How can party bans be justified? Which parties were banned in post-war Europe – and why? Do militant democracy instruments work? Is an international militant democracy concept in the making?

As one of the most influential ideas in modern European history, democracy has fundamentally reshaped not only the landscape of governance, but also social and political thought throughout the world.

This book offers a concise and accessible introduction to debates about expertise, policy-making and democracy. It uniquely combines an overview of recent research on the policy role of experts with discussions in political philosophy and the philosophy of expertise.

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.

This volume challenges the idea that the development of ‘democracy’ is a story of rise and progress at all. It is rather a story of continuous but never completely satisfying attempts of interpreting the rule of the people.

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…

Political scientist Tom Theuns (Leiden University) has been awarded a Veni grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO). This means that he is recognised as a promising researcher and that he will receive support to develop his ideas further for a period of three years. Theuns will focus on the role…

Although many studies have addressed democracy in education around the world, so far research on democratic education in the context of communist society has been scarce. In the current study, we aim to clarify the concept of democratic value and its manifestation in Vietnam’s schools. In addition,…

Hans-Martien ten Napel recently published a volume with Routledge, Culture, Secularization, and Democracy; Lessons from Alexis de Tocqueville, co-edited with Prof. Sophie van Bijsterveld (Radboud University Nijmegen).

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…

The conflict between the Hungarian Prime Minister Orbán and his party Fidesz, on the one hand, the other parties within the European People's Party (EPP), on the other, illustrates the complex functioning of European democracy. Michiel Luining, lecturer at the Institute of Public Administration at Leiden…

As both old and new democracies experience increasing democratic backsliding, there is a critical societal need to rethink the design and effectiveness of democratic checks and balances. In this conference on Friday 9 June, the aim is to explore multidisciplinary insights about what makes the checks…

How can party bans be justified? Which parties were banned in post-war Europe – and why? Do militant democracy instruments work? Is an international militant democracy concept in the making?

Honorata Mazepus, Assisstant Professor at Leiden University, researched the topic of Madisonian Judgments in Five Cultures, together with three other authors.

Sebastian Diessner, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Public Administration, focuses on the role of the European Central Bank in a critical phase toward a new presidency and its approach to monetary policy by looking at both financial market and survey data.

If you want easy answers to governance questions, you might as well abolish democracy, says Dr. Carola Schoor. A democracy should challenge and raise questions. For a balanced and just rule of law, a 'rule of law compass' is needed.

On 10 December 2024, the European Parliament played host to an insightful presentation of ‘Protecting Democracy in Europe: Pluralism, Autocracy, and the Future of the EU’, the new book by Tom Theuns, Assistant Professor at Leiden University. Hosted by MEP Thijs Reuten (PvdA/S&D) and his team, the event…

This book systematically evaluates the empirical evidence for legitimacy decline in established democracies, the explanatory power of theories of legitimacy decline, and promises new routes in investigating and assessing political legitimacy.

Wouter Veenendaal, a political scientist at Leiden University, is an analyst for the Freedom House report. Freedom House is an American non-profit organisation dedicated to democracy, political freedom and human rights. In short, the report describes the degree of freedom and the state of democracy…

The most recent edition of the journal ‘The Theory and Practice of Legislation’ contains a contribution by Jelle But, Demy Jongkind and Wim Voermans.

This book analyses the emergence of modern parties in nineteenth-century Europe and explores their connection with the slowly developing institution of democracy.

On the brink of war, what influences decision makers to attack another country? Using innovative theoretical angles, Femke E. Bakker explores whether the basic assumptions of democratic peace theory are indeed correct. She stresses the microfoundations of conflict, questioning the assumptions on…

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 for Philosophy at Leiden University is host to the NWO programme,

This study employs a comparative perspective to identify generic and specific qualities of petitions and petitioning. It charts the chronological development of petitioning practices over centuries. The interdisciplinary approaches provide range of conceptual and methodological expertise for reade…

After four successful editions, the Academy for the Rule of Law (Dutch) course, a collaboration between Leiden University and the Montesquieu Institute, has evolved into its final form.

The starting hypothesis of the project is that secrecy is not always inimical to democratic governance as conventional wisdom has it.

Conference

In theory, states can gain security by acquiring internal arms or external allies. Yet the empirical literature offers mixed findings: some studies find arms and allies to be substitutes, while others find them to be complements. Political scientists Matthew Digiuseppe (Leiden University) and Paul Poast…

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.

Lecture

Political scientists John Gerring (University of Texas, Austin) and Wouter Veenendaal (Universiteit Leiden) evaluate the political implications stemming from the size of a political unit – on social cohesion, the number of representatives, overall representativeness, particularism ('pork'), citizen…

It is often claimed that social media can contribute to democratic decision-making by bringing politicians and citizens into dialogue with one another. But is this potential always realised, and how? Most researchers look at politicians and their online communication strategies. In this New Media &…

How interest groups, differences in policy issues and institutional differences between countries affect whether public opinion is translated into policy?

The idea of citizens and public professionals collaborating to provide public services has widely spread in several countries around the globe. Co-production is often presented as the go-to solution for challenges like a legitimacy crisis of both the government and the market, and financial concerns.…

The project investigates the changing local context of crime dynamics and the responses by selected international organizations and national governments. It places a major emphasis on security management at the trans-national level by investigating intra-regional security cooperation between Latin America,…

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

This project is part of a broader research agenda aiming to better understand the relationships between the development of contemporary security concerns and the evolution of forms of security cooperation and crisis governance.

The Economist published an article about a working paper about the effects of democratic elections on satisfaction with democracy. The paper was written by Dimiter Koshkov, Associate Professor at the Institute of Public Administration and Honorata Mazepus, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Security…