MA International Relations: Culture and Politics student Annick van Rinsum created a play as a method to research her master’s thesis. “Through writing this play, I aim to contribute to our understanding of International Relations Theory. I’m specifically interested in the question how our theories…

Five questions for James Shires, assistant professor at ISGA, about his new book, The Politics of Cybersecurity in the Middle East. The book is available to order now.

In this paper, Kantorowicz argues that reverse party favoritism exists. He exploits the fact that during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic crisis, the Polish government was keen to launch postal voting in the presidential elections scheduled for May 2020.

Interview with political scientist Hans Vollaard (Leiden University) about “Nexit” speculations, the strengths and weaknesses of Geert Wilders’s Party for Freedom, and the general attitude towards Europe in the Netherlands.

Political scientist Nicolas Blarel (Leiden University) analyses the background and implications of India’s prime minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Israel.

Using the League of Nations’ responses to early crises as an explorative historical case study, Political Scientist Gisela Hirschmann investigates how international organisations perceive and respond to existential threats.

Esteban Szmulewicz, PhD candidate at the Department of Constitutional and Administrative Law of Leiden University and expert on decentralisation issues, gave an online presentation of his research before the subcommittee on Political System, Constitutional Reform and Form of State in Chile and reported…

In an opinion piece in Dutch newspaper NRC, Corné Smit, teaching and research staff member at the Department of Constitutional and Administrative Law, discusses the possibilities and possible advantages of a minority government.

India’s prime minister Narendra Modi admires Israel’s achievements, but structural differences between Indian and Israeli national security situations, differences in the leaders’ worldviews and the absence of a common enemy inhibits stronger strategic rapprochement, argues political scientist Nicolas…

In the study of West-East relations, difference often takes centre stage. This holds for both culturalist and postcolonial perspectives. By contrast, in my investigation of Netherlands-Iran political relations in the 1960s and 1970s, I will focus on the role of SIMILARITY. What lay at the root of the…

Take a walk through any city, and you are likely to come across a brightly coloured mural. Although these paintings often seem to serve solely as a backdrop for Instagram snapshots, art history professor Minna Valjakka says there are rich traditions and intricate histories that uncover more critical…

Successfully completing a master’s thesis in Political Science is no small feat. Not only is this for most students the most extensive and in-depth research report they have ever written, the work is also held to very high standards. Yet, every year students manage to impress their instructors and demonstrate…

Aileen Schuurmans finished her MA International Relations this summer. She wrote an article titled 'How to Change the Story of the Pandemic with Daoist IR', which got published on E-International Relations, the world’s leading open access website for students and scholars of international politics.

The most densely populated country in Africa, Nigeria, is fighting a war on two fronts. Not only is Nigeria being confronted with violence on a national level by terror group Boko Haram, on a regional level there are conflicts between shepherds and farmers.

Political scientists Tom Louwerse, Simon Otjes & Cynthia van Vonno introduce the Dutch Parliamentary Behaviour Dataset, a record of parliamentary (voting) behaviour in the Dutch Tweede Kamer (Second Chamber, House of Representatives) since 1945.

Political scientist Corinna Jentzsch (Leiden University) about the organisation of rebel and government auxiliaries in the civil war in Mozambique (1976–1992).

‘Timmermans says more Polish workers are staying in Poland, but there aren’t any figures to back this up,’ was the headline of NU.nl news website during the European elections in 2019. This was after Nieuwscheckers, the fact-checkers at Leiden University, had checked a statement by PvdA politician Frans…

Alumnus Stan van Haasteren went to Northern Ireland in 1995 as a freelance journalist with a guitar strapped to his back and recently wrote a book about his experiences in Belfast. ‘The big difference with then is that today there is no more violence. But it's still a divided city.’

How does the management of Elephant Marsh Fishery in Malawi relate to wider contexts of policies, theories and regions? And how can the current management system be adapted to achieve long-term sustainability of the fishery?

The current ban on setting off fireworks in the Netherlands is inadequate. An offender can only be arrested after setting off fireworks in front of enforcers, who can’t respond to loud bangs in the distance. Mayors from municipalities in the province of Gelderland therefore want to impose a ban on the…

Does hegemony—legitimated rule by dominant power—have a role in ordering world politics of the twenty-first century? If so, what form does that hegemony take: does it lie with a leading state or with some other force? How does contemporary world hegemony operate: what tools does it use and what outcomes…

Endangered languages can survive if they are taught properly to new speakers, such as people with a migrant background. This is what Professor by Special Appointment Felix Ameka will say in his inaugural lecture on 30 September. Dutch people can do their bit by being less ‘polite’ to people whose mother…

The Bachelor Honours Class 'Homo Ludens: Why We Play' combines games, theory, and practice. Students dive into all aspects of humanity in which games play a part and discuss them, both on a theoretical an experiential level: 'Occasionally, you touch upon what play is, but then it eludes you.'

The emergence of the Köprülü household that imprinted its stamp on the latter half of the seventeenth century in the Ottoman Empire. What is the power struggle they carried out against Ottoman dynastic power?

On 19 September 2023 Tabitha Speelman successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

The land question had a crucial formative influence on Mayo politics in the decades before the First World War and this book shows the part played by many prominent nationalist figures such as Davitt, O’Brien, Dillon and MacBride in shaping the political landscape in Mayo.

Density functional theory (DFT) with so-called semi-local exchange has been remarkable accurate for some dissociative chemisorption reactions on metals, but it has notoriously failed for others. A team of researchers from the University of California at Irvine and the Leiden Institute of Chemistry have…

Too expensive groceries, diseases suddenly breaking out: from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, hundreds of people documented the world around them in chronicles. A significant number of these texts have been digitised in recent years. Professor of Early Modern Dutch History and project leader…

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…

In October, the Provincial Executive in Friesland reprimanded four civil servants who had signed an incendiary letter asking the government to adopt a more active climate policy. Wim Voermans, Professor of Constitutional and Administrative Law, feels that the Executive made a mistake.

Following the recent debate on the formation of a new Dutch government, there seems to be no clear definition of an extra parliamentary cabinet. Wim Voermans, Professor of Constitutional Law, discusses this in Dutch magazine ‘Vrij Nederland’ (VN).

Now that the new Dutch government's plans are set out on paper, the chess game begins for cabinet formation leader Richard van Zwol. He has to make the next move and put together the ministerial team. But how do you know if you’ve made the right move with the right chess piece? And who is a suitable…

Political scientist Corinna Jentzsch received an NWO Veni grant for her research on the conditions of collaboration between militias and state forces and its consequences for safety and political order.

The image of the European Union (EU) as a remote law-making machine is widespread. Quite often journalists and politicians deliberately depict ‘Brussels’ as bureaucratic, even undemocratic, bypassing its citizens. And many of us buy into that image. Nikoleta Yordanova, Anastasia Ershova and Aleksandra…

Jessica Vance Roitman and Wouter Veenendaal, researchers at the KITLV/Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies, investigate the origins, development, and consolidation of political oligarchy in the Caribbean island nation of St. Maarten.

Citizens in multiple crime-ridden countries strongly support the militarization of security—that is, placing the military in charge of traditional policing duties. Yet, we know little about the determinants of such support. Do people approve of militarization even in the face of human fatalities? Political…

This book addresses the definition of history and how people are influenced by it.

This book explores the Indian tradition of liberalism through a critical intellectual biography of Valangaiman Sankaranarayana Srinivasa Sastri (1869–1946).

Juan Masullo (Leiden University Institute of Political Science) receives a grant from the Elise Mathilde Fund/Leiden University Fund to conduct his research project ‘Forging an Anti-Mafia Culture: Observational and Experimental Evidence from Italy’. Masullo aims to find out what ordinary Italians think…

Frits van der Meer and Gerrit Dijkstra of the Institute of Public Administration reflect on the increasing power of political assistants in the magazine “De Hofvijver”.

Liesbeth van der Heide, Education and Research Staff Member at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs (ISGA), wrote on 20 April in the American news publication, Foreign Policy about the March’s deadly massacre in Mali, which exposed the lack of progress since the country’s peace accords. Furthermore,…

It occurs on a regular basis: a public administrator resigns or is dismissed when their integrity is at stake. To what extent does that damage their image? Geerten Boogaard, Professor of Local Government, discusses this in an item published by regional public broadcaster ‘Omroep Gelderland’.

It rarely happens: halting a decision by walking out of a meeting. ‘But there’s nothing wrong with it from a constitutional law perspective,’ says Geerten Boogaard, Professor by Special Appointment of Local Government, in ‘Leidsch Dagblad’.