How many written parliamentary questions does each party put to each minister? Political scientists Simon Otjes (University of Groningen) and Tom Louwerse (Leiden University) studied the practice in Dutch parliament and found that parties use parliamentary questions strategically as part of their ‘permanent…

Niels van Leeuwen is enrolled in the Master Public Administration: Economics & Governance. During the first stage of his master, he did an internship in the United States, at the economic affairs department of the Royal Netherlands Consulate General in Chicago. ‘There are more ways that lead to Rome…

Both play and politics have the potential to create worlds in which new rules apply, meanings are created, and possibilities emerge for collaboration, strategy and creative solutions. In this sense, play and politics have always been very much alike. But what happens to this kinship in a post-digital…

Valentina Carraro gave a presentation titled "Strengthening the Human Rights Council and the UN Treaty Body System" at the 'Reinvigorating the United Nations' Conference organized by the Diplomatic Academy in Vienna on January 27th and 28th. During the conference Valentina presented her research on…

This book explores how public health concerns and political agendas influenced each other in the US over the past century.

Debates on political legitimacy in Dutch parliament in the 1880s, 1930s, and 1960s

Political Scientist Katharina Natter (Leiden University) advances theory-building on immigration beyond the liberal state and demonstrates how immigration politics can provide valuable insights into the inner workings of political regimes. Connecting scholarship from comparative politics, international…

Combine the analytical tools of the Political Science discipline with an in-depth study of current politics in the Netherlands.

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

In the present-day United States, to what degree(s) are far-right men and women similar and/or dissimilar in their motivating factors for engaging in far-right social movement activism?

Political scientist Wouter Veenendaal received an NWO Veni grant for his research on the political stability of small states. 'I find small states fascinating, they are almost always excluded from comparative research, while in fact they often challenge existing theories in political science.'

This article provides a comprehensive analysis of the Islamic State's use of images taken by drones, drawing on a dataset of ISIS propaganda images from October 2016 to December 2018.

The Microscopy Unit houses, maintains and coordinates most of the microscopy equipment of the IBL. The available equipment ranges from conventional light and fluorescence microscopes, to confocal laser scanning and electron microscopes. In addition, infrastructure is available for histology, including…

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…

USMCA (North American Free Trade Agreement) is the successor to NAFTA – a free trade zone covering Canada, the United States and Mexico. This Agreement includes a new procedure to ensure compliance with fundamental labour rights.

Political scientist Wouter Veenendaal (Leiden University) provides an in-depth case study of clientelism in Malta, the smallest member state of the European Union. He reveals that not only that patron–client linkages are a ubiquitous feature of political life in Malta, but also that the smallness of…

How do governments distribute resources across economic sectors during a crisis? And why do some sectors receive more than others? The recent COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the urgency of these questions. In this paper, we explore the extent to which a political economy…

Madeleine O. Hosli & Jaroslaw Kantorowicz analyze EU states' foreign policy divergence at the UN General Debate, assessing if Lisbon Treaty reforms increased EU cohesion or if states maintain distinct positions.

Willemijn Aerdts, lecturer at ISGA, discussed the Russian interference in the domestic affairs of Western countries on Dutch radio BNR.

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.

Beyond the immediately visible plenum, parliaments are highly complex institutions. They work through various venues in which decisions are prepared or even taken. The two main institutions in this regard are parliamentary party groups, which comprise legislators who are elected under the same party…

The crisis in Iran seems to have settled and both countries are claiming victory. The Americans say that they taught Iran a lesson, but Iran projects the contradictory. Now, who is right? On Thursday 9th January, Bert Koenders commented on this on BNR News Radio.

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.

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…

This book concentrates on the regulation of political parties in the EU post-communist democracies, and on Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and Romania, in particular.

Why did India develop a strong military partnership with the state of Irael, after having ignored it for 42 years? How could both countries develop defense ties in spite of limited political leadership involvement? Finally, what are the prospects for defense relations as India grows to become one of…

It is often said that the links between political parties in Africa and their voters are clientelist, rather than programmatic. The familiar image is that of African ‘big men’, displaying personal wealth while being respected and celebrated in the community for sharing their riches. Yet, political scientist…

Leiden students organised a Model United Nations (MUN) from 3 to 6 May in The Hague. An MUN simulates the working of the United Nations and is intended to allow students to learn about the practice of international relations. View the photo series.

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

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.

Book by Soledad Valdivia Rivera

Managing scarcity to serve the public interest is a classic government task. An important way to execute this task is by allocating individual rights that are only available in limited quantities, such as CO2 emission allowances, gambling licences, subsidies, radio frequencies, public contracts and…

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.

The war between Ukraine and Russia is playing out not just on the battlefield but also on the geopolitical playing field of gas. Conflicts at the start of this century about this energy source were, says PhD candidate Ilia Barboutev, a precursor to today’s war.

The project investigates the implementation of policies and practices related to reconciliation and the strengthening of government capacity in the Odesa and Kharkiv regions of Ukraine.

This article devises a framework to assess the degree to which human rights bodies provide duplicating or contradicting recommendations to States. Focusing on the case of torture, it creates an original database of recommendations delivered to 14 countries in the years 2012–2016. Results show that duplications…

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…

On 16-17 June 2022, Valentina Carraro presented a paper on ‘Overlapping Institutions in the United Nations human rights system’ at the Politicologenetmaal conference, Radboud University, Nijmegen.

The parliamentary elections in the Netherlands, scheduled for March 2017, are likely to result in a fragmented parliament and a complicated coalition formation process, according to Dutch political scientist Hans Vollaard (Leiden University).

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.

This research cluster is a part of the Institute of Political Science’s research programme ‘Institutions, Decisions and Collective Behaviour’. Its members study phenomena such as migration, immigration, citizenship, integration, ethnic parties, minority and caste-based politics, borders and migration,…

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…

This master’s programme focuses on understanding the causes and consequences of armed conflict between states and within states. In addition, we explore whether and how local, national and international actors and institutions can forge cooperation, prevent political and armed conflict from emerging,…

On 1 September 2022 Güldeniz Kibris successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

The Oxford Handbook of Dutch Politics provides a comprehensive longitudinal overview of the state of the art of academic research on the Dutch political system: its origins and historical development, its key institutions, main fault lines, pivotal processes, and key public policy dynamics. In each…