On Friday, April 5, the Ecuadorian police stormed the Mexican Embassy in Quito to arrest former Ecuadorian vice president Jorge Glas Espinel.

In a time of growing polarisation and declining trust, the rule of law is under pressure. The system as we know it today only took shape 177 years ago, with the constitutional reform of 1848. Carla Hoetink emphasises: ‘The democratic rule of law was originally designed to prevent violence and revolu…

Atrocities have been the order of the day in Syria since war broke out in 2011, but the perpetrators are rarely tried. According to PhD candidate Elizabeth Van Schaack, the international community could bring justice in Syria, but only if there is political will. PhD defence on 29 April 2020.

The past decade, against the backdrop of a fragmented political landscape, has witnessed the greatest changes to the Netherlands since the aftermath of the Second World War. The labour market, the housing market, the energy market, the bank system, the pension system, the healthcare system, to name…

Assistant Professor Briitta van Staalduinen has received the Best Dissertation Award from the American Political Science Association, Section on Class and Inequality. Her dissertation, Ethnic Inequality in the Welfare State, aims to reconcile the persistence of ethnic inequalities in expansive welfare…

On Friday 3rd February 2017 Leiden University hosted a PhD colloquium in conjunction with the University of Liverpool and the University of Oslo, on the topic of ‘Law and Politics in the European Union’. As part of the Interaction between Legal Systems 2.0 project, the colloquium presentations focused…

The Team International Relations and European Studies addresses the interconnections and interdependence of contemporary global political, economic, security and culture from a multidisciplinary perspective rooted in the humanities. More specifically it is concerned with the study of international relations…

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.

This study is an attempt to reconstruct the muted violent past by breaking the monopoly of the Turkish state over the memory of the Armenian genocide.

Under what circumstances is politicization more likely to occur than others, and what impact does politicization have on government legitimacy and performance?

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…

PhD defence

For every period, it is a challenge to unearth the details of political trafficking; yet the effort needs to include all relevant persons, groups, and institutions – not only those wielding formal responsibilities. We hope to reinvigorate this effort by inviting specialists to present their research…

Where does Europe begin and end? How have the European Union and its precursors decided which countries are eligible to join the community and which are not? Few issues are more hotly debated, more important for the course of European integration, or more consequential for individuals in and around…

Citizens, journalists and scholars notice that foreign policy in, and of, the European Union, is ‘de-Europeanising’. Political scientist Daniel Thomas (Leiden University) offers a theoretical exploration of the likely implications. He expects that it will become more difficult for the EU to achieve…

Why do some civil wars experience quagmire, a situation in which belligerents are trapped in fighting? To explain this puzzle, Jonah Schulhofer-Wohl (Leiden University Institute of Political Science) analyses the overlapping strategic interactions between foreign powers and the warring parties. Studying…

Wim Voermans, Professor of Constitutional and Administrative law, travelled to São Paolo, Brasilia and Rio de Janeiro from 14 to 18 March with a delegation from Leiden University with the aim of strengthening ties with Brazil. During the visit agreements were made on future academic collaboration and…

The center studies the many ways in which issues of law and justice are dealt with in art and literature with a focus on liminal issues and cases. These are issues and cases where law comes to the limits of what it is capable of dealing with and art and literature explore the implications of what is…

What does a 19th-century exhibition of traditional utensils from the province of Zeeland tell us about the current rise of populism? A lot, Ad Maas will say in his inaugural lecture.

Earlier this week, a working group of the United Nations, comprising all 193 of its member states, adopted a consensus report on norms for responsible state behaviour in cyberspace. Dennis Broeders, full professor of Global Security and Technology at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, Leiden…

The fact that a significant number of seats in the Dutch provincial councils are now occupied by members of the Dutch Farmer-Citizen Movement (BoerBurgerBeweging, BBB) who have an agricultural background need not lead to conflicts of interest when voting on, for example, nitrogen emissions. This is…

Employer organizations have been presented as strong promoters of the liberalization of industrial relations in Europe. This article, in contrast, argues that the preferences of employers vis-à-vis liberalization are heterogeneous and documents how employer organizations in Spain, Italy, and Portugal…

What Determines Perceptions of Bias toward the International Criminal Court? Evidence from Kenya. In this article, published on the website SAGE Journals in the Journal of Conflict Resolution, the authors Geoff Dancy, Yvonne Marie Dutton, Tessa Alleblas, Eamon Aloyo examine the attitude towards international…

In 2009-2010, the notion of a more ‘assertive’ China emerged in Western discourse, a viewpoint that China vehemently rejects. Nevertheless, especially after Xi Jinping rose to power in 2012, it is clear that China has abandoned its long-held foreign policy doctrine of ‘keeping a low profile.’

Lecture

Study information

Tom Long (2022). A Small State’s Guide to Influence in World Politics. Oxford University Press. ISBN: 9780190926212, 240 pp. (hardback), £19.99.

Leiden University invites pre-applications from scholars who wish to spend 12-24 months in the Institute of Political Science as part of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship Programme.

From 1 September 2014, Glen Newey takes up the post of Professor of Practical Philosophy in Leiden University’s Institute for Philosophy.

What is the best way for us as a society to deal with all the different forms of diversity? Professor Marlou Schrover will use the EuroScience Open Forum (ESOF) to explore this question with colleagues and the public.

If you have a plan that could improve the education or the learning environment of the Faculty of Humanities in terms of diversity or inclusion, you can apply for a grant from the faculty’s JEDI Fund. This year, Nasreen has been helping to develop a new syllabus for the first-year Ancient History co…