Princeton UP Ideas Podcast

A central paradox of democracies is that they are always ruled by
elites. What can democracy mean in this context? Today, it is often said
that a populist revolt against elites is driving democratic politics
throughout the West. But in Elites and Democracy (Princeton
University Press, 2026), Hugo Drochon argues that democracy is more
accurately and usefully understood as a perpetual struggle among
competing elites—between rising elites and ruling elites. Real political
change comes from the interaction between social movements and elite
political institutions such as parties. But, although true democracy—the
rule of the people—may never be achieved, striving towards it can bring
about worthwhile democratic results.

At the turn of the twentieth century, Gaetano Mosca, Vilfredo Pareto,
and Robert Michels put forward “elite” theories of democracy and gave us
terms such as the “ruling class” and “elites” itself. Drawing on their
work and tracing the history of democratic thought through figures such
as Joseph Schumpeter, Robert Dahl, C. Wright Mills, and Raymond Aron, Elites and Democracy reveals that this fundamentally elitist basis of democracy—democracy understood as competition between elites—was there all along. The challenge is to think it anew.

Moving away from procedural or principled conceptions of democracy, Elites and Democracy develops a dynamic theory of democracy, one grounded in movement. With current politics defined by a populist backlash against elites, dynamic democracy offers the tools we urgently need to understand our contemporary predicament and to act upon it.

Hugo Drochon is an Associate Professor in Political Theory at the
University of Nottingham. He is a historian of modern political thought,
with interests in Nietzsche's politics.

Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th- and 19th-century British Literature.

Kira Ganga Kieffer (Visiting Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, Wesleyan University; PhD, Boston University, 2023) studies contemporary American spiritualities, health, gender, and marketing. Her first book, a history of religion and vaccine skepticism, Unvaccinated Under God: Religion and Vaccine Hesitancy in Modern America (Princeton UP, 2026), is  forthcoming from Princeton University Press. She is the author of “Smelling Things: Essential Oils and Essentialism in Contemporary American Spirituality,” in Religion & American Culture (2021) and “Manifesting Millions: How Women’s Spiritual Entrepreneurship Genders Capitalism,” in Nova Religio (2020), which received the Thomas Robbins Award for Article of the Year. She has written for Religion & Politics, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and Religion for Breakfast.

Kieffer uses textual analysis of spiritual marketing materials to discover how consumer culture creates religious concepts within a secular context. Focused on spiritual items and practices that are marketed to women, Kieffer compares the usage of essential oils by three very different groups of spiritual practitioners: contemporary yogis, evangelical Christians, and witches. Although the usage of essential oils is consumerized, Kieffer argues, the beliefs and practices created by “oilers” are nonetheless meaningful responses to the spiritual yearning. Essential oil practices blur the lines between religious traditions, sharpen individual spirituality, and work to create new collective identities.

Order "Unvaccinated Under God" here: here

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A provocative new history of America's constitution and an urgent call to action for a nation confronted by challenges its founders could never have imagined

The American Revolution occurred at a time when Britain's constitutional order failed to adapt to the extraordinary growth of its colonies. The framers designed an American constitution to succeed where Britain's had faltered, planning for continuous population and territorial expansion that would eventually cross the continent. Yet by the end of the nineteenth century, it was already ill-suited for an increasingly urban, industrialized society, and the transformations of the twentieth century have pushed it to a breaking point. The Making and Breaking of the American Constitution: A Thousand-Year History (Princeton UP, 2026) charts the history and aims of the American constitution from its origins in an agrarian past to the grave crisis we face today.

Mark Peterson traces the American constitutional tradition to the control of land in medieval England, showing how the founders incorporated the aspirations of Magna Carta with the administrative principles of the Domesday Book, a meticulous survey and valuation of landed property commissioned by William the Conqueror. This framework encouraged the growth of democratic self-government in a young nation. It also institutionalized the colonization of territory and the expulsion of Indigenous peoples, establishing a legal blueprint for transforming tribal lands into revenue-yielding real estate for settlers. Peterson's riveting narrative paints an arresting picture of a dynamic republic whose frame of government has changed enormously to meet the challenges of the modern age but whose written constitution has changed very little.

Marking the 250th anniversary of American independence, The Making and Breaking of the American Constitution reveals how this widening disconnect threatens the very existence of our democracy. It calls for a constitution that sustains the ideals developed over the past thousand years while meeting the challenges of the future.

Mark Peterson is the Edmund S. Morgan Professor of History at Yale University. He is the author of The City-State of Boston: The Rise and Fall of an Atlantic Power, 1630–1865 (Princeton) and The Price of Redemption: The Spiritual Economy of Puritan New England.

Mark Peterson traces the American constitutional tradition to the control of land in medieval England, showing how the founders incorporated the aspirations of Magna Carta with the administrative principles of the Domesday Book, a meticulous survey and valuation of landed property commissioned by William the Conqueror. This framework encouraged the growth of democratic self-government in a young nation. It also institutionalized the colonization of territory and the expulsion of Indigenous peoples, establishing a legal blueprint for transforming tribal lands into revenue-yielding real estate for settlers. Peterson’s riveting narrative paints an arresting picture of a dynamic republic whose frame of government has changed enormously to meet the challenges of the modern age but whose written constitution has changed very little.

“Parental rights” is a rallying cry for today’s American conservatives, signaling opposition to mandatory vaccination and “woke” public school curricula. In Every Man's Home a Castle: Parental Rights and the Makings of Modern Conservatism (Princeton UP, 2026), Dr. Julia Bowes traces the origins of the modern parental rights movement to the nineteenth century, when the introduction of compulsory schooling laws, child labor regulations, and vaccine requirements provoked a resistance rooted in the presumed right of white men to govern their homes. A wide-ranging coalition—including Irish Catholic immigrants in Illinois, Mormon enclaves in Utah, and Protestant clergy in Virginia—believed that the state had usurped the “natural rights” of parents and “invaded the home.”Dr. Bowes shows how, by the turn of the century, those disparate voices had coalesced into national conservative movements. Anti-vaccinationists, alternative medical practitioners, and parents who opposed compulsory school medical exams joined forces to form the National League for Medical Freedom. Deciding a case brought by conservative Catholic lawyers, the Supreme Court declared parental rights a “fundamental liberty” protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. And the Sentinels of the Republic, a conservative citizen’s lobby, mobilized a campaign to defeat the proposed federal Child Labor Amendment, bringing together pro-family and free-market politics with far-reaching consequences.Exploring the emergence of parental rights as an antistatist ideology through legal cases, legislative debates, and political movements, Dr. Bowes argues that the expansion of state power over children provoked such fierce opposition because the paternal rights of white men—considered the “rights-bearing” individuals of American democracy—were widely viewed as the mark and measure of their independence.

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.

The British Empire covered much of the world during the 19th century–and each time someone moved through it, they left a paper trail in their wake. Julia Stephens, the author of Worldly Afterlives: Tracing Family Trails Between India and Empire (Princeton UP, 2025), uses that archive of documents to try to piece together the stories of Indian migrants that traveled the empire throughout their lives–and, in some cases, after their lives were over.

Julia joins us today to talk about her book and her attempt to find a different approach to studying these histories: Figures like Kuala Lumpur magnate Thamboosamy Pillai, Zanzibar–Bombay matriarch Jambai, and the elusive sailor John Muhammad.

Julia Stephens is associate professor of history at Rutgers University. She is also the author of Governing Islam: Law, Empire, and Secularism in South Asia (Cambridge University Press: 2018)

You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books. You can read its review of Worldly Afterlives here. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.

Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon.