This book offers a concise and accessible introduction to debates about expertise, policy-making and democracy. It uniquely combines an overview of recent research on the policy role of experts with discussions in political philosophy and the philosophy of expertise.

Think tanks have proliferated in most Western democracies over the past three decades and are often considered to be increasingly important actors in public policy. Still, their precise contribution to public policy remains contested.

This book is the first comparative study of estimative intelligence and strategic surprise in a European context, complementing and testing insights from previous studies centred on the United States. It does extensive empirical analysis of open-source material and interviews in relation to three cases…

Forest degradation has limited the Orang Rimba's access to forest resources. As a result, they've had to make significant cultural modifications and adaptations. Ekoningtyas Margu Wardani explains in her PhD dissertation these transformation processes among Contemporary Indonesian Hunter-Gatherers through…

More collaboration, combining data and asking the right questions. These are a few of the recommendations that policymakers and researchers formulated at the conference 'Data gedreven Beleidsontwikkeling' on 28 November 2017.

In order to analyze the challenges linked to data use in the context of nexus governance, Giest & Mukherjee use a policy design lens and more specifically the perspective of organizational policy instruments to look at the Mediterranean region.

Feeling nostalgic, Professor in Public Administration Science Bernard Steunenberg explains how some years ago he would occasionally show a TV broadcast to his students, first removing the videotape from its big box and putting it in a VHS player. Today, a student from Maastricht, sitting in the train…

Whilst government’s ability to design ‘context-specific’ regional innovation policy is generally assumed to depend on the region’s decision-making power, the aim of this study is to investigate how regional government matters. In order to open up the black box of policy design, the study develops a…

Rector Magnificus Carel Stolker will retire on 8 February. If there’s one theme running through his career, it’s the links between the University and society. In this series of pre-retirement discussions, Stolker will talk one last time to people from within and without the University. This time he…

Sarah Giest and Annemarie Samuels, both Assistant Professors at Leiden University, researched the quality and coverage of the data being collected for policiymakers to be used, specifically pertaining to minority groups.

Cutting down global emissions of greenhouse gases to combat global warming won’t do the trick alone: we also need negative-emissions technology that can capture carbon dioxide directly out of the air. In the prestigious journal Global Environmental Change, PhD candidate Oscar Rueda and colleagues shed…

You should start working now, and the positive results will only be seen long after your term has expired. That is just about the worst thing you can say to politicians and policymakers. Yet that is exactly the message of two recent reports on sustainable resource use from the Centre for Environmental…

This paper critically compares seven widely used risk assessment tools for violent extremism, including the VERA-2R, the ERG 22+, the SQAT, the IR46, the RRAP, the Radar, and the VAF.

Lecture, Leiden Interdisciplinary Migration Seminar (LIMS)

What makes a pension scheme sustainable? Most answers to this question have revolved around expert assessments of pension schemes’ affordability or adequacy. This study shifts focus from the financial or social sustainability of pension scheme designs to their political sustainability. The key question…

Evidence-informed policy-making is crucial for good governance. Yet, despite the abundance of evidence from research and evaluation available to decision-makers, we know little about the actual influence of evidence on government policies. The ‘Power of Evidence’ (PoE) research programme, directed by…

In this special edition of Information Polity there is a focus on the transparency challenges of using algorithms in government in decision-making procedures at the macro-, meso-, and micro-levels.

An article by Bert Fraussen, Adria Albareda, Caelesta Braun, Moritz Muller & Erin Sullivan, published as a three-part blog series.

This project aims to link robot development and policymaking to reduce the complexity in robot legal compliance in the context of COVR.

An article by Bert Fraussen, Adria Albareda, Caelesta Braun, Moritz Muller & Erin Sullivan, published as a three-part blog series.

An article by Bert Fraussen, Adria Albareda, Caelesta Braun, Moritz Muller & Erin Sullivan, published as a three-part blog series.

The combination of academic and professional skills taught in the CSM prepares you for a wide variety of careers in the rapidly expanding domain of security and crisis management, including public or private sector and policy-making positions.

The combination of academic and professional skills taught in the CSM prepares you for a wide variety of careers in the rapidly expanding domain of security and crisis management, including public or private sector and policy-making positions.

The combination of academic and professional skills taught in the CSM prepares you for a wide variety of careers in the rapidly expanding domain of security and crisis management, including public or private sector and policy-making positions.

The combination of academic and professional skills taught in the CSM prepares you for a wide variety of careers in the rapidly expanding domain of security and crisis management, including public or private sector and policy-making positions.

The combination of academic and professional skills taught in the CSM prepares you for a wide variety of careers in the rapidly expanding domain of security and crisis management, including public or private sector and policy-making positions.

What does it mean to do public policy ethics today? How should philosophers engage with ethical issues in policy-making when policy decisions are circumscribed by political and pragmatic concerns? How do ethical issues in public policy differ between areas such as foreign policy, criminal justice, or…

The combination of academic and professional skills taught in the CSM prepares you for a wide variety of careers in the rapidly expanding domain of security and crisis management, including public or private sector and policy-making positions.

Bert Fraussen, Assistant Professor at Leiden University, Adrià Albareda, a PhD candidate at Leiden University and Caelesta Braun, Associate Professor at Leiden University, identified combinations of consultation tools and analyzed their implications for stakeholder diversity.

The first generation of Governance of Sustainability master's students has graduated. They received their diplomas during a festive ceremony at Wijnhaven on 17 September. And they will not be the last: The master's programme is only growing in popularity. ‘We are very proud of our first graduates, especially…

In order to solve problems such as the refugee crisis, countries must work together at international level. This requires big changes in the way in which states make and implement policy. Leiden researchers analyse these changes and advise policymakers on best practices.

Populist opposition parties are less likely to engage in policy-making behaviour (participating in or directly influencing legislative production) and somewhat more likely to engage in scrutiny behaviour (monitoring and criticising government actions).

No nation-state can solve today's global challenges on its own. In the specialisation International and European Governance you will obtain a deep understanding of the interplay between the international, EU, and (sub)national governance systems and how this interplay affects a national government's…

Having encountered a series of shocks that pose an existential threat to our livelihoods, our societies have become increasingly polarized. Shortly after two years of lockdowns due to the pandemic, the war in Ukraine boosted at a global scale a polycrisis that intersects energy shortages, refugees,…

Loneliness and social isolation have become a significant problem in contemporary Japan. The financial burden associated with an ageing population has severely constrained the ability of local authorities to address the problem. As a result, policymakers have sought cost‐effective methods of tackling…

Researchers from the Institute of Public Administration study the mechanism of lobbying and influencing political parties and the behaviour of these parties to see how solutions are found to problems. This enables them to reach conclusions as to how best to effect changes in political focus and poli…

Niels van Willigen (Institute of Political Science, Leiden University) puts Dutch participation in UN peacekeeping into an historical context. He analyses the reasons for the Dutch withdrawal from the 1990s onwards, and explores the obstacles and opportunities for a structural return. Van Willigen argues…

Studying International Relations and Organisations (IRO) you are building a foundation that will benefit you in your future career, whether as part of an international organisation, or as a journalist or consultant.

Policymakers and Academics Speaking with Each Other

Text Mining and Retrieval Leiden (TMRL) focusses on text mining and retrieval problems in complex domains.

The combination of academic and professional skills you gain in the MSc PA makes you an excellent candidate for positions in national and international governance and policy making, as well as for managerial positions in the private sector, after graduation.

Jean Monnet is the part of Erasmus+ dedicated to promoting excellence in EU studies in higher education around the world. Jean Monnet Actions aim to build bridges between academics, researchers and EU policymakers. There is an emphasis on the study of and research on EU integration and in understanding…