Dimiter Toshkov
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dtoshkov.bsky.social
Dimiter Toshkov
@dtoshkov.bsky.social

comparative politics, European Union governance, research methods and design, data visualization, bureaucracy and public administration

Political science 63%
Business 13%
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How do attitudes to 🇪🇺 European integration relate to political ideology and policy preferences?

A major update of my study:
- I added the latest 2023 ESS data for citizens and 2024 CHES data for parties
- I built an app to explore these relationships across datasets, indicators, years & countries

It is an interesting paper 😉 osf.io/preprints/os...

My suspicion is that some of the resistance to any work that doesn't follow the canon comes from young scholars who feel they need to 'enforce' the boundaries of the field they have been socialized into. But this is also just a hunch.

Reviewer 2:
You have no definition of 'sanctions'. Also, I don't like your definition of 'sanctions'. 😂😡🥹

So findings from general studies of human behavior are invalid because people don't know much about international organizations 🤷‍♂️ ...
One of the joys of doing social science for me is reading and learning from different fields. But too often reviewers encourage the exact opposite. Why?

It is truly disappointing how small-minded some political scientists can be 😮‍💨. For a recent study on enforcement in the EU, we dug deep into the general literature on enforcement, which spans evolutionary psychology, anthropology, economic behavior, etc.
Here is what Reviewer 2 has to say:

This is some very thorough empirical work on judicial bias in Germany 👏
New paper with @mhamjediers.bsky.social

German judges have discretion to apply rehabilitative juvenile criminal law (Jugendstrafrecht) or punitive adult criminal law to 18–20-year-old offenders. We show that immigrant youths are ~10 percentage points less likely to be sentenced under juvenile law
NEW -

Anti-Immigrant Bias in the Choice Between Punitive and Rehabilitative Justice - https://cup.org/49vUfVa

- @riazsascha.bsky.social & @mhamjediers.bsky.social

#OpenAccess
New paper with @mhamjediers.bsky.social

German judges have discretion to apply rehabilitative juvenile criminal law (Jugendstrafrecht) or punitive adult criminal law to 18–20-year-old offenders. We show that immigrant youths are ~10 percentage points less likely to be sentenced under juvenile law
NEW -

Anti-Immigrant Bias in the Choice Between Punitive and Rehabilitative Justice - https://cup.org/49vUfVa

- @riazsascha.bsky.social & @mhamjediers.bsky.social

#OpenAccess

I see what you mean, but then it would be TAN/GAL ... which does have an interesting ring to it 😆

by the way, from the app, you can download the integrated Chapel Hill Expert Survey dataset on party positions (1999-2024) with proper country codes and variable names that reference the polarity of the party positions 🤓.

Thanks for using it. Any feedback welcome (incl. requests for features).
For my course on Conflict and Representation in the EU, I made an interactive Shiny app that plots CHES party positions, for all countries, years (1999-2024) and (most) dimensions in the dataset. Enjoy!
dimiter.shinyapps.io/ches/

#polsci #Polisky #EUsky #Comparativesky #polbehaviorsky
Planning a panel related to the EU 🇪🇺 or European integration for the next @ecpr.bsky.social General Conference (8-11 September 2026 in Krakow 🇵🇱)?
The section proposal on the EU is prepared by Adam Holesch (IBEI) and @nathaliebrack.bsky.social. Get in touch with them before 7 November to co-ordinate!

'The contact [on a public transit system in the US] results in exclusionary attitudes toward the outgroup', according to the conclusions of this RCT www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Causal effect of intergroup contact on exclusionary attitudes | PNAS
The effect of intergroup contact has long been a question central to social scientists. As political and technological changes bring increased inte...
www.pnas.org

oh, I didn't see that! thanks for pointing it out

Pedantic point, but the reported increases/decreases are not in % (percentages), as suggested by this @nieuws.nos.nl table, but in percentage *points*.

NSC lost 97% of its vote share, not 12.5%.

Same graph for prospective voters of VVD (in blue) and GL-PvdA (red). VVD supporters are quite negative of GL-PvdA voters already, shortly after the fall of the cabinet. Feelings seem to be mutual, with GL-PvdA supporters quite negative towards VVD voters as well.

Affective polarization (negative/positive feelings towards voters of different parties), for prospective voters of D66 and CDA, as of june 2025. Dots show the averages per groups of party voters.

DD6 voters were much more negative towards JA21 than CDA voters were negative towards GL-PvdA voters.

Call me old-fashioned, but I find such open endorsement of political figures by university professors on professional social networks inappropriate.
It is actions like this one that erode the credibility of social scientists as independent experts.

The period without a proper government will only be extended after the elections this week, until a new governing coaltion is formed. Last time this took more than seven months, to form a cabinet that lasted 11 months 🤷.

I find it quite remarkable that in the past 8 years, the Netherlands has had no regular government for 2.5 years, or 30% of the time.
For two-and-a-half years the country has been governed by 'demissionary' cabinets with a very limited mandate (prepare elections and take care of ongoing business).

Reposted by Dimiter Toshkov

Vandaag in Trouw: Veel kiezers steunen de democratie, maar niet iedereen verstaat hetzelfde onder "democratie". Waarom wil een grote groep kiezers een onbegrensde meerderheidsdemocratie? Lees mijn bijdrage (samen met @dtoshkov.bsky.social) hier: www.trouw.nl/opinie/opini...
Opinie: De steun voor democratie hangt af van haar resultaten
Het is niet zo gek dat burgers aandringen op een systeem van ‘de meerderheid beslist alles’, schrijven Lars Brummel en Dimiter Toshkov.
www.trouw.nl
💡New publication in Governance @govjournal.bsky.social!

Read our article, together w/ @dtoshkov.bsky.social and Brendan Carroll, on the perceived legitimacy of region-specific crisis interventions in Germany and the Netherlands, here ➡️ doi.org/10.1111/gove...

Short summary of our main findings ⬇️

Reposted by Dimiter Toshkov

🚨 New call for the SGEU FUTURE Grants! 🚨

Are you a PhD student doing research on 🇪🇺 European integration? Do you need financial support for your fieldwork?

If yes, apply to the new edition of the SGEU Future Grants.

Deadline is 30 September 2025. Details here:

ecpr.eu/news/news/de...
New call for the SGEU FUTURE Grants
European Consortium for Political Research
ecpr.eu
Why do people support policies that go against their interests?

Miroslav Nemčok and coauthors show that voters shift their views to match their party, even when that means supporting painful welfare cuts.

Out now in POQ: doi.org/10.1093/poq/...
@miroslavnemcok.bsky.social @hannawass.bsky.social

And please consider the SGEU in Catania 1-3 July 2026 as a follow-up.

Also works well with the SGEU Conference in Catania 1-3 July 2026: there will be strong need for some Sicilian sunshine after two events on the island of Ireland 😉.

The reintroduction of compulsory military service is more contentious, as well as military exercises in protected nature areas.
These are the first results from our new survey of the population of South Holland, with @larsbrummel.bsky.social
Stay tuned for more insights on policy polarization in NL.

There is a very strong support among people in Holland for an active role of the Dutch government in international cooperation and defence. There are also big, cross-partisan majorities in favor of increasing the defence budget and continuing sending weapons to Ukraine.
shorturl.at/svcZp

"and I saw this optical illusion where bars of the same size look radically different if you paint them in certain colors"

"say no more"
Two vacancies for assistant professor (tenure track) at our Department of Political Science. One on International Relations, the other on EU Politics and Governance.

I may be biased, but would 100% recommend applying. We are a warm, collegial, ambitious department.

werkenbij.uva.nl/en/vacancies...
Vacancy — 2 Assistant Professors: International Relations (option a) and EU Politics and Governance (option b
The Department of Political Science at the University of Amsterdam invites applications for two tenure-track Assistant Professor (Universitair Docent) positions in Political Science with a specializat...
werkenbij.uva.nl

Another consequence of granting ever more powers to the president is that a democratic transition becomes ever less likely. Do we really believe Republicans will accept a Democratic president with this sort of unchecked power in 4 years?
New, from me:
Quick explainer on why the Supreme Court (likely) decision to overturn Humphrey's Executor and move toward unitary executive theory will undermine any future efforts to rebuild state capacity.
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/why-the-su...
Why the Supreme Court decision on firing independent agency heads is a big deal
The demise of Humphrey's Executor and the rise of unitary executive theory
donmoynihan.substack.com