Populist opposition parties are less likely to engage in policy-making behaviour (participating in or directly influencing legislative production) and somewhat more likely to engage in scrutiny behaviour (monitoring and criticising government actions).

Towards the graduation ceremonies, you sense an increasing nervousness. Not only because all the tradition and glamour surrounding the event, also because that will be the day that the winner of the Political Science master’s thesis award will be announced. For 2022-2023, the jury is considering seven…

Robert Pee, William Michael Schmidli (Eds.) This book posits that democracy promotion played a key role in the Reagan administration’s Cold War foreign policy.

As a Leiden University’s master’s student in Political Science you conduct independent research and report your findings to fellow academics and, who knows, to a larger audience. Your thesis is a showcase of your academic skills and personal interest, and perhaps even passion. Easier said than done,…

A comparative analysis of legitimation strategies in tree hybrid regimes: Russia, Venezuela, and Seychelles.

Read more about the International Network Open Science & Scholarship Communities in our Vision and Mission statements.

The nominees for the IRO thesis prize 2023 and the Prof. Dr. J.Th.J. van den Berg-prijs 2023. Who wrote the best bachelor theses in Political Science?

Opera, more so perhaps than most other forms of art, is deeply intertwined with philosophy and politics. For some composers this was explicitly so. Think of Wagner’s relation with Nietzsche and Schopenhauer or Verdi’s role in Italian unification. But almost any opera raises, and tries to grapple with,…

Law and peace in the work of Hans Kelsen. A re-evaluation of Kelsen’s legal philosophy: legal pacifism as tacit meaning of his Pure Theory of Law

It is a full classroom: more than 30 pupils from 5 and 6 vwo are present to listen to political scientist Leila Demarest's lecture. She gives a brief introduction on the topic she is about to discuss: democracy in the global North and South. At first, the group seems a bit quiet, but when she asks questions…

Adina Akbik has been appointed as a new member of the Young Academy Leiden (YAL) as of 1 September 2024. Akbik is Senior Assistant Professor of European Politics at Leiden University. YAL serves as a platform for early career academics, and Akbik is keen to promote the needs and interests of young researchers…

In this article, Kuipers and Timmermans analyze the first lady's relationship with policy problems in the period 1945-2013.

The Dutch State is set to challenge The Hague Court of Appeal's ruling that the Netherlands must stop exporting arms to Israel at the Supreme Court. The government believes that foreign policy falls within the political domain and not within the judiciary. Geerten Boogaard, Professor of Constitutional…

Research & Politics (RAP) is a peer-reviewed open access journal which focusses on research in political science and related fields through open access publication of the very best cutting-edge research and policy analysis. The journal achieved a high score for the impact factor, which puts it in 49th…

Following the fall of the fourth Rutte cabinet, Dutch Minister of Justice and Security Dilan Yesilgöz addressed the Dutch media about the ‘influx’ of family reunification applications by asylum permit holders. In her view, it would put enormous pressure on Dutch society and could jeopardise security.…

Hoye proposes that concerns about virtues of the sovereign are essential for understanding Hobbes's both his political thinking and his political critique.

The word bureaucracy does not have negative connotations for Ken Meier. Meier, Professor of Bureaucracy and Democracy, has a clear grasp of the relationship between elected politicians and bureaucracy, or the civil service. Inaugural lecture on Monday 20 May.

The democratic rule of law is under pressure due to a series of scandals and integrity issues, as seen in the recent parliamentary inquiries. Professor Ronald Kroeze explains: 'Public office holders are expected to show complete dedication, but that norm is quite absolute, and what we mean by it is…

Assessing the feasibility and legitimacy of the current model of global tax governance and the role of the OECD and EU in international tax law-making.

This study investigates how the tenure of security (proxied by both inter- and intra-party electoral advantage) affects the engagement and political performance of members of parliament.

Nikoleta Yordanova, a political scientist at Leiden University, will lead an international research consortium funded by the European NORFACE Network to complete a multi-disciplinary project ‘Willingness and Capacity for EU Policy Action in Turbulent Times: Conflicts, Positions and Outcomes’ (EUINACTION).…

On 19 May 2020, Xuechan Ma defended her thesis 'Moving towards Coexistence and Cooperation: The Spratly Islands and International Law'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. N.J. Schrijver.

This summer school focuses on the emergence of sexual orientation, gender identity (SOGI) and intersex issues in different areas of international law, such as human rights law, refugee law, international economic law, and international criminal law. Further information for this summer course will be…

'After my BA International Studies I decided to do the MA International Relations, and that proved to be a good choice,' Mats Radeck (23, Trier, Germany) says. He is in the last phase of the MA, working on his thesis on

Ramesh Ganohariti, PhD student and Ernst Dijxhoorn, Assistant Professor at Leiden University, researched the relation between international relations and sports, with sport and sports events increasingly being used for various diplomatic and political goals.

On 22 May, the Dutch House of Representatives invited one hundred citizens to pose critical questions regarding the Ministries’ annual reports. This followed on from the annual ‘Accountability Day’. Caspar van den Berg, Associate Professor of Public Administration, helped think about how citizens could…

On Thursday 3 March , Prof. Margaret Moore will give the annual Centre for Political Philosophy lecture.

In this chapter, Kohei Suzuki aims to provide a brief overview of Japan’s local government system.

In 2019, Aliaksandr Lukashenka marks a quarter of a century as the first, and so far only president of the Republic of Belarus. This new book by Dr. Matthew Frear, Assistant Professor of Russian and Eurasian Studies, offers the most up-to-date analysis of government and politics in a country usually…

Videos shared on social media have become important evidence to hold perpetrators of human rights violations accountable. What does this increased use of digital open source evidence mean for the quality of international human rights accountability? Through an innovative experimental design, this project…

On 10 March 2021, Pieter Huizing defended his thesis 'Parallel Enforcement of International Cartels and Its Impact on the Proportionality of Overall Punishment'. The doctoral thesis was supervised by Prof. T.R. Ottervanger.

On Wednesday 27 September a new book by Prof. Luuk van Middelaar will appear, entitled The new politics of Europe. Frans Timmermans, the European Commission’s first vice-president, presents the book that evening during a symposium around the same theme.

This publication examines the issues regarding the cross-border resolution of financial institutions, focusing on the power allocation between the home and host resolution authorities, i.e. the jurisdiction rule.

On 15 February 2024, Alexandros Sarris defended the thesis 'International Law and Governance of the Arctic in an Era of Climate Change'. The doctoral research was supervised by Nico Schrijver and Freya Baetens.

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.

This book brings together contributions on topics related to the Dutch EU Presidency Agenda 2016 from a number of scholars who are affiliated with Leiden University.

Both Europe and Latin America face challenges globally and at home. Conflicts over land and resources have been resurgent in recent years.

Xinrong Ma defended her thesis on 13 February 2018