Female genital mutilation (FGM) is a traditional practice, which comprises all procedures that involve partial or total removal of the female genitalia, for non-medical reasons. This harmful practice is mostly prevalent in African countries. It is estimated that 100 to 140 million females worldwide …

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, …

It has been almost fifteen years since the brutal conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) started, and has been causing tremendous suffering for the Congolese civilians ever since; leaving millions of people dead, and causing another hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes, while …

Democratic deficit, mistrust and decreasing interest in European politics has forced European Union institutions to take action to bring Europe back to its citizens. The aim of this paper is to outline the impact of the European Union Youth policies on European integration. This will be accomplished …

In the Netherlands, there have been many discussions about whether or not to establish a European Defence Organisation. However, due to the political party D66 (Democrats '66), this discussion has been revived in 2006 to such an extent that it really had an impact on political agendas of the Dutch political …

I started this particular project with an internship at the European Commission in Beijing, China. Experiencing China's enormous growth myself in the last seven months it was clear to me that China will have an even greater impact on both the economic and political agendas of the Western world and its …

Leading up to the European parliamentary elections in June 2009, the question to which extent political parties are able to engage citizens through strategic marketing efforts regains significance in the public discourse. The paper analyzes both the origins and trends of political marketing to distill …

This paper provides an overview of the United States policy and its potential results in Iraq. The objective of this research is to establish to what extent has the ambitious US plan for the introduction of democracy in Iraq been accomplished. At the heart of the study lies the question of the effectiveness …

Will the Netherlands be able to keep its sovereignty in the current episode of European security and defence policies? More and more cooperation takes place at the international level in a globalised world. The European institutions get more and more control over Member States policies. All nation-states …

Before the change of the system in 1989 decisions were made by the communist state-party and all citizens of Hungary had to do was simply obeying these decisions; publicly questioning the communist rule was not done. What followed in the years after was a somewhat passive state of mind. Consequently, …