Projects
Making Democracy Function. An Empirical Analysis of the Effectiveness and the Legitimacy of New Forms of Democratic Linkage. KU Leuven
On Science, Media and Democracy. University of Antwerp
The changing face of local democracy? The impact of citizen participation on attitudes, roles, relationships and legitimacy perceptions of democratic institutional stakeholders Ghent University
New initiatives of citizen participation change the nature of local democracy. This research wants to bring a more comprehensive understanding of how participation has an impact on the roles of politicians, civil servants, citizens and civil society actors in the policy-making process, the relations between these actors, and the legitimacy of local democratic public policy making in the eyes of these actors.
Reconciling Europe with its Citizens through Democracy and Rule of Law KU Leuven
Considering several successive crises and claims about the illegitimacy of European governance, RECONNECT starts from the observation that the EU and the Member States are confronted with an existential crisis of the entire European project (European Commission 2016). ‘Democratic deconsolidation’ (Foa and Mounk 2016) and ‘rule of law backsliding’ in countries such as Hungary and Poland (Kochenov, Magen, Pech 2016; Schlipphak and Treib 2016) ...
The Illegal Economy of Democracy in a Militarised Society – the Case of Bodoland, Assam Ghent University
The PhD project uses a twofold theoretical framework of political economy of extraction and
postcolonial democracy to understand the functioning of illegal economy of timber and its association with democratic processes like election funding, client-patronage relationships. Using a political ethnography methodology across several villages in BTAD, Assam, the project seeks to integrate the discourses around illegal economy, ...
The speech-protective framework set aside by the abuse clause and the protection of democracy. A comparative analysis of the developments and practice under the EHCR, the ICCPR and the US Constitution Ghent University
In international human rights law, traditional free speech guarantees are often set aside when expressions are considered particularly threatening for democracy and its basic values. This research aims at analyzing and evaluating this practice and its consequences, through a comparative analysis of the limitation of freedom of expression at international level, complemented by case studies of four democratic states.
Narrating Sun Yat-sen: Explaining The People’s Republic of China and Republic of China’s (Taiwan) Developments Concerning Leninism, Christianity, and Democracy Ghent University
This dissertation strives to overcome scientific knowledge gaps related to Sun Yat-sen’s life, as well as the gaps surrounding the concepts that are crucial in understanding his persona: Leninism, Christianity, and democracy. Through comparing interpretations of Sun’s political philosophy in the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China, this thesis will attempt to elucidate how he was crucial in shaping their respective ...