Cleveringa Lecture 2025 at NIMAR
"Fragility and Resilience of Representative Systems. The Case of the Netherlands" by Prof. Dr. Henk te Velde, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities of Leiden University.
The Netherlands Institute in Morocco (NIMAR) is hosting this year’s Cleveringa Lecture, titled “Fragility and Resilience of Representative Systems: The Case of the Netherlands”, delivered by Prof. Dr Henk te Velde.
The lecture will take place on Thursday 4 December 2025 at NIMAR.
In a world where democratic norms are increasingly under pressure, questions once considered unthinkable have become urgent. Since Donald Trump began his second presidency in the United States, many observers have asked whether the American representative system can withstand the strain. Similar developments can be observed in parts of (Western) Europe.
In his lecture, Prof. te Velde will take the history and current situation of the Netherlands as a starting point to explore how representative systems can be both fragile and resilient. Using the Netherlands as his main example, he will reflect on how history, tradition, and everyday political practice shape democracy, and what lessons the past might offer for the challenges of today.
About the speaker
Prof. Dr. Henk te Velde is the Dean of the Leiden Faculty of Humanities and Professor of Dutch History. His work focuses on Dutch and Western European history from the late 18th century to the present, with a particular interest in political history and its connections to contemporary politics.
He has published extensively on the history of political culture in the Netherlands and Western Europe, including studies on liberalism and nationalism, political leadership and traditions, and comparative parliamentary eloquence.