Ronny Wijling and Michelle Fairman win Political Science bachelor’s thesis prizes 2025
During the annual graduation ceremony, not only were the Bachelor's students in Political Science honoured, but also those students who had written exceptional theses. The thesis prizes reward work that excels in originality, social relevance and academic quality. This year's winners are Ronny Wijling and Michelle Fairman. Congratulations!
International Relations and Organisations thesis prize
The Leiden and The Hague bachelor programmes in Political Science each have a thesis prize. The prize for the best thesis in the specialisation International Relations and Organisations (IRO) is awarded anually since 2020. This year, the jury consisted of Petr Kopecký, Rebecca Ploof, and Yuan Yi Zhu. They faced the challenge of picking the best thesis from a shortlist of nineteen theses, nominated by the instructors of the so-called IRO bachelor projects.
The jury members considered, among other things, the excellence of the research question, social relevance, theoretical framework, empirical analysis, and policy implications. After a careful review, the committee was impressed by the novelty and scientific rigor of the nominated theses. However, in selecting the best thesis, one had to stand out among these outstanding projects. Following thorough discussions, the committee decided to award both an honorable mention and the IRO Thesis Prize of 2024-2025.
‘Clear academic and policy relevance’
The 2024-2025 IRO Thesis Prize was awarded to Michelle Fairman for her thesis, 'A New Currency of Power? Self-Legitimation Turf Wars in Global Governance Discourse'. The thesis studies whether the institutional environment an international organisation operates in influences its legitimation efforts. It argues that increases in delegated authority not only intensify discursive self-legitimation but also that this relationship is amplified in a competitive institutional landscape. The jury was were favourably impressed by its novel research question with clear academic and policy relevance as well as its sophisticated quantitative methodology. The thesis was supervised by Kathleen Brown.
Honorable mention: Kasya Hilhorst
The honorable mention goes to Kasya Hilhorst for her thesis, titled 'An Abhidharma Buddhist account of intergenerational justice', supervised by Dr. Jelena Belic. This thesis was recognized for its development of a philosophical account of intergenerational justice based on Abhidharma Buddhist understanding of existence and identity that is able to overcome the non-identity problem.
Van den Berg Prize (Politicologie and Internationale Politiek)
Students enrolled in the Bachelor's programme in Political Science, specialising in Politicologie or Internationale Politiek, compete for the Van den Berg Prize with their Bachelor's theses, provided they have been nominated by their supervisors.
This year, the jury for the Dutch-language specialisations consisted of Joop van den Berg, Femke Bakker, Marco Verschoor and student member Ralph Otten. They deliberated on the five nominated theses, 'all of which were of a very high standard and, moreover, very evenly matched'. In the end, the jury agreed on the winner: 'Caraïbische vertegenwoordiging: een democratisch tekort. De representatie van het Caraïbisch deel van het Koninkrijk in de Tweede Kamer der Staten-Generaal', written by Ronny Wijling and supervised by Cynthia van Vonno.
‘An urgent and topical issue’
Ronny Wijling's thesis addresses an urgent and topical issue: the structural democratic deficit in the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The thesis distinguishes between the CAS islands (Curaçao, Aruba and Sint Maarten), which do not have active voting rights in the States General, and the BES islands (Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba), which do have active voting rights. Wijling examines the extent to which members of parliament and political parties, despite this deficit, represent the interests of the islands in party programmes and committee debates. The thesis shows that political parties pay limited attention to the islands, but that some parties and individual members of parliament are indeed committed to representing their interests. Finally, it demonstrates that an island background does not have a clear influence on the representation of interests. The jury has awarded this thesis the prize because of its highly relevant theme, clear writing and convincing link to existing literature. In addition, the combination of document analyses and interviews makes the thesis strong both theoretically and empirically. This originality and meticulousness make this thesis stand out and deserve first place.