This article examines to what extent bureaucratic responsiveness depends upon the source, the content and the salience.

In this article, Kohei Suzuki examines how bureaucratic politicization and closedness are associated with the turnover intentions of bureaucrats in 36 countries.

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.

‘Can he do it?’ Since the remarkable victory of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the 2015 Nigerian presidential elections, this has arguably been the most frequently posed question in Nigerian politics.

Does becoming a public sector employee change a person’s political beliefs, behaviors and interactions with the state? Do public teachers hold the same values as other professionals and the general Brazilian public?

Reputation literature has provided crucial insights about the evolution of the US regulatory state. Daniel Carpenter’s influential account painstakingly demonstrates the relevance of reputation to bureaucratic ‘power’ and to early institutional state-building in the US context. We argue that adopting…

The author researched the motivations of bureaucrats to integrate refugees into welfare services even when they do not have any legal obligation to do so.

In this paper, Sarah Giest and Bram Klievink highlight the effects of AI implementation on public sector innovation. This is explored by asking how AI-driven technologies in public decision-making in different organizational contexts impacts innovation in the role definition of bureaucrats.

Who tried to influence the mission and position of the Dutch security services between 1912 and 1992, what effect did that have on the form and contents of the security services? How to account for transformations of the security services?

Latif Fauzi defended his thesis on 18 May 2021.

In this chapter, Kohei Suzuki aims to provide a brief overview of Japan’s local government system.

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.

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.

This study seeks to analyse how job stress could be the result of performing administrative tasks

Müller, Braun & Fraussen examine the conditions under which commissioners appear in the news and which communication strategies they pursue.

This article explores how employees use leadership behaviours and how characteristics of the organizational context affect their engagement in leadership.

Indonesian Law and Reality in the Mahakam Delta

This study examines recovery planning committees across Japan's Tohoku region.

Our main goal is to improve understanding of how intelligence and security services operate, how they are embedded in broader political, bureaucratic, and societal contexts, and how their methodologies can be complemented.

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.

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

This article examines leadership encouragement and psychological safety as antecedents of prosocial rule-breaking (PSRB) behaviour.

Article by Annemarie Samuels in History and Anthropology

In the wake of controversial disclosures of classified government information by WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden, questions about the democratic status of secret uses of political power are rarely far from the headlines. Despite an increase in initiatives aimed at enhancing government transparency – such…

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

Authority and Control in the Countryside looks at the economic, religious, political and cultural instruments that local and regional powers in the late antique to early medieval Mediterranean and Near East used to manage their rural hinterlands.

In this book, Lydie Cabane examines the history of disaster management in South Africa.

The threat of totalitarian domination; the rise of bureaucratic expertise; the resurgence of nationalisms and xenophobia; the claims of religion in secular societies; and the importance of robust legal and political institutions: these are among the main issues that mark—or specters that haunt—the 20th…

Since the Second World War, intelligence and security services have played an important role in policy and decision making, particularly with regards to a state’s national security. In this minor programme we study both the organisations, their working methods, their analysis techniques, as well as…

How and to what extent does AI affect citizen representation in public service delivery and state-citizen interactions?

On 2 Juni 2021, Maarten Manse defended his thesis 'Promise, Pretence and Pragmatism: Governance and Taxation in Colonial Indonesia, 1870-1940'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. R. Arendsen.

How have British, Dutch, and German security services dealt with political violence and terrorism since the late 1960s; to what extent did they consider these new phenomena as a task and how have they developed activities in order to counter these security threats?

Public sector decision-makers operate amidst an abundance of information and unclear political objectives. Attention is the sine qua non of policy-making: What is attended to can be addressed in policy responses; what is overlooked or goes unnoticed cannot. Despite its importance, public administration…

Subproject of

Here you'll find selected publications and media attention from our group.

The 2012 crisis in Mali, where the state collapsed and terrorist groups took over the north, came as a surprise to many. Mali had been considered a poster-child for democracy and was judged as considerably more stable than its neighbors by leading quantitative indices of state fragility. This article…

Reproducing past, present and future: colonial visions and experience in Asia in the residencies

The major objective of the study is to ascertain how Japanese colonialism affected the manner in which food was produced, processed, prepared and consumed in the colony, and how new attitudes towards these practices were constructed.

Turkic nomadic rulers established large empires in the Middle East and Asia between the 11th and 14th centuries. This project will explore the link between their political ideology and the production of art and literature, via the cultural heritage of five cities along the Silk Road: Kashgar, Samarkand,…

Research in Leiden University’s Institute of Political Science focuses on the dynamics and the interaction of political institutions, individual decision-making, and collective behaviour.

You are about to start your Master's programme in MSc. Public Administration at Leiden University in The Hague, The Netherlands. Make sure you are well prepared and get your studies off to a good start.

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

The Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences is committed to being a safe, comfortable, and equitable space for both staff and students: a place where a diversity of people feel valued and welcome, where there is room for a diversity of perspectives.

In the track Intelligence and National Security you will be introduced to intelligence and security services in their political, societal, and bureaucratic contexts. The track will give you a thorough understanding of the modus operandi of these agencies, their interaction with the surrounding world,…

The Public Management and Leadership specialisation emphasises how the behaviour of critical actors – politicians, top-level bureaucrats, street-level professionals and citizens - is critical to understand and improve public governance. The specialisation blends public administration with psychology,…

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?

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?

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…

Bordering Up: Regulating Mobility Through Passes, Walls and Guards

Many Asian countries are in a process of democratisation. The expectation was that citizens would gradually gain more control over the functioning of their elites. Experts from Leiden have concluded that this process often fails to improve the quality of the administration. They researched the nature…