New Books in Public Policy

Can we expect leadership and responsibility from the Asian Global South in climate change governance? India, China, and Climate Change Governance: Leadership and Responsibility in the Asian Global South(Routledge, 2026) is a new book published by Routledge, edited by scholars from Singapore, Estonia, and Poland, explores this intriguing question by examining not only the domestic challenges Asian countries face in exercising leadership and assuming responsibility, but also the international cooperation and competition that shape their regional and global roles. Although the book is focused on India and China, its chapters also dedicate attention to the US, Europe and international organizations.
Amit Ranjan is a Research Fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore, Singapore.
Agnieszka Nitza-Makowska is a Research Fellow at the Asia Centre, University of Tartu, Estonia, and an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Political Science and International Relations, Civitas University, Warsaw, Poland.
The episode is hosted by Linas Didvalis, an Associate Professor at Centre for Asian Studies at Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas, Lithuania.
The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the following academic partners: Asia Centre, University of Tartu (Estonia), Asian studies, University of Helsinki (Finland), Centre for Asian Studies, Vytautas Magnus University (Lithuania), Centre for East Asian Studies, University of Turku (Finland), Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University (Sweden) and Centre for South Asian Democracy, University of Oslo (Norway).
We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia.

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In this episode, Lilyanna D'Amato speaks with Rahim Kurwa about his book Indefensible Spaces: Policing and the Struggle for Housing (U California Press, 2025), which examines the policing of housing in Los Angeles' northernmost suburb, Antelope Valley. Kurwa traces the suburbs' relationship with Los Angeles from post WWII to the early 2000s and 2010s, when the region saw increased Black migration as result of the Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher program, the largest rental assistance program for low-income families in the nation. Kurwa contextualizes the adoption and reception of the voucher system in Los Angeles at the end of the 20th century, and explores the participatory policing and criminalization practices used to evict Black residents and re-segregate the region.

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Climate action is at an impasse. Its political opponents are stronger than ever, its advocates powerless. Almost every major government and corporation expresses their commitment to tackling climate change, yet decades of discussion, governance, and action have failed to stop carbon emissions advancing to record annual levels. How has so little been achieved for so long on such an urgent issue? In Climate Hegemony: Confronting the Politics of Environmental Impasse (LSE Press, 2026), Laurie Parsons shows how the architecture of environmental thinking has been locked into ineffective pathways. We don’t need to be coerced into inaction on climate, because our understanding is constrained by metaphors, rhetoric and assumptions so embedded we have long since ceased to see them. To confront this, Climate Hegemony brings us a human’s-eye view of the climate crisis, building up from lived experience to reveal the interests and politics that underpin the impasse. Drawing on almost two decades’ research at the frontline of global development in Cambodia, Parsons reveals the chasm between how climate change appears in a newspaper, or a policy bulletin, and how it appears to those immersed in the places it affects. From this perspective, the limitations of current environmental thinking become clear, but so too do a great many alternatives. In this powerfully argued work, Parsons set out how, if we were to rethink the perspective from which we understand climate change, we can build knowledge from and for marginalised communities, from the ground upwards, challenging the impasse and creating new pathways to address and adapt to the social impacts of climate breakdown.

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Kenneth R. Feinberg's What is Life Worth? New Edition with Reflections 25 Years After 9/11 (Rivertown Books, 2026) shares the story that inspired the acclaimed motion picture Worth, told by the man behind the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund—a moving saga of national tragedy and healing.
Now with the author’s reflections on how today’s hyper-partisan America needs to unite to face our greatest challenges. Just days after September 11, 2001, attorney Kenneth Feinberg was appointed by Congress to administer the federal 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund—a unique effort to compensate families victimized in the terror attacks. He was given an unlimited budget and total authority over how to spend it.
Feinberg soon found himself under attack and mired in controversy. Traumatized and angry, some families threatened to sue over awards they considered skimpy; others were insulted by the very idea that a dollar value could be placed on the lives of their loved ones. Feinberg spent three years meeting 9/11 survivors and families, hearing their stories and absorbing their grief.
Gradually, Feinberg earned the respect and support of the 9/11 families, over 97 percent of whom chose to participate in the fund rather than sue. What Is Life Worth? shares the lessons Feinberg learned about the power of compassion and the limits of any effort to place a value on human life.

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In Sugar Coated: Unboxing the Hidden Forces Shaping America's Favorite Breakfast Food (U California Press, 2026), world-renowned food politics expert Marion Nestle joins forces with former cereal executive Lisa Sutherland to examine what cereal boxes reveal about American culture and food politics. If you want to understand how the food business works, just have a look at a box of breakfast cereal. Hardly anything on supermarket shelves is bigger, bolder, or more deliberately designed. The fiercely competitive industry that brings us Cheerios, Froot Loops, and Trix sells a distinctly American dream: indulgence and health in one convenient package. Cereal boxes chronicle our shifting national obsessions with health, ingredients, dietary advice, and American culture. They show us what sells food: cartoons for kids, athletes for men, weight loss for women. And hidden in the history of cereal package designs, we find clues to the corporate lobbying that shapes agricultural policy, health claims, and labeling regulations. Sugar Coated unboxes the influence of cereal companies on food policy and the power of marketing, revealing, in the process, why Big Food is so good at selling profitable products regardless of their effects on health.

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