Uploaded July 2026 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago

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Is Mayor Mamdani governing any differently than a standard-issue social democrat? What is the history of social democracy and democratic socialism in the US and Europe, and where is the movement headed?

Joining me to help answer is Dr. Sheri Berman, author of The Primacy of Politics: Social Democracy and the Making of the making of Europe's Twentieth Century: amzn.to/4byUcbk

Sheri Berman is a professor of Political Science at Barnard College, Columbia University. Her research interests include European history and politics; the development of democracy; populism and fascism; and the history of the left. She has written about these topics for a wide variety of scholarly and non-scholarly publications, including the New York Times, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, and VOX. She currently serves on the boards of the Journal of Democracy and Political Science Quarterly. Her last book was Democracy and Dictatorship in Europe: From the Ancien Regime to the Present Day (Oxford University Press 2019). Her most recent book, The Political Consequences of Economic Ideas: Neoliberalism, the Left, and the Fate of Democracy is forthcoming from Oxford University Press.