Identifying and explaining change in the structure of central state bureaucracies and the determinants of survival of individual public organizations are two closely related areas of research in public administration. We aim to bridge the gap between these two main strands of studies of organizational…

Part of ‘Moralising Misfortune: A Comparative Anthropology of Commercial Insurance’, an ERC Consolidator project of Erik Bähre.

Nobody likes it, but we do need bureaucracy, is Sandra Groeneveld's message in her inaugural lecture. Her advice is that we just need to handle it differently and should invest in people's behaviour, rather than focusing on strict rules.

Previous studies have identified institutional, organizational, and individual factors that promote innovation in public organizations. Yet they have overlooked how the type of public administration—and the type of administrators—is associated with innovative attitudes.

The Executive Board of Leiden University has appointed Professor Ken Meier to the Chair of Bureaucracy and Democracy at the Institute of Public Administration. The appointment starts on 1 September for a period of five years.

This book, edited by Joost Augusteijn, Constant Hijzen and Mark Leon de Vries, explores how democratic regimes have dealt with anti-democratic forces in society, from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first century.

In his PhD research in the field of public administration, Mark Reijnders looked at why people do not receive the help they need. They lose their way in the labyrinthine support system or become bogged down in bureaucracy. In public administration this is known as non-take-up of social care. PhD defence…

Kohei Suzuki, assistant professor at Leiden University, together with Victor Lapuente, examined how male and female public managers show attitudinal differences toward innovation in the public sector.

This project aims to explore, in general, what explains civil servants’ attitudes and behavior, and, in particular, why some civil servants are more committed to professional norms and public service values – such as impartiality, equity, efficiency, and innovation – than others.

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

Studies on representative bureaucracy have often confirmed the positive performance effects of bureaucracies mirroring the demographic characteristics of their clientele. However, little is known about the underlying individual level mechanisms leading to these outcomes.

At the heart of this study is a thorough inquiry of categorisations of social identity used in the VOC’s record-keeping bureaucracy. How were service, occupational and caste groups classified and shaped by the VOC?

Nadine Raaphorst wrote an chapter for The Oxford Handbook of Administrative Justice about how two notions of fairness are studied in street-level bureaucracy literature and about the factors that influence how bureaucrats behave in this regard.

With regard to governance, policies and law, many Muslims and Muslim countries recognise the possibility that Islam has something important to say about the way society is to be ordered, governed, and regulated.

How did the imperial administration of justice function during the reign of the Severans?

How do insurance products transform intimate and personal relations? What are the consequences of the classifications that insurance companies use and how do these affect solidarity, morality and inequality?

How citizens and professionals are the key to successful collaboration in the delivery of public services. How do individual characteristics of citizens and professionals influence citizen-professional collaboration in the co-production of public services?

The idea of global governance and trust in international institutions are apparently getting into deep water. But is there a legitimacy crisis? Not according to international élites, as Jan Aart Scholte (Leiden University), Soetkin Verhaegen (Maastricht University) and Jonas Tallberg (Stockholm University)…

This study aims to examine how South Korea (hereafter, Korea) and Japan, two neighboring countries in Northeast Asia, have been responding to and mitigating the spread of COVID-19.

This proposed research uses ego-documents from visual artists that were not intended for publication to reassess the scholarly debate on the demise of the Russian Avant-garde aesthetic in the twenties and early thirties of the 20th century.

Latif Fauzi defended his thesis on 18 May 2021.

At the center of this research project lies a practice-based, artistic exploration of the impact of digitalization on the lived reality of both physical and cognitive labor.

Court cases that get out of hand are enacted again and again, according to PhD candidate Tessa de Zeeuw. De Zeeuw: ‘Even if the court comes to the correct judgement, from a legal point of view, the issues that appear in a case such as that of Lucia de Berk continue to

Governance is a complex puzzle of organisations, people and divergent interests. Academic research in this field furthers our knowledge of the role of public administrators, of different organisational structures, of the people who work at such organisations and of how these organisations implement…

Colonialism Inside Out: Everyday Experience and Plural Practice in Dutch Institutions in Sri Lanka (c. 1700-1800)

Professor Sandra Groeneveld’s inaugural lecture is getting closer. On May 27 she will deliver her lecture called: “The relevance of bureaucracy. How to deal with ambivalence in public management”. Ahead of this inaugural lecture, professor Groeneveld gave us an interview last week. In this interview…

Kohei Suzuki, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Public Administration contributed to the research project ‘Reforming Public Administration in Libya’. The brainstorming meeting was organized by the Statistical, Economic and Social Research and Training Centre for Islamic Countries (SESRIC) in T…

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.

Impressions by Oene de Haan - PhD candidate at Utrecht University.

Thanks to its early civilisation and continuous mix of influences, the Muslim world has a rich and varied culture. The study of material culture, books, stories, films and increasingly television series teaches us about the structure of modern-day Muslim societies.

For most of the past ten years, Europe has been in a state of ‘crisis’. The bank crisis mutated seamlessly via the Euro crisis to the present migrant crisis. Whereas previously the general assumption was that even closer cooperation within the European Union was a foregone conclusion, the EU is now…

Professor Ken Meier is one of the most prominent researchers of the world in the field of Public Administration. Meier holds appointments as a professor of Public Administration at Cardiff School of Business (Wales), a professor of bureaucracy and democracy at Leiden University (The Netherlands), research…

Research is the basis for good security policy. By analysing the motives of radicalised people and identifying the biggest risks in the area of digital communication, Leiden University researchers are helping governments to formulate effective countermeasures.

The organisations and people who implement government policy face many different types of change. Academics from Leiden University research how they deal with these and advise them on how best to meet the needs and wishes of society.

A History of Dutch Corruption and Morality showcases 300 years of change, continuity, and diversity in the history of Dutch political corruption and public morality. It analyses a series of corruption scandals and shows how the following debates were connected to the big changes of that time: from the…

Subproject of

No matter where you come from, life in the Netherlands will be a little (or a lot) different to your home country.

To enjoy the Winter holidays, the Leiden Leadership Centre has selected several interesting illustrations of leadership.

Caspar van den Berg, researcher and Assistant Professor at the Institute of Public Administration, has been awarded a prestigious Veni grant of 250,000 euros from the Dutch Organization for Scientific Research (NOW) for his international comparative research on politicization of top civil servants.

This video accompanies the article "Navigating Discretion: A Diplomatic Practice in Moments of Socio-political Rupture", published in Vol. 14, Issue 4 of The Hague Journal of Diplomacy.