Joost van Spanje is Professor of Political Science. He specializes in political behavior and political communication in established democracies worldwide.

His ERC Consolidator Grant research team investigates if and how news media cover new parties, and electoral effects of such coverage in 41 countries since 1950. 

In addition to about 50 SSCI-ranked journal articles, Joost published two books.

In the 2018 monograph entitled Controlling the Electoral Marketplace: How Established Parties Ward Off Competition he studies how established parties react to the presence of challenger parties in 15 countries since 1944. Joost argues, and demonstrates empirically (based on experiments, surveys, and election outcomes), that a particular combination of strategies reduces far left and far right parties’ electoral support.

In his book Prosecuting Politicians for Hate Speech and the Consequences for Democracy with Rachid Azrout (Oxford University Press, 2025), he describes cases of legal action against anti-immigration politicians on citizens in nine countries since 1965. In addition, four consequences of such legal proceedings on citizens are theorized about and assessed empirically, revealing consistent unintended effects.

Joost previously conducted research at Waseda University (Tokyo), the University of Oxford, the EUI (Florence), and New York University. Invited talks he has given include lectures at Oxford, WZB (Berlin), Waseda, and Stanford. Joost has won the Annual Political Science Award, an NWO Veni grant, an NWO Vidi grant, and an ERC Consolidator grant. These individual research grants add up to awards of over €3,000,000. In addition, his students nominated him for the 2017 and 2020 University of Amsterdam Lecturer of the Year Awards.

Joost's media experience includes TV interviews given to various international and national (Australian, Brazilian, British, Canadian, Dutch, German, Italian, and US) news media.