How can party bans be justified? Which parties were banned in post-war Europe – and why? Do militant democracy instruments work? Is an international militant democracy concept in the making?

What does the interspecies interpretation of the equality principle mean for the liberal democracy, and is it possible to provide for an appropriate legal and political position for animals without defying the classic-liberal principles of the liberal democratic state?

As one of the most influential ideas in modern European history, democracy has fundamentally reshaped not only the landscape of governance, but also social and political thought throughout the world.

The interdisciplinary network Faith in Democracy (FID) studies the religious, sometimes even totalitarian, assumptions behind the concept of

Do political parties still perform their representational function? This is one of the main questions facing modern democracy. You will be addressing this issue both theoretically and empirically.

This book historicizes the debate over how democratic regimes deal with anti-democratic groupings in society.

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.

This book explores the spiritual potential of faith, mysticism and transcendence in answer to the dangers of a mythologised state and the sacro-sanctification of (liberal) democracy and its rule of law.

This edited volume offers a critical discussion of the trade-offs between transparency and secrecy in the actual political practice of democratic states in Europe. As such, it answers to a growing need to systematically analyse the problem of secrecy in governance in this political and geographical…

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

On 25 October 2018, Tu Zhang defended her thesis 'Public Reason Secularism: A Defense of Liberal Democracy'. The doctoral research was supervised by prof. P. Cliteur.

This volume challenges the idea that the development of ‘democracy’ is a story of rise and progress at all. It is rather a story of continuous but never completely satisfying attempts of interpreting the rule of the people.

We live in a data-drenched society awash with numbers. An inhabitant of the democratic polis of Athens (5th and 4th centuries B.C.E.) increasingly found himself surrounded by numerical data. This project aims to analyze the communicative functions and the political meaning(s) ascribed to these public…

Robert Pee, William Michael Schmidli (Eds.) This book posits that democracy promotion played a key role in the Reagan administration’s Cold War foreign policy.

The smallness of Suriname, according to political scientist Wouter Veenendaal (Leiden University), strongly affects and shapes the nature of democracy in the country. On the one hand, clientelism ensures that members of each ethnic group included in power-sharing arrangements have access to state resources…

This thesis attempts to interrogate post-1991-2015 political development in Ethiopia, focusing on the political discourses espoused by the government and opposition, using the discourse analysis method and securitization theory.

Debates on political legitimacy in Dutch parliament in the 1880s, 1930s, and 1960s

Acquiring and maintaining public support is frequently cited as an important requirement for governments fighting non-state actors. But how exactly can public support influence the course of counterterrorism campaigns and thereby contribute to an escalation or de-escalation of violence?

Political scientist Tom Theuns (Leiden University) has been awarded a Veni grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO). This means that he is recognised as a promising researcher and that he will receive support to develop his ideas further for a period of three years. Theuns will focus on the role…

How can the Indonesian National Ombudsman make the transition from autonomous to responsive justice in view of the day-to-day challenges it is faced with?

Although many studies have addressed democracy in education around the world, so far research on democratic education in the context of communist society has been scarce. In the current study, we aim to clarify the concept of democratic value and its manifestation in Vietnam’s schools. In addition,…

Almost all the members of the Dutch House of Representatives, ministers and government officials are university educated. At the same time, the large majority of the electorate have a lower level of education, or even no education. How much of a problem is that? Two new books warn about this gap in…

During Pinochet’s dictatorship (1973-1990) numerous left-wing Chileans fled to Europe. In exile some of their political views became more moderate. Mariana Perry defended her PhD about this topic in September.

The conflict between the Hungarian Prime Minister Orbán and his party Fidesz, on the one hand, the other parties within the European People's Party (EPP), on the other, illustrates the complex functioning of European democracy. Michiel Luining, lecturer at the Institute of Public Administration at Leiden…

After Wallonia’s veto on CETA, a group of 60 academics has come out to defend the European decision-making process in trade policy.

The Bolivian people will make their opinion known on a change to the constitution in a referendum on 21 February. Leiden University organised a symposium on the referendum on 11 February. The aim of the change is to allow President Evo Morales to remain in power until 2025.

How can party bans be justified? Which parties were banned in post-war Europe – and why? Do militant democracy instruments work? Is an international militant democracy concept in the making?

Honorata Mazepus, Assisstant Professor at Leiden University, researched the topic of Madisonian Judgments in Five Cultures, together with three other authors.

On 12 March 2021, Armin Cuyvers spoke on the issue of Euroscepticism and EU democracy post-Brexit in the multidisciplinary Winter School on Sustainable Global Futures: Knowledge, Democracy and Global Communications.

Early November 2019 lecturer Michael Klos spoke about the freedom of speech on social media at the World Forum for Democracy 2019 in Strasbourg.

Recently, Hans-Martien ten Napel was in the news on the above subject several times.

This book systematically evaluates the empirical evidence for legitimacy decline in established democracies, the explanatory power of theories of legitimacy decline, and promises new routes in investigating and assessing political legitimacy.

On 11 March, Oliver Rathkolb (University of Vienna) held a lecture about Social Democracy.

A shadow cabinet has just been formed. This one consists of students from all the Dutch universities. They will be keeping politicians on their toes in the coming year, and want to show that progress cannot be made without academic research and teaching. Master’s student Zeineb Romdhane is Minister…

The late 1960s: across Europe, students are demanding the right to more participation within their universities. In 1971 Leiden University was granted an elected University Council. It became quite powerful: the Council even had the right to dismiss the Chairman of the Board.

The scaling up of municipalities means that local authorities are too often losing sight of citizens. This warning was given by Job Cohen on 30 November on his departure from Leiden University as Thorbecke professor. ‘The Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations has got some work to do.'

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.

On 17 February 2016 Armin Cuyvers was invited to speak at the Liverpool European Law Unit (LELU) in a seminar on ‘Legitimacy and participation in the EU’. In his presentation, entitled ‘National parliaments as training wheels of EU democracy?

Antoaneta Dimitrova, Professor Comparative Governance at Leiden University, Honorata Mazepus, Assistant professor at Leiden University and Dimiter Toshkov, Associate Professor at Leiden University, together with three other authors researched which aspects of state capacity might contribute to opening…

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.

The Institute for Philosophy at Leiden University is host to the NWO programme,

The legal regulation of political parties in post-war Europe.

The starting hypothesis of the project is that secrecy is not always inimical to democratic governance as conventional wisdom has it.