We are looking for a candidate for a PhD position with the below subject:

Do you have a background in Public Administration, Law, or Political Science? Are you concerned about political myopia and how governmental decisions contribute to a climate-resilient and climate neutral world? Are you interested in developing ideas for protecting the rights and interests of future generations within present-day policy making?

To protect future generations’ rights, governments need to take timely action in response to sustainability crises such as climate change. Addressing these long-term crises is difficult because democratic governments are faced with short-term election and budget cycles and are often accused of being myopic. To incentivize governments to take climate action, citizens, scientists and civil society organizations are exploring alternative ways including climate change litigation and protest initiatives. They also have proposed institutional and democratic reforms to better equip democratic governments to also pay attention to long-term problems and solutions. Such reforms include special commissioners, citizen assemblies, codification of rights of nature, and institutions for future generations.

However, so far, it is not yet clear what the contribution of these reforms is to present-day policy making. In addition, the legal definition and protection of the rights of future generations remains underdeveloped  both under International Law and in domestic legal systems. In this project, we will systematically compare and analyze the contribution of institutional and democratic reforms to protecting interests of future generations, as part of forward-looking climate policies. The project will combine legal analysis with comparative and case study meta-analysis and field experiments. It will address the challenging legal definition of the “rights of future generations” looking at their direct or indirect protection under international and domestical legal frameworks. It will then analyze past and present institutional reforms in democratic countries aimed at protecting interests of future generations.The research will contribute to academic literature in the disciplines of public administration, law, political science, sustainability science and transformation studies. It will also provide evidence-based inputs to policy-makers on the law, policy and institutional interventions that might be needed to strengthen protection of future generations through policy reform.

Click here for more information and to apply for the position.

This vacancy will be listed up to and including 18 September 2023 (5:00 p.m. CET). We aim to schedule the first job interviews on 2 and 3 October 2023.