Two PhD Candidates in Political Science

The Institute of Political Science of Leiden University's Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences invites applicants for the position of Two PhD Candidates in Political Science

The PhD researchers will be part of the project “Downsize My Democracy? The Democratic Consequences of Decentralization”, which is financed by an NWO Vidi grant, hosted by the Institute of Political Science, and led by Wouter Veenendaal. This project analyses the democratic consequences of increasing decentralization and regionalization in European countries. It studies the effects of scale on the functioning of democracy in subnational units, and investigates the ever more complex relations between various administrative layers. The project explicitly foregrounds informal political dynamics and investigates their interaction with formal political institutions. The analysis focuses on the country cases of Iceland, Italy, the Netherlands and Switzerland.

One PhD researcher will work on the sub-project ‘Who votes? Political participation in subnational communities’, which involves the organization of an opinion survey as well as participatory fieldwork in the four country cases. This researcher will be supervised by the project leader, Wouter Veenendaal, and Professor Petr Kopecký.

The other PhD researcher will work on the sub-project ‘Who runs for office? Political competition and governance in subnational communities’, which involves a combination of elite interviews, a qualitative network analysis, and participatory fieldwork in the four country cases. This researcher will be supervised by the project leader, Wouter Veenendaal, and professor Ingrid van Biezen.