This episode discusses a significant political event that remained largely outside the media spotlight: the White House visit of Ahmed Al-Sharaa, the former al-Qaeda insurgent and leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), who ended Syria’s brutal 13-year civil war. How did a man once listed as a US terrorist end up shaking hands with the American President?

Joining the show is Dr. William Plowright, an Assistant Professor of International Security in the School of Government and International Affairs at Durham University, to explore the motivations behind the Trump administration's pragmatic decision. We take a close look at Al-Sharaa’s radical transformation "from jihad to politics," examining whether his moderate image is reliable or merely a political performance, and discuss the internal challenges Al-Sharaa faces in governing the country.

Discover the immense regional challenges, from dealing with Israel over the Golan Heights to preventing instability that could breed a new wave of extreme jihadism across the Middle East and Europe. Tune in to understand the immense stakes involved in Syria's future.

Link to Dr. Plowrights article in The Conversation: https://theconversation.com/how-former-jihadist-ahmed-al-sharaa-ended-up-being-welcomed-to-the-white-house-269631

To learn more about our guest and their research visit their website at https://www.durham.ac.uk/staff/william-plowright/

In November 2025, the Trump government designated Nigeria a 'Country of Particular Concern' (CPC) under the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act, threatening to end aid or even launch a military attack. Is this merely a policy decision, or part of a deeper geopolitical dynamic? This week, we explore the complex intersection of US foreign policy, religious freedom, and international order with the author of the Duck of Minerva article entitled "Bullies, Follies, and the Decadent Orders", Dr. Kodili Chukwuma. He argues that these actions illustrate "bullying as a discourse and practice of international ordering". Tune in to understand the powerful, paradoxical, and often destabilizing effects of naming, shaming, and ordering the world.

Link to the discussed Duck of Minerva article: https://www.duckofminerva.com/2025/11/bullies-follies-and-decadent-orders-constructing-nigeria-as-a-country-of-particular-concern.html [Last accessed 28/11/2025].

To learn more about the research of our guest, visit their website at https://www.durham.ac.uk/staff/kodili-chukwuma/

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The upcoming UK Budget statement is more than an accounting or economic exercise—it’s politics in action. Chancellor Reeves faces a defining challenge of modern governance: how to finance public demands and defence commitments while adhering to strict fiscal rules and Labour’s promise not to raise Income Tax, VAT, or National Insurance rates for working people. This episode explores the politics of taxation, arguing that tax choices are fundamentally political and at the heart of a state's capacity. Drawing on comparative analysis with countries like Sweden and the United States, Prof. Patrick M Kuhn looks at how the institutional structure and commitment devices structuring UK fiscal politics affects tax choices, including the abrupt Income Tax U-turn in the run-up to the budget statement. Discover how self-imposed constraints and the political necessity of keeping highly visible manifesto pledges force governments to pivot toward less visible revenue streams, like the highly effective but regressive “fiscal drag”. While politically pragmatic, this approach leads to an increasingly complicated, less efficient, and less progressive tax structure. Tune in to uncover why UK policy choices are politically predictable but economically perilous, locking the government into incoherent tax adjustments to avoid political self-immolation.

To learn more about Patrick and his research, visit his website at https://www.durham.ac.uk/staff/p-m-kuhn/

Literature:

House of Commons Library 2025. Tax Statistics: An Overview. Online at https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-8513/ [Last accessed on 21/11/2025].

Kiser, Edgar and Steven M Karceski 2017. The Political Economy of Taxation. Annual Review of Political Science 20, 75-92.

Schumpeter, Joseph A. 1991 (1918). The Crisis of the Tax State. In Joseph A. Schumpeter: The Economics and Sociology of Capitalism, edited by Richard Swedberg, pp. 99–140. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Steinmo, Sven H. 1996. Taxation and Democracy: Swedish, British and American Approaches to Financing the Modern State. New Haven; Yale University Press.

Swank, Duane and Sven Steinmo 2002. The New Political Economy of Taxation in Advanced Capitalist Democracies. American Journal of Political Science 46(3), 642-655.

Music: The Good News by SHANTI from https://tunetank.com/track/263-the-good-news/

While UK net migration has been declining in 2024, the public's concern about immigration has been increasing, making it the public's main issue. In this episode, Dr. Omar Hammoud-Gallego, an Assistant Professor of Public Policy in the School of Government and International Affairs, who researches migration and refugee policies, discusses public opinion and perceptions of migration, the recent migration policies of UK parties, and the politics behind them.

To learn more about our guest and their research, visit their website at https://www.durham.ac.uk/staff/omar-hammoud-gallego/

Literature:

Assaad, R., Ginn, T., & Saleh, M. 2023. Refugees and the education of host populations: Evidence from the Syrian inflow to Jordan. Journal of Development Economics, 164, 103131.

Gathmann, Christina, and Julio Garbers. 2023. Citizenship and integration. Labour Economics 82, 102343

Hainmueller, Jens, Dominik Hangartner, and Giuseppe Pietrantuono 2017. Catalyst or Crown: Does Naturalization Promote the Long-Term Social Integration of Immigrants?” The American Political Science Review 111(2): 256–276.

Hainmueller, Jens, Dominik Hangartner, and Dalston Ward. 2019. The effect of citizenship on the long-term earnings of marginalized immigrants: Quasi-experimental evidence from Switzerland. Science Advances 5(12): 1610

The Migration Observatory 2025. UK Public Opinion toward Immigration: Overall Attitudes and Level of Concern. Online at https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/uk-public-opinion-toward-immigration-overall-attitudes-and-level-of-concern/ [Last accessed: 14.11.2025].

The Migration Observatory 2025. Net migration to the UK. Online at https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/long-term-international-migration-flows-to-and-from-the-uk/ [Last accessed: 14.11.2025].

Turnbull-Dugarte, Stuart J. , Jack Bailey, Daniel Devine, Zachary Dickson, Sara Hobolt, Will Jennings, Robert Johns, Katharina Lawall 2025. Accommodating the Radical Right: The Electoral Costs for Social Democratic Parties. Working Paper, Southampton University. Online at: https://osf.io/6yhpe/files/osfstorage?view_only=dcd151d87276493d9dbcc5efcb1e469d [Last accessed: 14.11.2025].

YouGov 2025. EuroTrack: publics across Western Europe are unhappy with immigration. Online at: https://yougov.co.uk/international/articles/51684-eurotrack-publics-across-western-europe-are-unhappy-with-immigration [Last accessed: 14.11.2025].

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When US President Trump and Defense Secretary Hegseth authorized lethal strikes against alleged Venezuelan drug boats, were they fighting "narco-terrorists" or normalizing uncontrolled executive power? Join us as Prof. Christopher Finlay, Professor in Political Theory and Head of the School of Government and International Affairs (SGIA) at Durham University, draws on his essay "Beware the Boomerang Effect" to dissect the profound legal and ethical challenges posed by these actions. The administration’s choice to frame these actions as "acts of war" against "unlawful combatants" grants them the latitude to use lethal force as a first resort, violating the crucial principles of necessity and imminence.

Link to the Ethics & International Affairs article: https://www.ethicsandinternationalaffairs.org/online-exclusives/beware-the-boomerang-effect-why-u-s-strikes-on-alleged-drug-boats-pose-a-profound-threat-to-american-freedom

To learn more about our guest and their research, visit their website at https://www.durham.ac.uk/staff/christopher-j-finlay/

Related Literature:

Finlay, Christopher J. 2025. The Philosophy of Force: Violence, Domination, and the Ethics of Republican War. Oxford University Press.

Finlay, Christopher J. 2024. Political Violence Misliked: The Meaning of ‘Terrorism’. In H. Williams, D. Boucher, P. Sutch, D. Reidy, & A. Koutsoukis (Eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of International Political Theory (pp. 231-247). Springer Nature Switzerland.

Finlay, Christopher J. (2022). Ethics, Force, and Power: on the Political Preconditions of Just War. Law and Philosophy, 41(6), 717-740.

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In this episode, we take another look at the Israeli-Palestine conflict, which some have described as the “third rail” in British academia. With the ceasefire at the verge of collapse and domestic tensions remaining high in the aftermath of the attack on the Synagogue in Manchester, the urgent need for a public, thoughtful conversation about Jews, Israel, and Palestine is clear. Joining the podcast this week is Prof. Ilan Baron, a Professor in International Political Theory at the School of Government and International Affairs and Director of the Centre for the Study of Jewish Culture, Society and Politics at Durham University. He is the author of an article entitled “Antisemitism, Israel and the Problem with no Easy Solution”, which was published on the Duck of Minerva website in October 2025. The article challenges the automatic linkage between actions by the Israeli government and diaspora Jews, which he argues is particularly prevalent in journalistic reporting, treating Jews around the world as proxy representatives for Israel, thereby undermining the safety of British Jews.

Link to the Duck of Minerva article: https://www.duckofminerva.com/2025/10/antisemitism-israel-and-the-problem-with-no-easy-solution.html

To learn more about our guest's research visit their website: https://www.durham.ac.uk/staff/ilan-baron/

Literature mentioned in this episode:

Baron, Ilan Z. 2009. The Problem of Dual Loyalty. Canadian Journal of Political Science, 42(4), 1025-1044

Baron, Ilan Z. 2014. Obligation in Exile: The Jewish Diaspora, Israel and Critique. Edinburgh University Press; Oxford University Press.

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In this episode, Dr. Alice Finden, an Assistant Professor of International Relations in the School of Government and International Affairs (SGIA) at Durham University, draws on her research to discuss the political implications of deploying the concepts "terrorism" and "counterterrorism" in the context of the Gaza conflict and UK domestic politics.

To learn more about our guest, visit their website at https://www.durham.ac.uk/staff/alice-e-finden/

Literature:

Aitlhadj, L., Finden, A., Haspeslagh, S., Kaleem, A., Khan, R. M., Salhab, A., Schotten, C. H., Sen, S., & Stampnitzky, L. (2024). Where is Palestine in Critical Terrorism Studies? A roundtable conversation. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 17(3), 437-462.

Finden, Alice E. (2025). Counterterrorism and Colonialism: Everyday Violence in Britain and Egypt. Routledge.

Finden, A. E. (2025). Colonial Law and Normal Violence: The Racialised, Gendered and Classed Development of Counter Terrorism. In Global Counterterrorism: A Decolonial Approach. Manchester University Press.

Music: The Good News by SHANTI from https://tunetank.com/track/263-the-good-news/

Why is political violence making a comeback in the world’s most established democracies? From the storming of the U.S. Capitol in 2021 to riots in Brazil in 2023 and extremist attacks across Europe, violence is again being used to achieve political goals. In this episode Prof. Patrick M Kuhn digs into the paradox at the heart of democracy: why systems built on peaceful disagreement are seeing rising levels of aggression. Drawing on new political science research, he unpacks how polarization, populism, and elite manipulation can fuel unrest—and what the effects of violence are for democratic politics.

To learn more about Patrick Kuhn and his research visite his website (https://www.durham.ac.uk/staff/p-m-kuhn/) and the website on 19th-century election violence in England and Wales (https://victorianelectionviolence.uk/).

In season 2, episode 1 of this podcast we compared nd contrasted the aftermath of the 2021 riots in the U.S. with those in early 2023 in Brazil and asked what this might tell us about the state of democracy in those countries. You can listen to this episode at https://open.spotify.com/episode/147cTxqUlNzAUileQDIUFI

Bibliography:

Blaxill, L., Cohen, G., Hutchison, G., Kuhn, P. M., & Vivyan, N. (2025). Electoral violence in England and Wales, 1832–1914. Past & Present, 267(1), 154–210. https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtae017

Daxecker, U. E., Prasad, N., & Ruggeri, A. (2025). Political violence in democracies: An introduction. Journal of Peace Research, 62(5), 1363–1375. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022343324123456

Mares, I. (2022). Protecting the ballot: How first-wave democracies ended electoral corruption. Princeton University Press.

Nieburg, H. L. (1969). Political violence: The behavioral process. St. Martin’s Press.

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