Ruud Koole, born in Rilland Bath, the Netherlands, in 1953. Ph.D. from Leiden University. Associate Professor of Political Science at Leiden University.
Fellow (1 February 1996 – 30 June 1996)
Part of my ongoing research on political parties dealt with the position and functioning of ‘parliamentary party groups’ or fracties in Dutch. During my stay at NIAS I was able to set up a project (together with my colleague Knut Heidar in Norway) to produce a comparative volume on parliamentary party groups in thirteen European countries and in the European Parliament. A special workshop on this subject, that I directed at the annual congress of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) in Oslo in March/April 1996, was very helpful in advancing the project. As scheduled, I was able to finish the theoretical chapter for the volume as well as the first round of editing of the other chapters. We hope to publish the volume in the summer of 1997.
The second project I intended to work on at NIAS, ‘Dutch Political Parties and Foreign Policy: a History of Ideas’, advanced with the writing of an additional chapter, on the interwar period (1918-1940), for the envisaged book. Also a lecture held at the Institute for International Affairs Clingendael in May 1996 on roughly the same subject, `Domestic Influence on Foreign Policy in the Netherlands’, was prepared at NIAS.
Next to this, my stay at NIAS was equally very fruitful in terms of articles written on the general field of my research on Dutch politics and on (comparative) political parties. Most of my annual work as (co-)editor on the Political Data Yearbook, a volume with contributions from 28 countries, was done at NIAS this time. Moreover, I was able to draft a research proposal on my field of research to be submitted to Leiden University Stimuleringsfonds and/or to NWO.
NIAS was of great help to my research, because of the stimulating atmosphere among my fellow-fellows, the tranquillity of the working place and other facilities offered by NIAS.