Title Promoter Affiliations Abstract "Pride as a political emotion. Taking pride and the politics of recognition beyond the confines of identity politics." "Herbert De Vriese" "Center for European Philosophy" "The aim of this project is to examine the political significance of pride. In recent years, political philosophy has shown increasing interest in the role of emotions in politics. Whereas strong emotions like anger, fear, resentment, indignation, love and compassion have all received a great deal of attention in recent debates, comparatively little work has been done on investigating pride as a political emotion. The current project seeks to make up for this lack of attention. It will describe the distinctive political potential of the emotion of pride and argue why it is important to take pride seriously in politics." "How politics becomes news and news becomes politics. A comparative study among political journalists and politicians in Switzerland and the Netherlands." "Peter Van Aelst" "Media, Movements and Politics (M2P)" "News media are a central player in contemporary western democracies. Yet their political influence is poorly understood and the ways politics and media interact require deeper investigation. This studies deals with the reciprocal relationship between political journalists and politicians in Switzerland and 4 the Netherlands based on an actor-centered approach. Our main goal is to identify factors which make it more likely that political messages gets published by the media, and next, from a politicians'perspective, what news coverage makes it more likely that an individual politician will take action. A factorial survey among political journalists and politicians in both countries will test the characteristics of messages such as the standing of the actor, the issue or the parliamentary action announced. We will test in our comparative design whether political system characteristics moderate news values that have been found to be applicable around the World. Comparing the findings acrosscountries and actors will allow us to gain greater insight into how political news comes about and, even more importantly, what effects media coverage has on the behavior of political actors." "The politics of afterlives: Martyrs, sovereignty and the making of Kurdish political community" "Christopher Parker" "Department of Conflict and Development Studies" "How do dead people shape politics? In the Middle East and beyond, the dead recurrently stand at the heart of political contestations over sovereign power, whether they are celebrated or condemned, exalted or disowned, worshipped or mutilated. This research aims to explain this tenacity of the dead by interrogating political power not only as a question of disciplining life or inflicting death, but also as a question of governing afterlives. Departing from the idea that death represents not just the endpoint of politics but may unleash potent forces that political actors are keen to harness and direct, the project develops the notion of afterlife as central for an investigation into the making and unmaking of sovereignty. It studies in ethnographic detail the practices, discourses and actors that endow fallen guerrilla fighters of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) with potent afterlives as martyrs and transform them into nodes of sovereign power. In this way, the project develops a socio-material conceptualization of afterlives that expands existing theories of sovereignty and draws from the Kurdish case wide-ranging implications regarding the constitution of political power and the making of political community. Building on my long-term research record on political violence and subject formation in Kurdish communities, the project provides an alternative account of Kurdish politics beyond worn-out analytic frameworks of geopolitics and ethnic nationalism." "Scrolling Until the Trust is Gone? Investigating the Impact of Political Harmful Content on TikTok on Trust in Politics Among Adolescents." "Brahim Zarouali" "Institute for Media Studies" "As concerns rise over a widespread decrease in political trust among adolescents, social media platforms such as TikTok and its content are scrutinized for their potential role in this decline. As such, political harmful content, such as hate speech, disinformation, and extremist or populist content, is prevalent on TikTok and spreading more extensively than ever, potentially influenced by its recommendation algorithm. This raises worries about its impact on adolescents, avid TikTok users, and the consequential implications for political trust—an essential element for the present and future well-functioning of our democracy. Despite these concerns, existing research lacks a substantial focus on investigating specific types of political harmful content and its effects on adolescents' trust in politics. To bridge these gaps, this proposal will implement a linkage method integrating digital data donations, a content analysis, and a three-wave longitudinal panel study involving adolescents aged 16-21. This comprehensive strategy allows to explore all facets of political harmful content and its impact on trust in politics, with an added nuanced layer by accounting for self-selection dynamics. Furthermore, a political information literacy intervention seeks to highlight strategies for empowering young users against this backdrop. Findings of this PhD project will have crucial implications for political communication research as well as for societal actors and policy makers." "Peace and discipline. A study in political theory on peace education in international politics: the North-Atlantic region (1945-2007)." "Tom Sauer" "Faculty Research SW, International Politics" "This research project seeks to reflect on the meaning of peace, and on the role of peace education in bringing about international peace. We will suggest an understanding of peace as 'disciplined order' as opposed to its conventional definition (in IR theory) as the 'absence of war.' Inspiration is drawn from classical political theory, strands of which have highlighted the role of education in shaping virtuous citizens, and consequently in bringing about a peaceful society. The empirical validity of the model will be tested in the case of the reigning North-Atlantic peace." "Global IP law and local politics: The political economy of African seed business law" "Geertrui Van Overwalle" "Research Unit KU Leuven Centre for IT & IP Law (CiTiP)" "The World Trade Organisation has promoted Western-styled intellectual property (IP) norms around the world. This IP-related endeavours can be seen as part of a global move in the direction of less state and more private entrepreneurship. Whereas some ‘orthodox’ development scholars have welcomed the turn towards market institutions in development policy, other ‘critical’ development scholars have argued that Western IP norms are ill-suited to the needs of developing countries, especially in the agricultural sector. Both orthodox and critical scholars have two blind spots in their research. On the one hand, they have focused on emerging economies and extrapolated their findings about ‘neoliberal’ policy prescriptions towards the rest of the developing world. The poorest African countries have been manifestly understudied. On the other hand, there is a problematic lack of data on how the law works on a day-to-day basis.My PhD aims to contribute towards filling these geographical and empirical gaps. I specifically look at the implementation in Africa of ‘seed business law’: patent law on agrobiotechnology, plant variety protection law and seed legislation. My argument is that seed business law is not supporting multinational seed companies to the extent usually assumed, but is rather locally adapted to the interests of domestic elites (politicians, bureaucrats, traditional leaders, landlords, businessmen, army, traders etc.). These interests, part of the local political economy, sometimes revolve around clientelistic redistribution via patronage networks, which results in separate circuits of capital accumulation. Accordingly, seed business law is to a large extent disused (not implemented) and to some extent dysfunctional (working towards goals other than the ones for which it was designed).In addition to a broad desktop study including statistics and legal sources, I conduct interview-based comparative case studies of seed business law vis-à-vis rice in Senegal and cotton in Burkina Faso. Senegal and Burkina Faso have the same legal framework for seed business law, but different political economies. Accordingly, comparing the two countries allows to isolate the effects of political economy on the use of seed business law. I link my fieldwork findings to the development studies literature. I argue that legal scholars should scrutinize domestic elites when researching the effects of international legal norms on development in Africa." "The Politics of Inequality. Economic Inequality, Political Trust, and Electoral Behaviour." "Marc Hooghe" "Research Group Social and Economic Policy and Social Inclusion, Centre for Political Research" "Does economic inequality influence political trust and voting behaviour of citizens in Western democracies? And how can political trust contribute to more support for income redistribution? This doctoral dissertation aims to provide an answer to these two questions from a comparative and quantitative angle.The key assumption of this dissertation is that some countries are more, and other countries are less successful in creating an equal society, and establishing a generous social welfare state. In more equal countries, so the literature predicts, we should expect that citizens will have more trust in their political institutions, and hence, that it will be easier for these institutions to enact social welfare and redistributive policies. We find this pattern because citizens with higher levels of trust, tend to be more in favour of government interventions in the economy, and they are more supportive of welfare state policies. Trusting citizens, moreover, are more likely to cast a vote that is in line with their policy preferences, because they will trust their political actors to implement their preferred policies.In more unequal countries, in contrast, we expect the opposite. Precisely because the political system is unsuccessful in curbing inequality, citizens will not believe that their political institutions will be capable of ensuring a more equal income distribution. In consequence, political actors will not receive a mandate to curb inequality. However, we may also expect that citizens of unequal countries, will more often punish their incumbent governments for failing to curb inequality. Or, they might vote more often for parties who promise to curb the power of economic elites, such as the populist radical right, but also social-democratic parties.In summary, we could hypothesise that the level of economic inequality of a given country, will influence political trust and voting behaviour. These democratic inputs, moreover, may also lead to support for income redistribution. In consequence, some countries become “trapped” in inequality.To test these research questions, I analysed various international surveys, such as the European Social Survey and the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, as well as the Belgian Electoral Study and Norwegian panel data through regression analyses.In the first section of my doctoral dissertation, I focused on the influence of economic inequality on political trust, and electoral behaviour. From a theoretical point of view, we can in this regard expect two main patterns: on the one hand, it could be expected that all citizens of a given country would react equally to the level of inequality in their country (in keeping with uniform effects theories), or on the other hand, inequality would mainly have an indirect effect, through changing the cleavages in political trust and vote choices of the different socioeconomic strata (in keeping with the adjustment theories).Theories that argue for uniform inequality effects, highlight that economic inequality leads to negative externalities (such as higher crime rates or lower social cohesion), and that citizens may reject inequality out of moral and fairness principles. Hence, all citizens will react equally to the extent of inequality within their country, and economic inequality is suggested to have a negative influence on a thriving political culture.The results of this dissertation, however, suggest that this is not always the case. Economic inequality is partially connected to political distrust, but it does not lead to specific vote choices. I did find further evidence for the adjustment theories. In more unequal countries, more well-to-do, and less well-to-do citizens report more similar levels of trust. A level of trust that is on average lower than what is the case in more equal countries. In equal countries, in contrast, we observe bigger cleavages in political trust between the different socioeconomic strata.I speculate that this is the consequence of processes of cognitive dissonance, a lower level of political sophistication, and adjusted expectations in more unequal countries. In more unequal countries, citizens might be rationalising the extent of inequality in their country through adjusted moral norms. They might also expect less from and pay less attention to politics. This does not mean, however, that citizens would be satisfied with the allocation of economic resources in their country. On election day, we observe a higher polarisation in incumbent support between those voters who are satisfied with the management of the economy in their country, and those who are not.In more equal countries, in contrast, we observe less polarisation in economic voting behaviour. We do find that citizens become more critical about what their governments are doing for them. Precisely because their government is ensuring more equality, and more generous social policies, citizens will be more critical when they themselves are still not faring well economically. Hence, we observe a stronger trust gap between more and less well-off citizens.In the second section of this dissertation, finally, I investigated whether political trust leads to more support for income redistribution. In particular, I studied the idea that political trust can be used as a heuristic by citizens when making political decisions. According to this logic, citizens with more political trust, will support political action in the field of social policy and income redistribution, and will let their vote choices be guided by these concerns. The logic behind this is that citizens with more political trust will believe that their political institutions are capable of reducing economic inequality. The results of this dissertation indeed suggest that this is the case. Citizens with higher levels of trust, will more often vote for parties that represent their policy views. Political trust will also increase social solidarity, and support for more targeted welfare policies (such as policies aimed at unemployed or poorer citizens). Moreover, trust will make citizens accept more drastic welfare state reforms and more controversial welfare policies.In summary, we can conclude that a cyclical pattern is occurring, where economic inequality, and the democratic inputs under study are interconnected with each other, whereby some countries seem to be trapped in inequality, while others are more successful in achieving an inclusive society." "Politics Undercover: Understanding the Role of Social Media in Adolescents’ Political Socialization" "Laura Vandenbosch" "Leuven School for Mass Communication Research" "The political socialization of today’s youth takes place in a hybrid media environment. Social media platforms are part of this multi-faceted media landscape and play an important role in boosting youth’s political engagement and learning. The current PhD project proposes to tackle the gaps on political socialization in the new and hybrid media environment by unravelling the multi-layered role of social media in adolescents’ political socialization. To establish the framework guiding the project, an in-depth integration of insights from social media literature, political sciences, psychology and sociology will be done. Through content analytical research on influencers’ and adolescents’ social media content, a well-detailed structure on how to understand the explicit and implicit political cues presented in adolescents’ favourite social media spaces will be developed. These insights will fuel a longitudinal study among adolescents that examines how and when adolescents are directly and indirectly politically socialized when using social media." "Augustine of Hippo’s Politics of Ordered Love. Order as a Key to the Political Perspectives Developed in De Ciuitate Dei" "Anthony Dupont" "Research Unit of History of Church and Theology, Latin Literature, Leuven" "The sack of Rome by Alaric's Visigoths in 410 had huge symbolic significance. Many Christians, who conflated the fate of the Christianised Roman state with the fate of the Church, feared that the fall of Rome would also have an impact on the future of the Church. Pagan critics suggested that the city had been taken because the pagan rites that had once protected the city and the empire were no longer being observed, and because the spread of Christian ethics had weakened Rome's traditional virtues. Augustine (354-430) responded to these concerns in his De ciuitate Dei, in which he elaborated elements of political theory, based on the contrast between the perfect order of creation and the imperfect order of the world, and the human dealings with it. This project investigates the occurrence of different aspects of order and disorder in De ciuitate Dei  and brings them into dialogue with each other, in order to arrive at a better understanding of Augustine's thinking on politics." "The Impact of Family and School Characteristics on the Political Socialization of Adolescents. A Comprehensive Investigation of Political Attitudes and Political Behavior among Adolescents, Parents and Teachers." "Marc Hooghe" "Centre for Political Research"