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?

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.

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?

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.

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…

On Monday 10 December, the Polish Commissioner for Human Rights dr. Adam Bodnar delivered the eighth Raymond and Beverly Sackler Distinguished Lecture on Human Rights at Leiden Law School. The event marked the annual celebration of International Human Rights Day, which was proclaimed to commemorate…

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.

Political scientist Maurits de Jongh (Leiden University/Sciences Po) argues that political liberalism is self-defeating as a framework of justification for liberal conceptions of justice. He explores how the framework's self-imposed criterion of acceptability in the eyes of all reasonable citizens leads…

The 80,000 visitors to the Liberation Day Festival in The Hague on 5 May can learn about 444-year-old Leiden University at a range of interactive events on Malieveld and in the Dutch Parliament.

On 10 October 2019, Janneke Vink defended her thesis 'The Open Society and Its Animals'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. P.B. Cliteur.

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 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.

The eleven innovative essays in this volume explore the notion that all forms of modern mass politics, including liberal democracies, need such a form of sacralization of politics to function.

PhD Defence

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…

American foreign policy in the period after the Second World War is often characterised as liberal. This is, however, not the full picture, argues university lecturer Andrew Gawthorpe. He has been awarded a Vidi grant to research and rewrite this popular narrative.

This timely and engaging book examines the rise of populism across the globe. Combining insights from linguistics, argumentation theory, rhetoric, legal theory and political theory it offers a fully integrated characterization of the form and content of populist discourse.

Study Information, LUC 101 | Information Session

Are you passionate about addressing the global challenges of the 21st century? Do you have broad interests and do you want to live on campus in an international environment in the city center of The Hague? Then this bachelor programme is for you!

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

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.

Employer organizations have been presented as strong promoters of the liberalization of industrial relations in Europe. This article, in contrast, argues that the preferences of employers vis-à-vis liberalization are heterogeneous and documents how employer organizations in Spain, Italy, and Portugal…

In recent decades, the Netherlands’ struggle with multiculturalism has caused an upsurge in public interest in the relationship between state and religion. In this, the Dutch address a subject relevant not just to them, but to all of Europe.

Debate

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…

Debate

The Secular Outlook describes what moral and political secularism means. It paints the image of a world view in which state and religion are kept well separated.

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.

“Transitional justice” is a field of practice, policy and study that focuses on the ways that societies respond to legacies of large-scale atrocities though tribunals, truth commissions, reparations, and other mechanisms.

In 2014 Hans-Martien ten Napel received a Research Fellowship in Legal Studies at the Center of Theological Inquiry in Princeton, NJ. The book he wrote as a result of this fellowship was published last week by Routledge Law.

V.S. Srinivasa Sastri was a celebrated Indian politician and diplomat in the early twentieth century. Despite being hailed as the ‘very voice of international conscience’, he is now a largely forgotten figure.

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?

In this article, Gerrit Dijkstra and Jos Raadschelders from the Institute of Public Administration, argue that Bosnia-Herzegovina survives so far on the basis of negative legitimacy.

This book analyses the emergence of modern parties in nineteenth-century Europe and explores their connection with the slowly developing institution of democracy.

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…

Lecture

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?

Lecture

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?

Slavoj Žižek is one of the most prominent public intellectuals of the left. His central claim holds that “today, it is more crucial than ever to continue to question the very foundations of capitalism as a global system”.

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,…

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…