It is difficult to hold international organisations (IOs) accountable for human rights violations. Gisela Hirschmann (Institute of Political Science, Leiden University) introduces the concept of pluralist accountability, whereby third parties set the standards for IOs’ actions in relation to human rights,…

On June 24 and 25, 45 heads of state and government were in The Hague, the Netherlands, to attend the NATO Summit. High-stakes security issues were discussed at the summit, which occurred during a crucial moment in time.

PhD candidates from Institutions for Conflict Resolution (COI), Eva Grosfeld (Leiden University), Marlou Overheul (Utrecht University), and Amarins Jansma (social psychology, Utrecht University), won the KLI seed money grant for research on the influence of politically sensitive cases on public trust…

Politicians' statements often involve emotions, shaping public perceptions. This study highlights the role of emotions in EU foreign policy.

At the Sport Data Center, five research themes are explored.

What moves an individual, a society or a culture? How does religion relate to politics, economics and morals? Religion is everywhere and often plays, unnoticed, a large role in the daily lives of yourself and others.

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…

How to explain variation in the extent to which parliamentary voting behaviour follows the government–opposition divide? Party Politics article by Tom Louwerse et al.

It’s impossible to avoid, even in the Netherlands: the US will soon be going to the polls. Where does it come from, this fascination with US elections? PhD candidate Bram Eenink explains.

LIAS has a School of Asian Studies (SAS), a School of Middle-Eastern Studies (SMES) and a School of Religious Studies (LUCSoR). These designations, and the fields within them, remain foundational to our work. At the same time, the academic community benefits from the presence of cross-regional networks…

As a student in the programme Politicologie: Nationale en Internationale Politiek, you will examine societies and power relations with the analytical eye of a scientist. You will deal with interesting, important topics such as elections, civil wars and international cooperation. In doing so, you will…

Cynthia van Vonno, political scientist at Leiden University, explains why individual MPs vote according to the party group line.

Dutch right-wing political party Forum for Democracy has repeatedly demonstrated that it has no lower limit when it comes to morals. Should the courts in the Netherlands protect democracy by banning parties like Forum? Several legal experts from Leiden University commented on this question in newspaper…

From corpus pragmatics and metapragmatics to accountability and intentions, and from conversational structure and im/politeness to the role of emotions in utterance interpretation, the short articles collected here represent not just the wide scope of Michael's own work but also a snapshot of the field,…

This open access book brings together an eclectic cast of scholars in related disciplines to examine ageing in the Soviet Union, covering the practice of geriatrics, the science of gerontology, and the experience of growing old. Chapters in the book focus on concepts and themes that analyse Soviet ageing…

How we think about and act on the usefulness of scientific research has epistemological and political implications: what knowledge consists of, how it comes about and to what ends. In this dissertation, I situate the usefulness of scientific research in concrete places for knowledge exchange. The exchange…

This comparative study investigates court politics in four kingdoms that succeeded the south Indian Vijayanagara empire during the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries: Ikkeri, Tanjavur, Madurai, and Ramnad. Building on a unique combination of unexplored Indian texts and Dutch archival records, this research…

Alumni event, Lezing

To be eligible for Culture and Politics at Leiden University, you must meet the following admission requirements.

Leaders of the ASEAN Member States, Australia, China, Japan, the Republic of Korea, and New Zealand have signed the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) Agreement.

The Law of the European Union is a complete reference work on all aspects of the law of the European Union, including the institutional framework, the Internal Market, Economic and Monetary Union and external policy and action.

Provides a cutting-edge comparative political economy analysis of welfare and inequality across ten East Asian countries.

The relationship between LGBT inclusion and economic development: Macro-level evidence

On 9 and 10 November, the Institute of International and European Law of the University of Göttingen and the Minerva Center for Human Rights of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, organized a conference called ‘Unpacking Economic and Social Rights: International and Comparative Dimensions’.

The revolutionary organizations in Paris and Berlin around 1848.

Lecture and Masterclass with Alexandra Sapoznik (King's College London) Connecting economic and environmental histories in the pre-modern world 12 and 13 May 2025, Universiteit van Amsterdam. Deadline for submissions: 29 April 2025, 13:00

The image of the European Union (EU) as a remote law-making machine is widespread. Quite often journalists and politicians deliberately depict ‘Brussels’ as bureaucratic, even undemocratic, bypassing its citizens. And many of us buy into that image. Nikoleta Yordanova, Anastasia Ershova and Aleksandra…

The 21 universities of the League of European Research Universities have an enormous economic impact: more than 900,000 jobs and 71.2 billion euros in 2014. Each job at a member university results in 6 jobs elsewhere. Leiden University is a member of the League.

A new volume, co-edited by Nadine Akkerman of the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society, shows how ladies-in-waiting, by 'creatively manipulating their gender', often played a major role in shaping the political climate of Europe in the early modern period.

How can society let go of its obsession with economic growth and focus on goals as wellbeing, inclusion and sustainability? This is one of the core questions which a new 3 million euro European project will tackle the upcoming four years. Leiden University researcher Rutger Hoekstra is project coordinator…

How do politics and play relate to each other? Six Leiden academics hope to find an answer to that question over the coming years. They have received an NWO grant of 750,000 euros. Professor Sybille Lammes and University Lecturer Bram tell us how they plan to spend the money.

The aim of 'Intergroup helping' is to provide an overview of psychological research on intergroup helping, such as between countries or organisations, or in case of international crises. Co-editor Esther van Leeuwen has been an assistant professor at Leiden University in Social and Organisational psychology.…

The nominees for the IRO Thesis Prize 2024 and the Prof. Dr. J.Th.J. van den Berg-prijs 2024. Who authored the best thesis in Leiden University’s bachelor’s programme in Political Science?