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Welcome This homepage presents my
work as a political scientist based at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. My work focuses on the application of classical
insights and conceptions from political theory to contemporary political
challenges. In particular, I examine how the internationalization of
politics, and European integration in particular, challenges established
political theoretical insights. Thus, key themes in my research are the EU
democratic deficit, inter-parliamentary coordination, accountability in
international politics, EU institutional reform, and transnational social
justice. I publish on these issues in academic articles as well as in policy
reports and commentary pieces. Currently, I participate in the EU-sponsored RECONNECT-project, where I lead a
work package on democratic principles in the EU and under what conditions
these are threatened by new populist parties. Earlier I worked at the Centre
for European Policy Studies (CEPS) in Brussels, the University of Twente and Research voor Beleid in Leiden, a
firm for policy-oriented research and consultancy. |
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Ben Crum Department of Political Science Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam De Boelelaan 1081 1081
HV Amsterdam The
Netherlands Tel +31 20 5986821 Fax +31 20 5986821 |
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Forthcoming Co-Edited Volume Populist
Parties and Democratic Resilience focuses on
populist parties as the main agents of populism and examines when these
parties turn anti-democratic and when they remain loyal to the democratic
system. Co-edited with Alvaro Oleart, this volume contains in-depth
analyses by a great selection of contributors of the trajectory of populist
parties in eleven European Union countries (Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic,
France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, The Netherlands, Poland, Romania, and Spain).
On this basis, we outline different ways in which European democracies can
successfully accommodate populist parties through strategies that carefully
navigate between the extremes of uncritical acceptance and outright ostracization. Due February 2023, in the Studies in
Extremism and Democracy series of Routledge publishers. |
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Recent Academic articles |
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Why the European
Parliament lost the Spitzenkandidaten-process. Journal
of European Public Policy(OnlineFirst 2022) |
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With
Alvaro Oleart, Information or
Accountability? A Research Agenda on European Commissioners in National
Parliaments. JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies. |
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Patterns of
contestation across EU parliaments: four modes of inter-parliamentary
relations compared. West European Politics, 45(2), 242-261. |
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Recent Commentaries and blogs |
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‘EU
democracy beyond participation: Building an EU political space’. In G. von
Sydow, & V. Kreilinger (Eds.), Making
EU Representative Democracy Fit for the Future (pp. 18-21). SIEPS
(Svenska institutet för europapolitiska
studier). |
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With Abels, G., Alemanno, A.,
Demidov, A., Hierlemann, D., Renkamp, A., & Trechsel, A. (2022). Next
level citizen participation in the EU: Institutionalising European Citizens’
Assemblies. Bertelsmann
Stiftung. |
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‘It
is time to resolve the Spitzenkandidaten conundrum’,
RECONNECT Blog, 17 February 2022. |
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‘Making
Democracy a Priority in EU Economic Governance: Four theses on the
foundations of the T-DEM project (Piketty et al.)’, European Papers (2018)
3(1): 59-65. |
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Video |
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Democratie en integratie in de
EU [in Dutch]. Online lecture for the Mr. Hans van Mierlo
Stichting, The Hague. |
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EU
Parliamentarism as a “Multilevel Parliamentary Field”, presentation at
the PADEMIA-Workshop on ‘Multilevel Democracy’, Vrije Universiteit
Amsterdam/ACCESS EUROPE, 30 and 31 October 2014. |
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‘The
Democratic Dilemma of Monetary Union’, presentation at the 2012 EUDO
Dissemination Conference ‘The Euro Crisis and the State of European
Democracy’, European University Institute, Florence, 22 and 23 November 2012. |
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Books Learning
from the EU Constitutional Treaty This research
monograph offers a comprehensive analysis of the making of the Constitutional
Treaty and the subsequent Treaty of Lisbon. It uses this analysis to develop
an original political theory of democratic constitutionalization
beyond the nation-state, which maintains that international organizations can
be put on democratic foundations, but only by properly engaging national
political structures. Reviews succeeds in
blending normative and empirical insights in a manner that will make it an
indispensable reference on the EU's constitutional debates of the past decade
– and a worthwhile point of departure for those (inevitably) yet to come. Robert Harmsen in the Journal of Common Market Studies provides a good
reconstruction of the EU’s journey towards increased legitimacy and makes a
highly original contribution to the normative debate on the post-governmental
legitimacy of the EU. Diana Panke in West European Politics |
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Practices of
Inter-Parliamentary Coordination in International Politics. The European
Union and Beyond This volume, edited by John Erik Fossum (ARENA/
U.Oslo) and me, provides a thorough empirical
examination of how an internationalising context drives parliamentarians to
engage in inter-parliamentary coordination and how it affects their power
positions vis-à-vis executive actors, among themselves, and in society in
general. Building upon these empirical insights, the book assesses whether
parliamentary democracy can remain sustainable under these changing
conditions. Indeed, if parliaments are, and remain, central to our
understanding of modern democracy, it is of crucial importance to track their
responses to internationalisation, the fragmentation of political
sovereignty, and the proliferation of multilevel politics. |
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