How do democracies develop? The Institute for History is devoting a three-day conference to this question.

‘Foreign policy’ may seem to the general public to be merely an official response to problems entering the nation from across the border. Yet the political reach of diplomacy has extended, and diplomats will have to find ways to engage more with home citizens, including those who feel sidelined and…

The NORFACE-funded DEEPEN project on the democratic governance of funded occupational pension schemes that is located at the Institute of Public Administration of Leiden University, Linz university, University College Dublin, and University Carlos III of Madrid will be presenting first research results…

Legal proceedings conducted on behalf of apes and animals who are starved for the purpose of an ecological project. What position do animals actually have in the rule of law? And what changes need to be made? PhD candidate Janneke Vink defends her dissertation on 10 October.

Anthropologist Anouk de Koning about the tottering welfare state and the dilemmas of a government operating as a nearby, friendly partner.

How can interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary collaborations between psychology and public administration contribute to the development and application of behavioural insights that improve government functioning and its interaction with citizens?

Kohei Suzuki is Assistant Professor at Institute of Public Administration. This study carries several important implications for understanding the policy impacts of a graying population and for studies of the welfare state, in general.

Agriculture is among the most vulnerable sectors to climate change and poorer countries face the most severe difficulties. Coffee farmers in Central America, for instance, are facing multiple and mutually reinforcing crises, including price shocks, outbreaks of pests and diseases, migration, and farm…

Globalization, migration, technological innovation and climate change pose challenges to citizens in European countries. These challenges test the limits of cross-national and cross-generational solidarities, touching upon the very foundations of governance and society. This research program aims at…

Dr. Joris Larik, Assistant Professor of Comparative, EU and International Law at LUC The Hague, has co-authored a report entitled 'UN 2.0: Ten Innovations for Global Governance 75 Years beyond San Francisco'.

A new Special Issue with Transnational Legal Theory edited by Jelena Belic, Matthew Canfield, Henning Lahmann, Rachel Griffin, and Barrie Sander, brings together a collective of perspectives to unpack the promise and perils of human rights as a vocabulary for governing digital platforms.

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.

The Rutte-III coalition agreement has been presented and the commentary is flooding in. Public administration experts Arco Timmermans and Gerard Breeman examined the new agreement – as they have done for every coalition agreement since 1963 - and made a systematic analysis of it: it is very much about…

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.

How do Humanitarian Response Organizations (HROs) and Virtual & Technical Communities (V&TCs) collaboratively govern disaster sensemaking processes, and what challenges shape the effectiveness of these collaborations between 2010 and 2016?

This article explores how ISIS and the Taliban have fostered support through their parallel legal systems.

On 2 Juni 2021, Maarten Manse defended his thesis 'Promise, Pretence and Pragmatism: Governance and Taxation in Colonial Indonesia, 1870-1940'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. R. Arendsen.

Using artificial intelligence is more complicated for the government than for companies. Bram Klievink, Professor of Public Administration, aims to identify the problems and find solutions.

Subproject of

Courses in English.

On 18 June, Esmée Driessen defended the thesis 'Government encouragement and facilitation of civic initiatives. On the interpretation of ‘serving government’ in third-generation civic participation'. The doctoral research was supervised by Geerten Boogaard and Willemien den Ouden.

Natural resources often stretch across borders that separate modern nation states. This can create conflict and limit opportunities for regulated consumption of their goods and services, but also provide opportunities for joint multinational efforts that exceed single country capabilities.

On 9 October, Corné Smit defended his doctoral thesis, 'Minority governments in the Netherlands and Denmark '. The PhD research was supervised by Luc Verheij and Geerten Boogaard.

Sophie Vériter explores a small state’s impact on EU security governance, a hard challenge means against big states in this policy area.

Government impartiality is considered a core feature of quality of government, and one that leads to favorable macro‐level outcomes. We have limited knowledge, however, of how impartiality affects citizens' perceptions of public service quality. In particular, we do not know how the impacts of impartiality…

Prior to the 2020 presidential election, historians considered the disputed 1876 contest—which pitted Republican Rutherford B. Hayes against Democrat Samuel J. Tilden—the most controversial in American history.

On the 22nd of January 2016 the article: 'Drie valkuilen en denkfouten in de drang naar een kleinere overheid' (translation from Dutch: 'Three pitfalls and fallacies in the desire for a smaller government') written by prof. dr. Frits M. van der Meer & Mr. dr. G.S.A. Dijkstra was posted on Mejudice:…

Wanneer de overheid niet binnen de gestelde termijn beslist, geldt een dwangsomregeling. Volgens verschillende experts werkt dit pressiemiddel niet meer. Annemarie Drahmann, universitair hoofddocent Bestuursrecht en WOO specialist, zegt in Magazine Advocatie dat dit ‘schadelijk is voor de democratische…

On Monday 4 September, Professor Christopher Martinez, from the Universidad de Concepción (University of Concepción), Chile, was invited by the Department of Constitutional and Administrative Law to introduce his forthcoming book at our university.

On the 2nd of September Jiyan Qiao successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

The English edition of Rijpkema’s Weerbare democratie is published in Routledge’s Extremism and Democracy series, one of the leading series in the field, edited by Roger Eatwell and Matthew Goodwin.

In an op-ed and an interview in Dutch newspaper ‘de Volkskrant’, Reijer Passchier, Assistant Professor in Constitutional Law at Leiden University and Professor of Digitalisation and the Democratic Constitutional State at the Open University, stresses that Europe needs to take radical steps to tackle…

Politicians in The Hague were in for an unpleasant surprise when the interview with CDA politician, and also current Dutch Foreign Affairs Minister, Wopke Hoekstra was published. Especially Hoekstra’s suggestion to let go of the Government’s target to reduce the amount of nitrogen by 2030 raised some…

On 18 September 2019, Huw Llewellyn defended his thesis 'An Institutional Perspective on the United Nations Criminal Tribunals: Governance, Independence and Impartiality'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. N.M. Blokker and Prof. L.J. van den Herik.

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.

In September 2016, the Leiden University Institute for History starts with a new MA sub-track 'Governance of Migration and Diversity'. This so-called LDE Master (a joint program of Leiden, Delft and Erasmus) is part of the MA History specialization Cities, Migrations and Global Interdependence (CMGI…

In this book, Jan Melissen and other authors explore how governments engage domestic citizens in global affairs through the emerging practice of 'home engagement' in diplomacy, highlighting its growing importance in an interconnected and politically turbulent world.

In the track Intelligence and National Security you will be introduced to intelligence and security services in their political, societal, and bureaucratic contexts. The track will give you a thorough understanding of the modus operandi of these agencies, their interaction with the surrounding world,…

On November 22 in Arusha, Tanzania, the Council of Ministers of the East African Community (EASC) endorsed the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) as its seventh Partner State. This meeting, chaired by Kenya’s EAC Affairs and Regional Development Cabinet Secretary Adan Mohamed, represents one of the…

On November 22 in Arusha, Tanzania, the Council of Ministers of the East African Community (EASC) endorsed the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) as its seventh Partner State.

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.

What contributes to the successes and failures of governance networks in small to medium-sized Western European host cities in attracting International Organizations?

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…