An experimental comparison of the impact of liberal norms on a population residing and socialised within a democracy (the Netherlands) with a population in an autocracy (China) and their respective supports for war with another state shows that the level of liberal norms in the democratic experimental…

This book, edited by Joost Augusteijn, Constant Hijzen and Mark Leon de Vries, explores how democratic regimes have dealt with anti-democratic forces in society, from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first century.

What is the state of democracy in developing and transition countries in 2024? Terrible, according to the BTI Transformation Index.

The Dutch childcare allowance affair has exposed the failings of the democratic constitutional state. Early in 2021, the government therefore pledged to establish a new public administration culture. There’s still a long way to go to achieve this.

Elon Musk managed to foil a strategic Ukrainian drone attack with the push of a button. It clearly shows that democracy is hanging by a thread, says Associate Professor of Constitutional Law at Leiden University and Professor of Digitisation and the Democratic Rule of Law at the Open University, Reijer…

We live in a data-drenched society awash with numbers. An inhabitant of the democratic polis of Athens (5th and 4th centuries B.C.E.) increasingly found himself surrounded by numerical data. This project aims to analyze the communicative functions and the political meaning(s) ascribed to these public…

LEGITIMULT examines how Covid-19 measures by governments impact multilevel governance and democratic governance in 31 European countries

The future of Europe as a community of democratic states is deeply uncertain. The European Union, founded to promote ‘ever closer’ integration, aims nominally for peaceful, prosperous cooperation. But this ideal has been battered by a series of bruising crises, and now by war.

It can no longer be taken for granted that EU member states are stable democracies. What should the EU do to protect democracy given increasing democratic backsliding in some member states?

In the track Intelligence and National Security you will be introduced to intelligence and security services in their political, societal, and bureaucratic contexts. The track will give you a thorough understanding of the modus operandi of these agencies, their interaction with the surrounding world,…

This research cluster is a part of the Institute of Political Science’s research programme ‘Institutions, Decisions and Collective Behaviour’. Its members focus on the democratic role of citizens and the representative links between voters and politicians.

The leading textbook on governance and politics in the Netherlands. The authors offer a clear and comprehensive account and have revised the text to provide full coverage of recent important developments.

Does democracy still work? How does political representation function in times of fragmentation, populism and polarization? You will study the challenges that established and new democracies face.

In the wake of controversial disclosures of classified government information by WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden, questions about the democratic status of secret uses of political power are rarely far from the headlines. Despite an increase in initiatives aimed at enhancing government transparency – such…

Prior to the 2020 presidential election, historians considered the disputed 1876 contest—which pitted Republican Rutherford B. Hayes against Democrat Samuel J. Tilden—the most controversial in American history.

This article studies the perceived legitimacy of EU enforcement actions.

This Research project is funded by the 7th European Community Framework Programme, with additional funds from NWO Aspasia grant, and in collaboration with University of California, Berkeley.

Lecture

Political scientist Simon Otjes (Leiden University) receives a grant from The Dutch Research Council (NWO). The grant is part of the SGW Open Competition XS, which aims to stimulate innovative scientific research within the Social Sciences and Humanities domain. Otjes receives the grant for his research…

What does the interspecies interpretation of the equality principle mean for the liberal democracy, and is it possible to provide for an appropriate legal and political position for animals without defying the classic-liberal principles of the liberal democratic state?

A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe is a synthetic work, authored by an international team of researchers, covering twenty national cultures and 250 years. It goes beyond the conventional nation-centered narratives and presents a novel vision especially sensitive to the cross-cultural…

In this article, Honorata Mazepus, assistant professor at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, and Dimiter Toshkov, associate professor at the Institute of Public Administration, discuss whether the winner–loser gap extends beyond the political domain to subjective health and well-being as…

Choong-Yeol Kim defended his thesis on 14 November 2019

Recently, Johan Christensen, Assistant Professor at the FGGA, contributed to the commentary series on technocracy and democracy in global governance that is organised by the Global Governance Centre and the Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy.

This project investigates diversifying and democratizing heritage through practices of “home-making”. We propose to research ‘home-making’ as a non-binary practice of combining memories of roots and routes, dwelling in the present, and desires for the future.

In this specialisation you will focus on the challenges facing modern representative democracy. The programme offers a structured, intensive curriculum balancing substantive and skills-oriented courses, including a number of elective seminars, plus a research thesis.

Research within the centre is broad and pluralistic, ranging from the history of political thought to contemporary analytic and continental political philosophy and critical social theory. Members of the CPP also participate in the Research Profile Area on Political Legitimacy. The Centre is the proud…

The aim of this project is to study what makes an act or form of violence a specifically political reality.

This edited volume offers a critical discussion of the trade-offs between transparency and secrecy in the actual political practice of democratic states in Europe. As such, it answers to a growing need to systematically analyse the problem of secrecy in governance in this political and geographical…

Parliaments in democratic systems serve as the people’s representatives, legislators and overseers of the executive. They have the power to define the framework in which the executive can act and must report about its action. For parliaments to fulfil their roles, though, they depend on access to information.…

This book expands on the existing literature on the international dimension of democratization by introducing the concept of democracy projection. Democracy projection is defined as the projection of (democratic) norms through the every-day practice of interactions-beyond any donor-recipient relationship-between…

On 14 January 2021, Joost Westerweel defended his thesis 'Lokale democratische innovatie'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. G. Boogaard and Prof. M.J. Cohen.

Antoaneta Dimitrova, Professor Comparative Governance at Leiden University, Honorata Mazepus, Assistant professor at Leiden University and Dimiter Toshkov, Associate Professor at Leiden University, together with three other authors researched which aspects of state capacity might contribute to opening…

The institute hosts criminal lawyers and criminologists who engage in high-quality scientific research that is also relevant for society.

China is a one-party regime, yet elections are held for the local congresses. PhD candidate Wang Zhongyuan investigated how the Communist Party uses this democratic instrument to strengthen the authoritarian regime. PhD defence 31 January.

Undermining can be described as behaviour and actions which (threaten to) cause harm to the democratic legal order. This is a Dutch speaking course in The Hague.

An analysis of people’s access to justice and the working of (legal) institutions in post-conflict, democratic Libya

Do you have to be able to say everything on Twitter and Facebook? Is Instagram morally obliged to remove photos from attacks? Should we allow the terrorist group to recruit new members on the internet?

The chaotic years after the Civil War are often seen as a time of uniquely American idealism—a revolutionary attempt to rebuild the nation that paved the way for the civil rights movement of the twentieth century. But Adam Fairclough rejects this prevailing view, challenging prominent historians such…

Our research group Intelligence and Security, provides a diverse range of educational opportunities that combine theoretical foundations with practical applications in intelligence and security.

In this article, Gerrit Dijkstra and Jos Raadschelders from the Institute of Public Administration, argue that Bosnia-Herzegovina survives so far on the basis of negative legitimacy.

In this minor, you will learn about the structure, working methods, and the analysis techniques used by intelligence and security agencies in the Western world.

Lecture, Global Questions Seminar

The central theme of the NWO-project ‘The Promise of Organization’ is the evolution of political organization during the 19th century. We focus on the enthusiasm, arguments and concrete activities of the organizers as well as the criticism offered by opponents of modern political organization.

In secondary school, homophobic language is common, even in the Netherlands where there is high acceptance of homosexuality in the adult population. Adolescents especially in lower educational levels have prevailingly negative attitudes towards their lesbian and gay peers. Peer education with its participatory…