Carolien van Ham

Post-doc researcher

Telephone: +31 53 489 3354 / 3270

Fax: +31 53 489 2159

Email: Carolien van Ham

or Carolien.VanHam@EUI.EU

Ravelijn building; room RA 4101

General information

I am a post-doc researcher at the Centre for the Study of Democracy, working on the research project "The (presumed) legitimacy crisis of representative democracy in advanced industrial democracies: myth or reality?", funded by the Royal Academy of Sciences.

I received my PhD in Political Science from the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence, Italy, and during that period also spent a semester at the Harvard Kennedy School as a visiting research fellow. My PhD is entitled "Beyond Electoralism? Electoral fraud in third wave regimes 1974-2009" and investigates the causes and consequences of electoral fraud in 97 third wave regimes between 1974 and 2009.

I hold a Master in Political Science from the University of Leiden (cum laude) and a Master of Migration and Ethnic Minorities from the University of Utrecht (cum laude), and received PhD scholarships from NUFFIC and UACES. Before coming to EUI, I worked as a management consultant for national and local governments in the Netherlands, as a researcher for the Dutch Parliamentary Commission on Integration Policy (Commissie Blok), and as a researcher at the Instituto de Estudios sobre Migraciones (IEM) in Madrid, Spain. 

Expertise

My research interests are political representation, comparative democratization, electoral processes and electoral fraud.

Publications

Aarts, K., Thomassen, J.J.A. and Van Ham, C. (2013) Globalization, representation, and attitudes towards democracy. In: Thomassen, J.J.A. (ed) Elections and Representative Democracy. Representation and Accountability. Forthcoming

Smets, Kaat & Carolien van Ham (2013). The Embarrassment of Riches? A Meta-Analysis of Individual-Level Research on Voter Turnout in: Electoral Studies, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2012.12.006. 

Van Ham, C. (2012). Beyond Electoralism? Electoral fraud in third wave regimes 1974-2009. PhD Thesis. Florence: European University Institute.

Franklin, M. and Van Ham, C. (2009) Electoral Turnout. In: The International Encyclopedia of Political Science. Badle, B., Bergschlosser, D. and Morlino, L. (eds.) SAGE.

Van Ham, C. and Smets, K. (2009) The European Parliament Elections in the Netherlands. In: Wojciech Gagatek (ed.) The 2009 European Parliament Elections. Florence: European University Institute.

Van Ham, C. (2008) Controlling Governments? New Perspectives on Accountability. Book review. In: European Political Science, Volume 7, pp. 483–486.

Aparicio Gómez, R., van Ham, C., Fernández, M. and Tornos, A. (2005) Marroquíes en España. Madrid: Universidad Pontificia Comillas. Col. Sociedad, Cultura, Migraciones, 264pp.

Aparicio Gómez, R., Tornos Cubillo, A., Gómez Sota, F. and Ham, C. van (2003) Inmigrantes y vivienda en la Comunidad Valenciana. Valencia: CEIM. Fund. Com. Valenciana, 237pp.

Papers

Van Ham, C. (2013) Why do elections fail? Explaining election integrity in third and fourth wave regimes. Paper to be presented at the Electoral Integrity Project Research Seminar 30 April 2013, University of Sydney, Sydney.

Van Ham, C. (2013) Getting elections right? Measuring electoral integrity. Paper to be presented at the Harvard Workshop on Concepts and Indices of Electoral Integrity, 3-4 June 2013, Boston. Paper under review.

-     Thomassen, J.J.A. and Van Ham, C. (2013) Failing political representation or a change in kind? Models of representation and empirical trends in Europe. Paper presented at the conference ‘Responsive or Responsible? Parties, Democracy and Global markets – A conference in honour of Peter Mair’, European University Institute, 26-28 September 2012. Paper under review R&R.

Van Ham, C. and Thomassen, J.J.A. (2012) A legitimacy crisis of representative democracy? Paper presented at the Expert Meeting about the (presumed) legitimacy crisis of representative democracy in advanced industrial democracies, Netherlands Royal Academy of Sciences, Amsterdam, 16-17 November 2012.

Franklin, M. and Van Ham, C. (2012) Why Europeans vote: Fifty years of turnout research in Europe. Paper presented at the conference “The True European Voter: A Strategy for Analysing the Prospects of European Electoral Democracy that includes the West, the South and the East of the Continent”, Vilnius University, 19-20 October 2012.

Thomassen, J.J.A. and Van Ham, C. (2012) Democracy beyond parties? Changes and challenges of representative democracy in Europe. Paper presented at the conference ‘Responsive or Responsible? Parties, Democracy and Global markets – A conference in honour of Peter Mair’, European University Institute, 26-28 September 2012.

Van Ham, C. (2012) Clean elections, good governments? Electoral fraud and accountability in third wave regimes. Paper presented at the Workshop on Challenges of Electoral Integrity, International Political Science Association World Congress, Madrid, 7th July 2012.

Van Ham, C. (2010) Beyond Electoralism: Elections as Instruments of Democracy in New Democracies. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the American Political Science Association (APSA), Washington D.C., September 2-5 2010.

Van Ham, C. (2010) Beyond Electoralism: Measuring the Quality of Elections in New Democracies. Paper presented at the European Consortium for Political Research, Graduate Conference, Dublin City University, 30 August – 1^st September 2010.

Van Ham, C. (2009) Do voters know where parties stand? The impact of party system characteristics on voter information about party positions. Paper presented at the annual conference of the European Consortium of Political Research (ECPR), Potsdam, September 10-12 2009.

Van Ham, C. (2009) Choice or complexity? The impact of party system characteristics on voter uncertainty in European democracies. Paper presented at the European Consortium of Political Research (ECPR) 2009 Joint Sessions, Lissabon, April 14-19 2009 and at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association (MPSA), Chicago, April 2-5 2009.

Van Ham, C. (2008) Downs and the Third Wave: The Voting Paradox in New Democracies. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association (APSA), Boston, MA, August 28, 2008.

Van Ham, C. and Spirova, M. (2007) Cleaning up Politics: Parties and Corruption inthe New Europe. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association (APSA), Chicago, IL, August 30, 2007.

Van Ham, C. (2007) Bribes and Strikes: Corruption, trust and participation in European democracies. MA Thesis in Political Science, University of Leiden, Netherlands.

Van Ham, C. (2003) Migration Decision-making? A social psychological model of return migration of refugees. The case of Afghans in the Netherlands. MSc Thesis in General Social Sciences, University of Utrecht, Netherlands.