Admission Requirements
Participation in the BAP is only permitted if you passed the first year of IRO and completed at least 40 EC of the second year, including the courses Academic Skills: Research Design, Statistics II and Qualitative Research Methods.
Please note: For students who started their IRO programme before 1 September 2022 the admission requirements of 2023-2024 are still applicable: (a) first year, (b) 40 EC from year 2, incl (c) Research Methods in Political Science (10 EC) and (d) Academic Skills: Research Design (5 EC).
Transition regulations
If a student did not complete Research Methods in Political Science (10 EC) in 2022-2023 or earlier, they should complete Research Methods in Political Science (5 EC, year 1) and Qualitative Research Methods (5 EC, year 2).
Bachelor Project Information meeting
Semester I: The information meeting takes place on Friday 31 May 2024. Students will receive the invitation per mail from the SSC.
Registration for Bachelor Project
Semester I: Students can rank their Bachelor Projects between Tuesday 9 July 2024, 13:00h and Sunday 28 July 2024, 23.59h via MyStudymap.
Should you have questions regarding the registration, please email the SSC via ssc@leiden.edu.
Language
The thesis of the Bachelor Project will be written in English.
If you want to write your thesis in Dutch please consult your BAP teacher in advance.
Description
Goal 1: Learning to apply concepts, theories and methods in a research project that fits within a framework that has been formulated by the teacher in advance;
Goal 2: Conducting, and reporting on, a limited empirical or literature study.
Content: The bachelor project is a course that offers substantive instruction, followed by a research part within which students carry out an individual study. Various projects are offered that are structured around different themes. Students first follow substantive instruction for a number of weeks in which they deepen their knowledge of a specific subject within a subfield of political science. After that, students learn to formulate a research question, to design research to answer that question, to conduct their own research, and to report correctly and clearly on that research.
The final report - the Bachelor's thesis - completes the Bachelor's degree in Political Science. The thesis is an individual final paper based on at least partly on the student’s own, original research.
Mode of Instruction
Workgroup meetings, walk-in meetings, library instruction, and above all self-study.
Library Instruction
On Brightspace you will find more information on the digital module 'Library instruction'.
Study Materials
Halperin, S. & Heath, O. (2017) 'Political research: Methods and practical skills' - Oxford University Press, is assumed to be known. The core literature can be found on the Brightspace page of the Bachelor's Project. Further information about the bachelor project and the subprojects will also be available there.
Assessment Method
Students either pass or fail the entire BAP (16 weeks) worth 20 ECTS.
The assignments made in the first, substantive part of the BAP will jointly generate a first partial grade. This grade counts for 40% of the final BAP grade. It is rounded to one decimal. Obtaining a sufficient grade for this part of the BAP is not a necessary condition for passing the course.
The full thesis written in the second, thesis-specific part of the BAP will generate a second partial grade. This counts for 60% of the final BAP grade. It is rounded to whole and half numbers and passed with a 5,5 or higher. Obtaining a sufficient grade for this part of the BAP is a necessary condition for passing the course. This means that a (sufficiently high) partial grade for the second part of the BAP can compensate an insufficient partial grade for the first part of the BAP.
The final grade is the weighted average of both partial grades. In order to pass the entire BAP (20 ECTS), the final grade must be sufficient (i.e. at least 5,5) and, as stated above, the grade for the full thesis must be sufficient (i.e. at least 5,5) as well.
Concerning retakes:
Since the first, substantive part of the BAP counts for less than 50% towards the final grade, students who obtain an insufficient partial grade for that part do not have the right to a retake.
Since the full thesis written in the second, thesis-specific part of the BAP counts for 50% or more towards the final grade, students who obtain an insufficient partial grade for their thesis do have the right to a retake.
Students who obtain a sufficient partial grade for the full thesis written in the second, thesis-specific part of the BAP also have the right to a retake, unless they passed the entire BAP on their first attempt (which means both the final grade and the partial grade for the thesis obtained by them are sufficient).
Students failing the course but having received a sufficient grade for one of the two parts of the course are allowed to take the same BAP next academic year – provided that it is still offered and has not been changed fundamentally (no guarantees or rights here!) – but may skip that part of the course for which they received the sufficient grade. They can, so to speak, “take their sufficient partial grade to next academic year”.
Students failing the course and having received an insufficient grade for both parts of the course have to start all over again next academic year.
Students can follow only 1 BAP per academic year.
Final product
The thesis. It should be between 7,000-8,000 words. Note that this is the actual required length of the thesis and not 7,000-8,000 plus/minus 10%. Regarding the word count: Everything from introduction to conclusion counts (as picked up by the count in MS Word). The following elements do not count: front page, abstract, table of contents and list of references. Concerning the abstract and table of contents: these are optional.
Deadlines
BAP semester I: Friday December 20, 2024, 17:00 hrs.
Students who get an insufficient grade for their bachelor thesis – and so fail the entire BAP – have the right to improve their thesis and submit it for a second time. They do so on the basis of the feedback given by the supervisor during a feedback meeting. Note, however, that students are not entitled to any further supervision. The submission deadline for the second chance is:
BAP semester I: Wednesday February 12, 2025, no later than 17:00 hrs.
There are two important caveats to this:
Students do not have the right to resubmit their thesis if they passed the entire BAP on their first attempt (which means both the final grade and the partial grade for the thesis obtained by them are sufficient).
Students do not have the right to submit their thesis as part of the second chance if they did not submit a completed version of their thesis during the first chance.
Bachelor Project themes Semester I:
101 - Euroscepticism: Causes, Consequences and Responses (Dr. N. Yordanova)
The future of European integration has become the subject of public contestation and heated political debate. The failed EU constitutional treaty in 2005, the divided reactions to the Eurocrisis and refugee crisis across member states in the 2010s, and, ultimately, the exit vote in the Brexit referendum in 2016 all depict the end of an era of permissive consensus for an “ever closer union”. Yet, the negative experience with Brexit, combined with strong support for collective EU action in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, have replaced outright demands for further country exits and disintegration with appeals for different, scaled-down, or differentiated integration. To understand these debates and their implications for the future of the EU, in this class, students will learn about the factors driving Eurosceptic attitudes; how political actors and the EU have responded to such attitudes; when EU politicization shapes electoral behaviour in domestic and European elections, the positions of political parties and the responsiveness of national governments and EU institutions to public attitudes towards specific EU policies, integration steps or the overall EU regime. The course will evaluate these questions through the lenses of theories of public support for international politics, winners and losers of globalization, political behaviour, populism and responsiveness. It will introduce students to the state-of-the-art analytical literature and data on public attitudes towards the EU and political responses to Euroscepticism. In the second part of the course, the students will apply the acquired knowledge in their research projects and write their bachelor theses on the topic under the instructor’s supervision.
Research Methods
While we will review articles using statistical methods in the first part of this BAP course, the choice of research methods that the students can make when writing their theses (quantitative, qualitative methods, or mixed methods) is free and should be driven by the research question the student seeks to answer and the most appropriate method to examine this question.
Literature
The students are required to come to the seminars prepared and read in advance the mandatory readings for each session. We will mainly make use of scholarly articles, which are available through our library (e-journals). You can access the articles via the listed links while logged into the university network.
The following book is recommended as background reading: De Vries C. 2018. Euroscepticism and the Future of European Integration. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
102 - Foundations of Climate Justice (Dr. J. Belic)
There is overwhelming scientific evidence that human activities are significantly changing the climate system, which, in turn, is fundamentally transforming the world we live in. The images of melting ice caps, hurricanes, fires, droughts, and floods have become a constant feature of everyday news. These, in turn, affect the quality of life worldwide by way of decreasing food and water supplies, forcing people out of their homes and exacerbating the existing socio-economic inequalities. None of this is limited to the present generations, but it will in all its likelihood significantly affect the quality of life of future generations too. Besides humans, other species and whole ecosystems are greatly affected by climate change as well, and many face the risk of extinction due to insufficient ability to adjust to fast-changing environmental conditions. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, these negative effects can be mitigated if humanity takes immediate action to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels by the end of the 21st century. But what does this mean and who should do what? In this bachelor project, we will approach these issues from a normative point of view. That is, we will attempt to decipher what climate justice demands and who should secure it.
The course is divided into two parts. In the first part, which will take place in Block I, the course will be organized in the form of discussion-based classes. We will examine the notion of climate justice from three perspectives. We will start by defining the climate change-induced harm to humans as well as the non-human part of nature. Since climate change impacts the interests that many deem important, such as interests in life, health and nutrition, what kind of protection people are entitled to? How much weight should be given to the interests of future generations? What value and status should we recognize to species, ecosystems and nature in general? The next set of issues revolves around the problem of the distribution of responsibilities concerning climate change. We will evaluate various principles of justice for distributing benefits and burdens of mitigation and adaptation across countries and generations. Should the costs of mitigation and adaptation be borne by states and societies which are the most resourceful, those that have the greatest level of past and present emissions, or those that have benefitted the most from the emissions? Finally, the third set of issues concerns the responsibilities of different types of actors, including corporations and individuals. How can we characterize the responsibilities of corporations, especially oil companies, for climate change? What, if anything, individuals should do regarding climate change? Should we cut our emissions and significantly change our lifestyles? Are we morally required to take collective actions in order to make systemic changes? We will address questions such as these from various theoretical perspectives and we will also look at their practical implications.
In the second part of the bachelor project, which will take place in Block II, you will develop your bachelor theses on topics of your choice that fall within the scope of the material covered in the course. As this is a predominantly philosophical course, students will conduct normative research by way of evaluating the validity and soundness of the existing arguments, and developing their own arguments.
103 - Political Behaviour: Can we trust Democracy to the Voters? (Dr. J. Robison)
Why do democracies succeed or fail? One important answer is that the qualities of citizens—their values, attitudes, and “customs”—are crucial for the maintenance and success of a democracy. But, what qualities are required of democratic publics? Do democratic publics “pass the test”? And, does it matter if they don’t?
Students in this Bachelor Project explore the nature of public attitudes to understand fundamental questions about democratic politics. In the first phase of the project, students will learn how political scientists have attempted to answer these questions. We will pay attention to two crucial topics:
Information and Preferences: what type of knowledge do democratic publics require?; can people make good decisions even if ignorant of political facts; how worried should we be about “fake news” and misinformation?
Democratic Values and Norms: who adopts democratic values such as support for civil liberties and political tolerance?; when and why do people violate democratic norms and can they be persuaded not to?; and, do we need the public to internalize democratic norms or can we rely on elites as “carriers of the [democratic] creed”?
The first phase of the project will introduce you to core theories and evidence regarding public attitudes and preferences. Students in the second phase of the project will use this information as a bedrock for developing their own explanatory research question focused on public attitudes using quantitative methods (e.g., analysis of existing social surveys).
Students in previous versions of this BA Project developed projects on a diverse array of specific empirical questions including the comparative influence of economic and cultural threats on attitudes toward immigration in economically developing and developed countries; the effect of Islamophobic rhetoric on Muslim’s collective self-esteem using a survey experiment; the relationship between social sorting and Brexit affective polarization in the UK; social media use and political extremity using cross-national European data; value orientations and support for European integration; the relationship between economic inequality and trust in the police across the world; corruption attitudes and voting behavior in India; anxiety and support for Covid-policies in the United States; and the relevance of personal values for understanding issue preferences, and pro-democracy attitudes, in China and Hong Kong.
104 - The Politics of Public Health in Developing Countries (Dr. J. Phillips)
Why are some societies ‘healthier’ than others? Even within the same country, rates of vaccination, disease incidence, and public spending on prevention can vary enormously. This Bachelor’s Project focuses on the political factors – competition, state capacity, information, trust, social norms, ethnicity, corruption, ideology, international cooperation – that shape public health outcomes. It pays particular attention to primary healthcare, to preventive healthcare and to communicable diseases, so the focus is primarily on developing countries rather than on the OECD, though we will consider a limited number of examples from more developed countries.
By definition, public health is political, since it deals with the duration and quality of life of the population as a whole. Individuals’ choices – whether over the payment of taxes, the choice to smoke, the purchase of health insurance, or vaccination – affect the health outcomes of others, generating complex political conflicts and requiring collective, coordinated solutions.
In the first part of the project (Block I), we will examine inequalities in healthcare outcomes and explore the extent to which politics drives this variation. We will first discuss how ‘macro’ level variables such as whether a country is a democracy, colonial histories, and international collaboration explain national differences in the spread and containment of diseases such as malaria, HIV/AIDS and Covid-19, and different rates of child mortality. We then examine how ‘micro’ level variables such as individuals’ access to information, their social relationships, experiences shaped by gender and ethnicity, and their trust in government, determine why some people and not others – even in the same country – take public health precautions such as vaccination or visiting a clinic. Finally, we examine how health policy reform is produced and the conditions under which politicians are most likely to invest in improving both the supply of public health services and stimulating the demand to use these services.
The Covid-19 pandemic made clear the importance and political divisiveness of public health measures such as mask wearing, social distancing and vaccination. This is not a course about Covid-19, in part because there are many equally pressing public health pressures in developing countries, but we will discuss some of the evidence collected during the Covid-19 pandemic to understand the wide variation in governments’ and individuals’ responses.
In the second part of the project (Block II), students will build on the theories, arguments and evidence analyzed in the first part to explore their own research questions on the political determinants of public health. Students’ projects should focus on a specific, measurable dimension of public health, and develop a research design to understand and explain variation in that dimension. We will discuss in class all elements of the research process, including how to choose a well-defined research question, concepts and measurement, choosing a research design and methodology, and how to organize and write your thesis.
Methodologically, this BAP is agnostic, and students can develop theses using qualitative or quantitative methods. However, all projects are expected to use real-world empirical data and systematic, objective and appropriate analytical methods for either the generation or testing of specific hypotheses. During the first block, I will indicate how to access a range of useful quantitative datasets containing relevant variables, particularly with an emphasis on answering causal questions. The most appropriate qualitative methods are likely to include comparative case studies, systematic process tracing, or primary data collection through interviews or focus groups.
105 - International Economic Organizations in Times of Crisis: The IMF, World Bank, and WTO in the Global Economy (K. Brown)
What role do international organizations play in the global economy? Recent crises from the Great Recession up to the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine have revealed some of the essential ways that economic IOs calm economic storms, as well as devastating failings in the way that they operate that can intensify crises. This bachelor project will examine the purpose, efficacy, and second-order effects of economic IOs during times of crisis. We will investigate questions like: can leaders scapegoat the IMF for painful economic policies? Does World Bank intervention in sub-Saharan Africa help or hurt economic development? How do US and Chinese influence affect the work of economic IOs in the Global South? How do governments hide information from economic IOs, and why? How effective are economic IOs in preventing, or at least resolving, global economic crises?
Through the investigation and evaluation of political economy research on international organizations, students will become familiar with key global economic actors and explore how their relationships affect governance outcomes. The course is broadly divided into two parts; first, students will examine the architecture of the global economic system and the political forces that drive sovereign credit, foreign aid, and trade flows. We will explore the structure and power of institutions including the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, and the World Bank in these economic interactions. Students will apply these fundamentals to ongoing debates in the political economy literature about the role of IOs, such as their effect on expanding illicit financial flows, climate change mitigation, and democratic accountability.
In the second part of the project, students will develop their own empirical research question to investigate when, how, and why international economic organizations act to help resolve economic crises, and what the effects of these interventions are on political outcomes. Student projects must focus on a specific aspect of IO behavior to explain global or national economic outcomes, or conversely an aspect of the global/national economy to explain IO behavior. Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods projects are welcome and must use rigorous methods to test hypotheses using empirical data. During the first part of the course we will cover relevant datasets and primary sources on economic IOs as well as some methods for primary data collection including survey (experiments) and interviews/focus groups. Students will be expected to read one or more scholarly articles in advance of each session; no textbook will be assigned. Students are expected to have prerequisite knowledge of basic macroeconomic and finance concepts, although these will also be reviewed during the first class.