On Tuesday 19 January 2016, dr. Nelleke Koffeman LL.M, assistant professor at the Europa Instituut of Leiden Law School, appeared as a guest on the radio show ‘Juridische Zaken’ (‘Legal Affairs’) for the Dutch national radio channel BNR Nieuwsradio to discuss the proposal by the Alliance of Liberals…

Reijer Passchier, hoogleraar digitalisering en de democratische rechtsstaat aan de Open Universiteit en universitair docent staatsrecht in Leiden, waarschuwt in een opiniestuk in de Volkskrant, voor de alsmaar toenemende invloed van grote technologiebedrijven ten koste van de democratische rechtssta…

Marianne Maeckelbergh has received a Consolidator grant from the European Research Council for a project on the impact of property regimes on experiences of citizenship. The project will be carried out in five democratic countries: Greece, The Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United St…

How do democracies develop? The Institute for History is devoting a three-day conference to this question.

In the past years access to EU law has been significantly enhanced via services such as EUR-Lex. This development not only allows for easy retrieval of individual legal acts, but for collecting information about the evolution of EU law in the aggregate as well.

‘Foreign policy’ may seem to the general public to be merely an official response to problems entering the nation from across the border. Yet the political reach of diplomacy has extended, and diplomats will have to find ways to engage more with home citizens, including those who feel sidelined and…

When we talk about the Kingdom of the Netherlands, it is not just about the Netherlands. On the contrary: our Kingdom consists of no less than four countries, three of which are Caribbean islands. This structure is complex, to say the least. Although all countries are officially equivalent, in practice…

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.

In an op-ed and an interview in Dutch newspaper ‘de Volkskrant’, Reijer Passchier, Assistant Professor in Constitutional Law at Leiden University and Professor of Digitalisation and the Democratic Constitutional State at the Open University, stresses that Europe needs to take radical steps to tackle…

Lecture

The Rutte-III coalition agreement has been presented and the commentary is flooding in. Public administration experts Arco Timmermans and Gerard Breeman examined the new agreement – as they have done for every coalition agreement since 1963 - and made a systematic analysis of it: it is very much about…

Education at the Institute of Public Administration focuses on the broad study of public administration, including the semi-public sector, lobby organisations, civil society, and relevant private organisations.

How does governing work today, and how does society handle pressing challenges in ways that are democratic, effective, fair, peaceful, and sustainable?

On November 22 in Arusha, Tanzania, the Council of Ministers of the East African Community (EASC) endorsed the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) as its seventh Partner State. This meeting, chaired by Kenya’s EAC Affairs and Regional Development Cabinet Secretary Adan Mohamed, represents one of the…

On November 22 in Arusha, Tanzania, the Council of Ministers of the East African Community (EASC) endorsed the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) as its seventh Partner State.

The Institute of Public Administration at Leiden University serves as a bridge between academic research and practical application from its base in The Hague.

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…

‘Dutch politics are changing, but they also are characterised by stability; that tension fascinates me.’ Sarah de Lange studies, among other things, the Dutch party system, and specifically how the rise of extremist parties influences democracy. She will start as a professor in Leiden in mid-October…

China wordt steeds assertiever in zijn relaties met andere landen, maar achter dit beeld gaat een opmerkelijk diverse maatschappij en politieke realiteit schuil die tal van aanknopingspunten biedt voor samenwerking en verdere integratie van China in de wereld. In China een gids voor de 21e eeuw past…

The leading textbook on governance and politics in the Netherlands. The authors offer a clear and comprehensive account and have revised the text to provide full coverage of recent important developments.

The Institute of Public Administration in The Hague conducts leading research on contemporary policy and management processes within the public sector.

The international conference ‘Lessons from Afghanistan’ touched on many serious issues and raised several reasons for concern. But it also ended on a positive note. While politicians on both the domestic and the international levels have failed to prevent the collapse of the Afghan state, and we are…

Tech giants such as Google, Apple, and Microsoft are increasingly shaping the digital world we live in. Reijer Passchier cautions: 'Urgent measures are needed to curb this influence.'

What is the state of democracy in developing and transition countries in 2024? Terrible, according to the BTI Transformation Index.

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.

Light, open and green: a description that fits the new, renovated location of the Faculty of Humanities. The official opening of the Herta Mohr Building took place on 8 October, and it has many remarkable features: for example, recycled ‘mushroom columns’, a pedestrian bridge to the University Library…

Reijer Passchier, universitair docent Staatsrecht en hoogleraar Digitalisering en de democratische rechtsstaat aan de OU, verzorgde op 20 maart jl. een actualiteitencollege over de macht van Big Tech, dat het Montesquieu Instituut, in samenwerking met de Academie voor de Rechtsstaat organiseerde.

Assistant professor and dual PhD candidate, Pieter Slaman writes in Binnenlands Bestuur about the fact that the German occupier lengthened the period of mandatory education in The Netherlands.

Neither technology, nor Pan-Islamism, but only the codification of law could prevent Iran from falling even further behind the Western world. So wrote the 19th century intellectual Mustashar ad-Dowla in his tract Yak Kaleme. The translation of this work was presented in Amsterdam on 8 December.

Lecturer Michiel Luining appeared as a guest on a EU panel on the Dutch BNR Radio programme ‘Zakendoen’. During the item the ongoing political games surrounding the EU top positions after the European Elections held in May 2019 were discussed.

The Dutch childcare allowance affair has exposed the failings of the democratic constitutional state. Early in 2021, the government therefore pledged to establish a new public administration culture. There’s still a long way to go to achieve this.

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…

LEGITIMULT examines how Covid-19 measures by governments impact multilevel governance and democratic governance in 31 European countries

What political factors affect the speed or duration of EU legislative decision-making?

What drives the behaviour of accountability forums?

Elon Musk managed to foil a strategic Ukrainian drone attack with the push of a button. It clearly shows that democracy is hanging by a thread, says Associate Professor of Constitutional Law at Leiden University and Professor of Digitisation and the Democratic Rule of Law at the Open University, Reijer…

Democracy in Action is a Horizon Europe-funded initiative exploring how grassroots movements, cultural spaces, and digital innovations can strengthen democratic participation. With a special focus on youth, women, ethnic minorities and night culture, we bring together researchers, grassroots movements,…

De minor Economie en Beleid van de Universiteit Leiden leert je oplossingen te vinden voor problemen waar het Nederlandse openbaar bestuur elke dag aan werkt.

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,…

Boundaries in the collaboration between private and public interests are more blurred in the US than Europe, says Reijer Passchier, Professor of Digitalisation and the Democratic Constitutional State at the Open University and Assistant Professor in Constitutional Law in Leiden, in ‘de Volkskrant’.

A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe is a synthetic work, authored by an international team of researchers, covering twenty national cultures and 250 years. It goes beyond the conventional nation-centered narratives and presents a novel vision especially sensitive to the cross-cultural…

The future of Europe as a community of democratic states is deeply uncertain. The European Union, founded to promote ‘ever closer’ integration, aims nominally for peaceful, prosperous cooperation. But this ideal has been battered by a series of bruising crises, and now by war.

Your time at Leiden is about more than just studying. Some of your most memorable experiences will stem from being a part of our lively and diverse student community, as well as from life in the beautiful city of Leiden.