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
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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
Reviewer 2:
You have no definition of 'sanctions'. Also, I don't like your definition of 'sanctions'. 😂😡🥹
November 5, 2025 at 9:22 AM
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:
November 5, 2025 at 9:04 AM
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
November 4, 2025 at 5:02 PM
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
November 3, 2025 at 9:32 AM
Reposted by Dimiter Toshkov
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!
November 3, 2025 at 9:01 AM
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%.
October 30, 2025 at 2:55 PM
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.
October 30, 2025 at 8:26 AM
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.
October 28, 2025 at 4:07 PM
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).
October 28, 2025 at 11:28 AM
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
October 20, 2025 at 7:55 AM
Reposted by Dimiter Toshkov
💡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 ⬇️
September 16, 2025 at 8:57 AM
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
July 16, 2025 at 8:03 AM
Reposted by Dimiter Toshkov
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
July 15, 2025 at 8:52 PM
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
June 27, 2025 at 11:16 AM
Reposted by Dimiter Toshkov
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
May 23, 2025 at 9:30 AM
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
May 23, 2025 at 7:50 AM
Reposted by Dimiter Toshkov
🚨 New publication 🚨 : Happy to share that my paper, "Losing Touch: The Rhetorical Cost of Governing" is now forthcoming at @cpsjournal.bsky.social. Short 🧵 about the paper here 👇 1/10
May 22, 2025 at 9:56 AM
Does anyone know what is the copyright status of the peer reviews of our work that we recieve from journals? Are we allowed to make them publicly available, legally speaking? What would be the consequnces of just posting the reviews online (other than pissing off the editors, obviously)?
May 21, 2025 at 9:27 AM
Great list of methodological results/advice articles
Gave a talk to our PhD students today, and feeling appreciative of all the recent methods work on improving common practices. Thanks to all the authors who work to make their work accessible, especially on social media.

A few articles we discussed:
April 7, 2025 at 6:51 PM
Last week I completed another edition of my short introductory course to R for social science PhD students @fggaleiden.bsky.social. The course covers fundamentals, data wrangling, data analysis (stat models) and data visualisation. All the slides are freely available at dimiter.eu/R-tutorial.h....
April 1, 2025 at 8:23 AM
Five years after COVID-19, the question about the impact of the policies introduced to fight the pandemic is still unsettled.

In a new paper, we evaluate the effect of the policy measures on mortality in The Netherlands for the period 2020-2022.

What do we find?

www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...
March 31, 2025 at 8:54 AM
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
March 14, 2025 at 8:46 AM
⭐Motivated causal reasoning⭐: in a new pre-print with @honoratam.bsky.social we introduce the idea that ingroup favouritism affects formal causal judgements, and we provide experimental evidence in support of this hypothesis
osf.io/preprints/os...
March 11, 2025 at 10:20 AM
Reposted by Dimiter Toshkov
European leaders met with 🇺🇦, 🇪🇺 & NATO officials to discuss 🇺🇦 support & defence cooperation.

This is all very welcome & needed.

But for peace & defence efforts to be future-proof & credible, public support is essential.

Building it won’t be easy.

🧵with @eupinions.bsky.social data
March 2, 2025 at 5:38 PM
Reposted by Dimiter Toshkov
Can the EU stop making overly complex rules?

1 / The EU is great at regulating - but sometimes too great. A look inside how policies are made, why simplification efforts often come too late, and what needs to change. 🧵
February 17, 2025 at 10:11 AM