Mar 1
A note for Sunshine Week, March 15-21, 2015. Louis Brandeis is credited with writing that “Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.” But why did Brandeis say that sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants? Because he was referring to a statement by James Bryce in his 1888 book, The American Commonwealth.
I’ve written a short piece for Medium drawing on my S.T. Lecture at the University of Oxford this month.
I’ll be delivering the Lee Lecture at All Souls College, Oxford, on February 26, 2015. Download the details from All Souls College. The title of my lecture will be Four Crises of Democracy. The paper is now available on SSRN (Revised on January 6). The Lecture is supported by Dr. Seng Tee Lee FBA through an endowment for an annual lecture in Political Science and Government. Read more
Dennis Phillips writes a review of The End of Protest for the Australian Review of Public Affairs. Read the review here.
Following the launch of When The Party’s Over in London last week, I thought I would write this short note on Medium: Six Reasons Why It’s Easier To Impose Austerity. Comments welcomed.
I participated in a roundtable conversation this afternoon at the British Academy to launch When The Party’s Over: The Politics of Fiscal Squeeze edited by Christopher Hood, David Heald and Rozana Himaz. I have contributed a chapter on the politics of the US depression in the 1840s.
Bookforum mentions my “Four Crises of Democracy” paper in a round-up of recent works on the state of democracy.
An IMF blog features a review of “The Politics of Fiscal Squeeze,” an edited volume that includes my chapter on the United States’ financial difficulties in 1837-1848.
The introduction to The End of Protest can now be read on Medium. Cornell University Press has reduced the price on Amazon to $1.99.
I’ve just posted a short paper on SSRN, “The Nation-State: Not Dead Yet.” It marks twenty years since the publication of several influential books (by Kenichi Ohmae, Jean-Marie Guéhenno, and Susan Strange) that predicted the end of the nation-state.
Alasdair S. Roberts 
