The nation-state had a long history of success, but today it is failing its citizens on a global scale. Over the last hundred years, nation-states focussed on maximizing internal unity and jurisdictional sovereignty. Benjamin R. Barber’s ‘If Mayors Ruled The World’ is the central source of this thesis …

The dissertation at hand is embedded in the context of the 2014 European elections that have brought to light a strong Eurosceptic sentiment throughout Europe. It picks up on the intention to create a new Eurosceptic group in the European Parliament as brought forward by right-wing populists Geert Wilders …

Silvio Berlusconi was Italy's longest serving Prime Minister since the Second World War. As Prime Minister, he exercised control over the three public television channels in Italy. The combination of a strong political figure that controls large parts of public media and has considerable business interests …

During the elections of 2002, Pim Fortuyn managed to win 26 seats in Parliament with his party LPF (Lijst Pim Fortuyn), even after his tragic death, and established a new record in the political history of The Netherlands. His extensive use of the mass media had a significant role in contributing to …

This final project has been assigned by ProDemos Huis voor Democratie en Rechtsstaat (House for Democracy and Rule of Law). This final project is a graduation paper for the bachelor degree European Studies from The Hague University of Applied Sciences. This benchmark research paper compares ProDemos …

This paper presents the results of a literature review in regard to Social Media and participation. Besides that, to understand the meaning and impact of Social Media on elections, we show field results from the 2010 and 2011 elections in the Netherlands. There are several challenges when it comes to …

The rise of populist movements in Europe is partly explained by the power of mass media. The press, public and politicians keep each other prisoner. The media increases incidents and looks for personal stories while politicians respond to those stories in order to be noticed by the public. Therefore …

The objective of this dissertation is to investigate how Czech historical events during the twentieth century influenced Czech society and politics in relation to Europe. During the twentieth century, the Czech Republic experienced highlights and downfalls. The founding fathers, Masaryk, Beneš, and Štefánik, …

Recently, the European Union seems to have a popularity problem. Especially in the Netherlands the attitude of citizens and journalists has changed dramatically over the past fifteen years. This resulted in low voter turnouts over the years and eventually a Dutch 'no' towards the European Constitution …

Throughout the years women in most countries were granted the same political rights as men. Namely, the right to vote and the right to stand for election. However, this did not automatically lead to equal participation in political decision making. It is remarkable to see that this, even though women …