Thesis Seminar introduction meeting
On May 8, 2019 from 11.00-13.00 there will be a general introduction meeting about the thesis seminars. The meeting will take place in room 1A15 at PDLC (Leiden, the FSW building). The coordinator and instructors of the thesis seminars will explain and discuss the general thesis seminar procedures and expectations and students can ask questions about the thesis seminars. If you want to be prepared for next semester, please mark this date in your agenda!
Registration for the Thesis Seminar of your specialisation will be taken care of by the SSC in August.
Theme: The Parliamentary Arena- S. Otjes
Parliament is the primary arena for political conflict and cooperation. Here, every day MPs cooperate on making policy or use the tools available to them to highlight the mistakes of the government. The Dutch parliament is unique in the world in many respects: through its purely proportional electoral system, its consensual political culture and the power it grants opposition parties.
Students are invited to study parliamentary behaviour or the parliamentary culture. The focus will be on the Tweede Kamer and the tools that are available to MPs there such as tabling motions, amendments, private member bills and parliamentary questions and participating in parliamentary debates. Students can also examine the Eerste Kamer or municipal or provincial parliaments. Students are invited to connect the parliamentary arena to other arenas, such as the electoral or governmental arena, or to consider the interplay between MPs, journalists or representatives of interest groups.
Students can use both quantitative or qualitative methods. During the thesis seminar special attention will be spent to the Dutch Parliamentary Behaviour Data Base.
As this is the only thesis seminar for the specialisation Dutch Politics, the seminar is open to all students within the specialisation and students are free to choose a different focus in their thesis, as long as it focuses on empirical question related to Dutch politics.
Additional Information
Please note that for some seminars there will be no additional substantive readings than the ones discussed in the courses they build on.