What explains successful democratization? This paper makes four contributions towards providing more sophisticated answers to this question. Building on the comparative case study and large-N literature, it first presents ...

News media’s use of horse race polls is a defining feature of contemporary political reporting. This thesis investigates how the news media use these opinion polls and how this coverage can influence two of the most central ...

This thesis studies the development of drug use, drunkenness, and criminal behaviour in early to mid-adolescence. Its main aims are to improve knowledge about how and why these three behaviours develop and to contribute ...

What are people’s travel patterns – both users and non-users of carsharing and private cars in European cities? What are the main psychological aspects of and motives for making a travel mode choice? This thesis aims to ...

To what extent do particular regime types provide tangible benefits? During this era of declining faith in democracy globally and assertive alternatives to democracy, identifying democracy’s tangible benefits is particularly ...

Internet communication technology has created new ways for adults to sexually abuse children, and as the world becomes more and more digitalized and children are increasingly connected, reports about online child sexual ...

Conflict has exercised the minds of scholars since the establishment of the academy. Yet, those studying conflict continue to struggle over what, precisely, it is, and how and why it occurs. While theorists have made ...

Why have some territories performed better than others in the fight against COVID-19? This paper uses a novel dataset on excess mortality, trust and political polarization for 153 European regions to explore the role of ...

Research on political participation finds that poor citizens engage less in politics than wealthy citizens. Yet, recent survey evidence also suggests that there is crucial variation in the poor’s level of engagement within ...