The specialisation Global Political Economy of the master’s in International Relations at Leiden University provides you with a cutting-edge understanding of the world economy and its social and political foundations.

The Global Politics of Confucianism, a monograph contracted with Columbia University Press, analyzes the interaction between Confucianism and globalism in past and present, using history to critically engage Confucianism’s place in contemporary international relations and policy debates.

Are you thinking about studying Global Political Economy? Learn more and watch the introduction video.

Hegemony and World Order explores a key question for our tumultuous times of multiple global crises.

All players on the world stage operate strategically in order to safeguard their interests. Political scientists at Leiden University cast light on this volatile interplay of forces. Their research helps voters, NGOs, governments and international organizations make smart choices in this complex and…

The shift from response to recovery is now noticeable as the world moves past the paralyzing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. This book explores responses to the pandemic by international, regional, and local institutions, multilateral action, and crisis prevention efforts at different levels of governance,…

An interdisciplinary collection of the best international scholarship on Muslim youth.

The Leiden Political Economy Group (L-PEG) is a multi-disciplinary network of scholars with a research interest in (comparative / global) political economy based at Leiden University. Our members belong to various institutes and faculties across Leiden University, and from other universities across…

Political Scientist Gisela Hirschmann (Leiden University) asks how international organisations can be compelled to comply with respect human rights. She finds that this is done through ‘pluralist accountability’: external third parties such as courts, NGOs, or regional organisations holding international…

The World Politics Major at Leiden University College The Hague examines the big ideas and the powerful forces – political, military, economic, social and cultural – that shape the world at every level, from the global to the local and everything in between. Political conflict is a key driver of many…

In this article, Lydie Cabane, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, discusses the emergence and diffusion of ‘global health’ as a concept. In addition to bringing a fresh perspective on the origins of global health, the paper contributes to the globalization debates by…

Human Rights at Risk brings together social scientists, legal scholars, and humanities scholars to analyze the policy challenges of human rights protection in the twenty-first century.

The research group Diplomacy and Global Affairs focuses on international diplomacy, international organisation, global, transnational, multi-level and comparative governance. Among key research topics are the European Union and the United Nations, EU current enlargement policy, rule of law in the EU,…

Many of the big challenges of the 21st century (climate change, international migration, financial instability, socio-economic inequality) find their origins in the organisation of the global economy. Any solution to the world’s big challenges therefore requires forceful policy interventions at the…

The eleven innovative essays in this volume explore the notion that all forms of modern mass politics, including liberal democracies, need such a form of sacralization of politics to function.

Political scientist Luzia Helfer (Leiden University) empirically tested claims about media-politics relatiopns using unique data from experimental studies with elected politicians and political journalists in Switzerland and the Netherlands.

The minor Global Affairs is built on two pillars of International Relations: International Security and International Political Economy. This minor aims to provide students with the tools and knowledge to understand the most important global trends and challenges.

Discover the effects of clothing value and lifespan on buyer-user-producer relationships through collaborative research with Localising Global Garment Biographies.

Building on the recent initiative to truly globalize the field of international relations, this book provides an innovative interrogation of regionalism.

The specialisation Culture and Politics of the Master’s in International Relations at Leiden University encourages critical perspectives on complexities of culture as an inextricable part of global politics.

The research group Politics, Culture and National Identities 1789-present investigates a wide range of national political cultures in Europe and the Americas in the 19th and 20th centuries. Instead of only analyzing high politics (the acts of governments and political parties), the research group focuses…

This research project is supported by an NWO Aspasia grant, DeepDish TV, crowd-sourced funding, and the Democracy and Media Foundation.

Considering the ways in which the ‘global turn’ is changing the theory and practice of historical disciplines, Explorations in History and Globalization engages with the concept and methodology of globalization, challenging traditional divisions of space and time to offer a range of perspectives on…

Politics is about the authorised allocation of values: who gets what, when and how much? This question is relevant at many different levels, in many different places and in very different ways.

The Leiden Lectures in Media | Art | Politics (MAP) is a series of talks organized by Pepita Hesselberth and Yasco Horsman. Speakers from various academic backgrounds and in different stages of their careers reflect on diverging ways in which technological and social changes challenge and transform…

Political scientist Matthew Longo (Leiden University) takes a detailed look at the evolution of border security in the United States after 9/11. Far from the walls and fences that dominate the news, he reveals borders to be thick, multi-faceted and binational institutions that have evolved greatly in…

This article explores levels and patterns of legitimacy beliefs with respect to multistakeholder global governance at ICANN. From a large and systematic evidence base, Jongen & Scholte have found that ICANN has strong legitimacy underpinnings among its staff and board, as well as quite uniformly moderate-to-high…

In this journal article, Dr. Joris Larik and Dr. Richard Ponzio put forward a broad-based pandemic recovery agenda that goes hand in hand with institutional reforms at the global level.

Never has good policy been so important. From unemployment and a lack of affordable housing to regulating cryptocurrencies and protecting against cybersecurity threats, the challenges we face are complex and global. The text explains how policymaking works: from the emergence of policy ideas to deciding…

This book explores the lasting legacy of the controversial project by the Congress for Cultural Freedom, funded by the CIA, to promote Western culture and liberal values in the battle of ideas with global Communism during the Cold War.

Leiden’s Institute for History has an exceptionally strong expertise in premodern European history in its global context, with specialists whose interests cover virtually the whole continent. We have a strong track record in leading larger research teams and work together with colleagues across Europe…

‘Internationale Politiek’ is a specialisation in the BSc programme in Political Sciences. It combinEs the core political science subjects with the study of international and global processes and institutions. This specialisation is partically taught in Dutch and based in Leiden.

The Colonial and Global History Research Programme of the Leiden University Institute for History combines a deep curiosity of transcultural processes such as imperialism, (de)colonization, and globalization with critical historical research on regional societies in Africa, Asia, and the Americas.

Jan Aart Scholte, Professor Global Transformations and Governance Challenges, is a co-author of this book that offers the first full comparative study of citizen and elite legitimacy beliefs toward global governance.

GLOBALINT is a pioneering study of intelligence in the Global South. It asks ‘how do (un)democratic shifts in political governance impact intelligence services in contexts of violent conflict?

How does global change across time and space lead to convergence and loss of variation or increasing diversity and conflict?

Fostering multi-polar perspectives that engage more connected, nuanced and pluralistic understandings of the world. Global Interactions encourages and supports research that provides significant new insights on these global processes across time and space.

Political scientist Maurits de Jongh (Leiden University/Sciences Po) argues that political liberalism is self-defeating as a framework of justification for liberal conceptions of justice. He explores how the framework's self-imposed criterion of acceptability in the eyes of all reasonable citizens leads…

This article investigates the sources of legitimacy in multistakeholderism as a major alternative approach to intergovernmental global governance.

LUC's Liberal Arts and Sciences programme is centered around these four Global Challenges: Peace & Justice, Sustainability, Diversity, and Prosperity.

References to nature and the environment in the Caribbean literary and the contemporary age of globalization.

Globalization, migration, technological innovation and climate change pose challenges to citizens in European countries. These challenges test the limits of cross-national and cross-generational solidarities, touching upon the very foundations of governance and society. This research program aims at…