Arnout van de Rijt
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arnoutvanderijt.bsky.social
Arnout van de Rijt
@arnoutvanderijt.bsky.social
1.5K followers 440 following 150 posts
Professor of Sociology. Head of the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the European University Institute (EUI). President of the International Network of Analytical Sociology (INAS). Editor-in-Chief of Sociological Science.
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Reposted by Arnout van de Rijt
philipncohen.com
Emily Oster interviewed me for her podcast in 2024 - about Melissa Kearney's book, The Two-Parent Privilege - and then they never told me the episode was posted six months later. I guess no one I know listens to it...? Anyway, some belated notes and excerpts:
I was on Emily Oster’s podcast about marriage and didn’t even know it
Well, I knew I did the interview, on March 7, 2024. I just didn’t know that they posted the episode six months later, in October 2024.
familyinequality.wordpress.com
February 6, 2026 at 12:52 PM
arnoutvanderijt.bsky.social
THANK YOU @ppraeg.bsky.social and European Societies editors.

This was a lot of hard work and you made a real difference for the discipline.
ppraeg.bsky.social Patrick Präg @ppraeg.bsky.social · 2d
An era has come to an end
As we write our final editorial for European Societies, we return to the spirit of our first editorial (Präg, Ersanilli and Gugushvili, 2022) and to the question that guided our tenure: did we deliver on what we promised? At the outset, we set out a twofold vision. We wanted to keep European Societies a genuinely general sociology journal with a focus on Europe and European sociology, open to all substantive areas and to authors worldwide. At the same time, we wanted to modernize the journal by lowering barriers to participation, moving toward open access and open science, and by running peer review as fairly, comprehensively, and efficiently as possible. Looking back, we believe the direction of travel has been consistent with that agenda, even if some constraints have become more pronounced as submissions have grown. The most tangible step toward barrier reduction has been the shift in the journal's publishing model. The move to MIT Press and the adoption of a noncommercial, diamond open-access model have made the journal free to read and free to publish in. This has mattered not only as an institutional achievement by ESA, but also as a signal of what a flagship journal of the European Sociological Association can be: a truly public scholarly resource rather than a gated space shaped by the ability to pay. In parallel, we worked to reduce friction in submission and production by making procedures more predictable and less resource-intensive for authors, and by strengthening the journal's commitment to transparency, including the routine expectation of replication materials for quantitative work published in the journal (Präg, Ersanilli and Gugushvili, 2025). We have thought of these changes as working on “access” and “voice” simultaneously. By “access,” we mean making it easier for people to read the journal and to submit their work. By “voice,” we mean that a broader range of scholars, institutions, and regions appears on our pages and shapes the debates. Bot… European societies in motion, and a commitment to voice A general sociology journal should reflect the major currents shaping European societies, not by chasing headlines, but by publishing sociological work that helps explain how Europe is changing. Over the past years, the journal has continued to engage research on inequalities and social stratification, climate change and ecological transition, migration and shifting borders, transformations in work and welfare, population aging and health inequalities, and the reconfiguration of social trust and political contestation. The full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 further underlined how quickly the horizon of “normal” European development can rupture, and how urgent it becomes to understand societies that have too often been treated as peripheral in general sociological publishing. The Special Issue on understanding Ukrainian society before and after the invasion (Martsenyuk et al., 2024) was therefore an attempt to contribute to that understanding while also practicing what we had argued for from the start: that underrepresented parts of Europe should not appear only through external observation, but should be visible through scholarship that is locally grounded, rigorously theoretical, and fully integrated into European sociology. Throughout our tenure, we also sought to ensure that the journal provided space for the plurality of sociological traditions across Europe. European sociology remains multi-paradigmatic and unevenly structured by regional and institutional inequalities. We therefore aimed to combine a high threshold for publication with broad openness to different intellectual styles, methods, and substantive agendas, and to keep ourselves accountable by paying attention to patterns in submissions and editorial outcomes across regions and approaches. This is unfinished work, but it is work that cannot be postponed if we want a journal that represents European sociology as it exists, rather th… the structural reality remains that a general journal with finite capacity cannot publish all of the strong sociology it receives, even when that sociology deserves a wide readership. This pressure is intertwined with another growing challenge: the difficulty of securing peer reviewers. Reviewing is the central infrastructure of scholarly publishing, but it rests on time and goodwill that are increasingly stretched. Across our term, it has become harder to find the right expertise quickly, particularly for more specialized topics or for underrepresented contexts where the pool of suitable reviewers is smaller. We therefore want to thank reviewers once more, not as a ritual, but as recognition that the journal's quality and fairness depend directly on their labor. We also hope that our community continues to treat reviewing as part of academic reciprocity, because without a sustainable reviewing culture, no editorial team can reliably balance speed, rigor, and equity. Thanks, acknowledgments, and handover We owe special thanks to Patrick Präg, who left his editorial role slightly earlier but contributed enormously to the journal's direction and to the everyday work that makes a journal function. His intellectual judgment, practical ambition, and commitment to fairness and transparency shaped many of the changes implemented during our tenure, and the journal is stronger because of his contributions. We also thank our associate editors, without whom our work would have been impossible: Plamen Akaliyski (Lingnan University), Çetin Çelik (Koç University), Roxanne Connelly (University of Edinburgh), Ivana Dobrotić (University of Zagreb), Marta Dominguez Folgueras (Sciences Po), Magne P. Flemmen (University of Oslo), Pablo Gracia (Autonomous University of Barcelona), Mobarak Hossain (London School of Economics and Political Science), Mathieu Ichou (INED), Katya Ivanova (Tilburg University), Cyril Jayet (Sorbonne University), Agnieszka Kubal (University of Oxford), Anna K…
February 5, 2026 at 12:38 PM
Reposted by Arnout van de Rijt
jonadejong.bsky.social
Do ordinary Republicans and Democrats really avoid each other in everyday life? In a new working paper with Delia Baldassarri, we present descriptive and experimental evidence to challenge the view that partisanship drives the formation of social relationships.

osf.io/preprints/so...

1/15
February 2, 2026 at 2:24 PM
arnoutvanderijt.bsky.social
"We review methodological issues that affect the estimates of the size of religiously unaffiliated populations and their change over time."

This month in our journal, @sociologicalsci.bsky.social
sociologicalsci.bsky.social Sociological Science @sociologicalsci.bsky.social · 3d
NEW: Matthew Conrad, Conrad Hackett: "How Measurement Changes Can Exaggerate the Growth of Religious “Nones” " sociologicalscience.com/articles-v13...
sociologicalscience.com
February 4, 2026 at 10:19 PM
arnoutvanderijt.bsky.social
"[W]hile respondents generally attribute high levels of blame for wrongdoing, greater fragmentation decreases the blame directed at core firms and heightens audiences’ uncertainty about responsibility."

This month in our journal, @sociologicalsci.bsky.social
sociologicalsci.bsky.social Sociological Science @sociologicalsci.bsky.social · 10d
NEW: Carly R. Knight, Adam Goldstein, "Ambiguous Actorhood: Twenty-First Century Firms and the Evasion of Responsibility" sociologicalscience.com/articles-v13...
sociologicalscience.com
February 4, 2026 at 10:17 PM
Reposted by Arnout van de Rijt
aeajournals.bsky.social
Forthcoming in the AER: "Gender Differences in Economics Seminars" by Pascaline Dupas, Amy Handlan, Alicia Sasser Modestino, Muriel Niederle, Mateo Seré, Haoyu Sheng, Justin Wolfers, and Seminar Dynamics Collective. www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=...
Gender Differences in Economics Seminars
(Forthcoming Article) - We assess whether men and women are treated differently when presenting their economics research. We collected data across thousands of seminars, job market talks and conferenc...
www.aeaweb.org
October 21, 2025 at 2:02 PM
arnoutvanderijt.bsky.social
Perhaps a causal effect of your recent article with @catherinedevries.bsky.social ?

fd.nl/opinie/15748...
February 1, 2026 at 9:28 PM
Reposted by Arnout van de Rijt
ckronenberg.bsky.social
For absolutely no reason, let me remind people of this banger of a paper by @caroartc.bsky.social

doi.org/10.1016/j.jp...
January 30, 2026 at 10:22 AM
Reposted by Arnout van de Rijt
miguelpereira.bsky.social
Job 🚨: The European Institute (@lse-ei.bsky.social) at LSE is hiring an assistant prof in International Migration. I'm not in the hiring committee but happy to answer Qs about the department, LSE or this bloody weather that is actually pretty pretty today.

jobs.lse.ac.uk/Vacancies/W/...
Assistant Professor in International Migration
Assistant Professor in International Migration, , <p style="text-align: center;"><em><span>LSE is committed to building a diverse, equitable and truly inclusive university</span></em></p> <p style="te...
jobs.lse.ac.uk
January 30, 2026 at 10:57 AM
Reposted by Arnout van de Rijt
drjenndowd.bsky.social
We deserve to live until we are old.

substack.com/home/post/p-... #publichealth #demography #epidemiology #healthpolicy
Live Free and Die: US Life Expectancy Has a Problem (But It's Not Seed Oils)
We deserve to live until we are old
substack.com
January 29, 2026 at 9:58 PM
Reposted by Arnout van de Rijt
mrooduijn.bsky.social
Lees dit interview met Steven Levitsky, een van de meest vooraanstaande democratie-onderzoekers., over de staat van de democratie in de VS. „Ik vond mezelf altijd een doemdenker. Maar het is veel, veel erger dan ik had verwacht.”
www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2026/...
‘Ik vond mezelf altijd een doemdenker. Maar het is veel, veel erger dan verwacht’, zegt Harvard-politicoloog Levitsky over Trump
Steven Levitsky | politicoloog: In tegenstelling tot zijn eerste termijn is er dit keer niemand in de Verenigde Staten die Donald Trump kan tegenhouden, ziet hoogleraar politicologie Steven Levitsky. ...
www.nrc.nl
January 30, 2026 at 9:49 AM
Reposted by Arnout van de Rijt
tomwgvdmeer.bsky.social
Hoe kan een minderheidsregering ook in Nederland werken? En hoe kan dat de relatie tussen regering en Tweede Kamer veranderen? Welke lessen kunnen we leren van andere landen, en wat maakt Nederland uniek?
En wat heeft Pippi Langkous hier nu weer mee te maken?
www.groene.nl/artikel/een-...
Om een minderheidsregering succesvol te laten zijn, zouden we kunnen kijken naar Denemarken en Zweden
Nederland is geen Denemarken of Zweden, maar we kunnen die landen wel gebruiken als voorbeeld als het gaat om onze nieuwe minderheidsregering. Hoe doen die Noordse landen het? En welke lessen kunnen w...
www.groene.nl
January 30, 2026 at 9:34 AM
Reposted by Arnout van de Rijt
jopieboy.bsky.social
(1/10) New paper at PNAS: what predicts Ukrainian refugees’ destination choice? We experimentally study the drivers of location choice in a conjoint design: we find that job opportunities, wages and networks are most important, much more so than welfare benefits.
August 18, 2025 at 9:42 AM
Reposted by Arnout van de Rijt
arnoutvanderijt.bsky.social
My colleague Kevin Munger asked me and a bunch of editors to sit and think through AI and peer review. Our take:

osf.io/9sxnc/files/...

We envision an increased (!) involvement of humans in the evaluation of social science.
January 28, 2026 at 9:59 PM
Reposted by Arnout van de Rijt
aksoyundan.bsky.social
Still a couple of days before the deadline to slot in an application👇🏼
January 29, 2026 at 6:40 PM
arnoutvanderijt.bsky.social
My colleague Kevin Munger asked me and a bunch of editors to sit and think through AI and peer review. Our take:

osf.io/9sxnc/files/...

We envision an increased (!) involvement of humans in the evaluation of social science.
January 28, 2026 at 9:59 PM
Reposted by Arnout van de Rijt
akoustov.bsky.social
Great summary of what awaits peer review in the near future—I hope journal editors are waking up!

I agree that discouraging AI use is a losing, if not destructive, gamble, while submission fees and mandatory computational reproducibility are a must.

kevinmunger.substack.com/p/peer-revie...
Peer Review 2027
How do we adapt scientific publishing to the age of AI?
kevinmunger.substack.com
January 26, 2026 at 7:52 PM
Reposted by Arnout van de Rijt
simonhix.bsky.social
NEW PAPER ALERT! My paper, with @bjornhoyland.bsky.social , on how “policy loss” shapes support for the EU has just been published in @cpsjournal.bsky.social. Check it out!
1/
January 26, 2026 at 3:12 PM
Reposted by Arnout van de Rijt
pengzell.bsky.social
JOB! I'm hiring a postdoc for 2 years on my ERC MaMo project.

Looking for someone with strong quant methods, ongoing work close to the project's aims, and a desire to publish in sociology. Start flexible in the next 12 months.

Formal call out shortly, but contact me first.
Markets and Mobility: How Employers Structure Economic Opportunity Intergenerational mobility, measuring the ability to achieve economic success regardless of family background, is a critical reflection of a society’s commitment to equality of opportunity. Rising income inequality has raised concerns about the potential erosion of upward mobility. While education has traditionally been viewed as the path to mobility, its transformative power is facing challenges in a rapidly evolving job market. This project reorients the focus of intergenerational mobility research by highlighting the labor market as an arena for the reproduction of advantage. It employs a comparative approach, using administrative data from four countries: Sweden, Austria, England, and the United States. It also incorporates evidence from a broader set of nations through cross-national surveys, longitudinal household surveys, labor force surveys, secondary data, and digital trace data. The project employs cutting-edge empirical methods, including quasi- experimental designs, event studies, within-family comparisons, decomposition analyses, counterfactual simulations, and diagnostic checks to rigorously assess the extent of inequalities in the labor market. The research investigates how family background influences the sorting of individuals to employers and workplaces, accounting for education and occupation, and explores variations in career progression within and between employers. It comprehensively catalogues and assesses mechanisms shaping workplace inequality, contributing to the development of social closure theory. Additionally, the project evaluates intervention strategies, encompassing both employer practices and government actions, to promote fair opportunity in the labor market.
January 21, 2026 at 12:32 PM
arnoutvanderijt.bsky.social
"Of the approximately one third of respondents who self-report using GenAI at least weekly, the primary uses are for writing assistance and comparatively less so in planning, data collection, or data analysis."

This month in our journal, @sociologicalsci.bsky.social
January 20, 2026 at 10:32 PM
arnoutvanderijt.bsky.social
"[I]ndividuals reporting the highest educational attainment are now overrepresented among categorical tolerants, suggesting that CT may increasingly function as an elite cultural strategy consistent with contemporary forms of status display"

This month in our journal, @sociologicalsci.bsky.social
sociologicalsci.bsky.social Sociological Science @sociologicalsci.bsky.social · 24d
NEW: Omar Lizardo, "The Forward March of Categorical Tolerance in the United States" sociologicalscience.com/articles-v13...
sociologicalscience.com
January 16, 2026 at 1:02 PM
Reposted by Arnout van de Rijt
cdiehl.bsky.social
New paper! Do people in more unequal municipalities perceive their position in the national income distribution more accurately? Our findings suggest: yes. 🙏 to @apeichl.bsky.social and team for local ineq. data & to @excinequality.bsky.social for funding!
linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii...
January 10, 2026 at 7:36 AM
arnoutvanderijt.bsky.social
"[C]aseworkers were unlikely to modify their decisions so that they aligned with risk scores."

This month in our journal, @sociologicalsci.bsky.social
sociologicalsci.bsky.social Sociological Science @sociologicalsci.bsky.social · Jan 6
NEW: Martin Eiermann, Maria Fitzpatrick, Katharine Sadowski, Christopher Wildeman, "How Do (Human) Child Welfare Workers Respond to Machine-Generated Risk Scores?" sociologicalscience.com/articles-v13...
January 6, 2026 at 6:13 PM
Reposted by Arnout van de Rijt
benjarvis.bsky.social
New paper out with @kchihaya.bsky.social and @eduardotapia.bsky.social. We show how a tendency to move near kin can preserve patterns of segregation, using a combination of discrete choice models and micro-simulations applied to the case of immigrants and their descendants living in Stockholm.
readdemography.bsky.social Demography - the flagship journal of PAA @readdemography.bsky.social · Dec 17
“Kin Propinquity, Residential Mobility & Segregation”: @benjarvis.bsky.social, @kchihaya.bsky.social & @eduardotapia.bsky.social examine ancestry & segregation; they find ancestry sorting effects are 3X greater than kin propinquity effects. @iasliu.bsky.social read.dukeupress.edu/demography/a...
December 21, 2025 at 7:01 PM
Reposted by Arnout van de Rijt
gabrielzucman.bsky.social
It has become received wisdom in Brussels and Washington that there is a new “euro-sclerosis”: that the EU economy is lagging the US

This view is wrong

A little primer on the measurement of productivity – and why reports of the economic death of Europe are greatly exaggerated🧵
December 12, 2025 at 12:32 PM