Recent elections in Afghanistan, Kenya, the Cote D?Ivoire, Nigeria, and Pakistan experienced substantial violence, but the causes and consequences of election violence remain poorly understood. This project conceptualizes election violence as a sub-type of political violence in which actors employ coercion to affect the electoral process or that arises in the context of electoral competition. A major difficulty in analyzing its causes and consequences is that no comprehensive data source on the incidence of election-related violence exists. To alleviate this problem, the proposed research project will collect data on election violence for all countries with competitive elections for the 1990-2010 period. Once complete, the data will publicly available. A second objective of the project is to develop theoretical arguments on the domestic and international determinants of election violence. Drawing on existing case study research, the argument posits that the competitiveness and quality of elections affect the likelihood of electoral violence. With regard to the international determinants, the proposal hypothesizes that the presence of international organizations supervising the electoral process can induce shifts in the use of violent intimidation, thus increasing the probability of violent intimidation in the pre-election period. The final objective is to systematically evaluate the theoretical expectations using data collected by the project. The project will transfer knowledge gained by organizing conference panels, presenting project results at academic conferences, publishing results in peer-reviewed journals, and professional activities that include meetings with practitioners engaged in mitigating election violence. Information on election-related violent events collected by the project will be available to other researchers and the general public through a user-friendly website.

Children’s numerical cognition is an important predictor of later success in life. The – yet unanswered – question is how (early) education should stimulate the development of early numerical cognition. The current project starts from an embodied cognition approach to unravel how the stimulation of exploration activities in kindergarten enhances children’s cognitive development, in specific early numerical cognition. To test the hypothesis that numerical development/cognition is primarily grounded in bodily experiences associated with children’s ability to manipulate materials that contain numerical or quantity information, a quasi-experimental training design will be applied with four conditions: (1) a training group stimulating kindergarten children in spatial exploration of objects containing numerical information; (2) a training control group focusing on numerical skills directly; (3) a training control group focusing on (visual-)spatial exploration of objects without numerical information; and (4) a non-training control group. Comparison of the differential effects of the training groups on early numerical cognition, while controlling for motor skills, visual-spatial skills and general explorative behavior, will provide insights in the precursors of early numerical cognition and the most effective way to stimulate the development of early numerical cognition in early childhood education.

It is crucial that politicians uphold democratic and moral norms, especially in times of grand societal transitions and crises. DeMoCraft studies the knowledge, skills, attitudes and practices that politicians need to do this. We look at what helps and hinders the ‘democratic moral craftsmanship’ of local, regional, and national politicians, and how it affects the quality and integrity of political decision-making and policy processes. To strengthen political-administrative resilience and enhance citizen trust, we develop interventions that stimulate and support politicians in their democratic and moral behavior.