the groundwork for the financialised world we inhabit today.

If you are interested in the history of banking, the culture of finance, or how modern financial habits emerged, this conversation offers a fascinating perspective on a transformation that most of us now take for granted.

You can download the book for free (Open Access) here

Listen to the episode to learn how banks became an intimate part of everyday life.
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In Company Towns: Industry Power and the Historical Foundations of Public Mistrust (University of Chicago Press, 2026), Dr. Elizabeth Mitchell Elder examines the long-lasting political legacies of mining-company dominance in the Midwest and Appalachia. While the economic consequences of deindustrialization are well-known, Dr. Elder shifts the focus to a more insidious problem: the political dysfunction that took root long before the mines shut down.

Drawing on historical and administrative data, Dr. Elder shows that the coal industry hindered the growth of local government capacity in the places where it was dominant. Mining companies also engaged in outright corruption to shape local governments, practices which local elites then carried forward. When mining companies withdrew, they left behind not just economic decline, but local governments ill-equipped to govern.

These patterns have had enduring consequences for public life. Dr. Elder shows how these historical experiences have fueled a broader cynicism toward government, in which citizens expect little from public institutions and doubt the usefulness of elections. Company Towns underscores the consequences of corporate dominance for state capacity, public opinion, and democratic accountability today.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.
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