Антоанета Димитрова
Biographic Data
| ID | 4152158 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Антоанета Димитрова |
| GIVEN NAMES | Антоанета |
| FAMILY NAME | Димитрова |
| SIGNATURE | ДИМИТРОВА А |
| AFFILIATIONS | Leiden University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7592-0587 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 37 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 635 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 37 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1996 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 13 |
Pathways to hybridity
The global resurgence of authoritarianism has fundamentally altered the international context for democracy promotion. How do domestic elites in the countries exposed simultaneously to democratic and authoritarian diffusion forces respond to these competing external influences? This article develops an analytical framework to study the interplay between competing democratic and authoritarian diffusion forces in the international arena and domesti…
Do public administration reforms increase trust in government in transitional settings? Evidence from Ukraine
Stuck on the stairway of change
Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the European Union (EU) has taken a number of unprecedented decisions. These decisions and policy measures have involved key EU policies, above all the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) and enlargement. Has the external shock of the war created conditions for these policies to take a new path? Has the war been a ‘critical…
Rhetorical action in a liberal international order in crisis
Security and Global Affairs
Mobilizing against Democratic Backsliding
Several central and eastern European countries have experienced democratic erosion of different kinds. While the Czech Republic and Poland have faced democratic backsliding, for example, others, such as Bulgaria and Romania, are better characterized as struggling with democratic stagnation. Regardless of the type of democratic erosion, robust protest movements have challenged democratic erosion. What motivates protestors who face different types …
Framing international cooperation
How the EU–Ukraine Association Agreement and its Consequences Necessitated Adaptation and Drove Innovation in the EU
Given its depth and ambition, the Association Agreement (AA) concluded between the EU and Ukraine may have been expected to result in significant reverse influence on the EU. However, this article shows that this influence is indirect, arising from mechanisms and international processes brought into sharp relief by the AA. These are: the power asymmetry between the parties, politicization of the agreement and geo‐politicization as a form of conte…
Battered by Geopolitical Winds, Bulgaria Struggles to Restart Much Needed Reforms
Towards open access social orders in Eastern Europe
This article introduces a special issue that investigates the interplay between domestic socio-political orders and changing external influences – of the EU, Russia, Turkey and other external actors in the region. In this introduction, we lay the conceptual framework and propose theoretical mechanisms linking state capacity and the actions of external actors to the likelihood of transformations from limited to open access orders. Previewing the f…
The dual role of state capacity in opening socio-political orders
State capacity declines with democratization, yet high state capacity supports the stability of both democracies and autocracies. Ukraine has been a paradigmatic example of capacity decline in democratization and Belarus of an authoritarian regime with high capacity. We set out to discover which aspects of state capacity might contribute to opening or stability. Conceptualizing capacity as containing administrative, informational and public servi…
Civil society and external actors
What is the importance of linkages between civil society and external actors? In this article we map the landscape of civil society organisations in Belarus and Ukraine linked to the EU or Russia. Compiling an extensive dataset of organisations, we identify which domains they belong to. We find that linkages with Russia prevail in the culture domain and are based on shared past and exclusive identities. By contrast, linkages with the EU operate i…
Grand Challenges in Studying Comparative Governance
SPECIALTY GRAND CHALLENGE article Front. Polit. Sci., 20 May 2020 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fpos.2020.00003
When Business and Politics Mix
This article identifies patronage networks in three Ukrainian regions and develops some ideas on the relation between these networks, economic and political openness, and the provision of public goods. The research represents a rich empirical study linking business and politics in three regions (Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, and Ivano-Frankivsk) with different levels of openness and democratic reform. Formal and informal ties between politics and business a…
Enlargement by Stealth
This article argues that the EU’s enlargement negotiations with Eastern European applicants have become possible to a large extent by the introduction of objective assessment by the Commission, which allowed integration to proceed despite the threat of deadlock. The process of negotiations and preparation, however, should be better seen as a constant switching between the technical parts of the acquis and their (potential) political consequences.…
Understanding Europeanization in Bulgaria and Romania
This special issue provides a much-needed occasion for reflection on Bulgaria and Romania's integration into the European Union (EU) and subsequent Europeanization. Reflection and empirical examination are much needed to put both countries' records and development in a broader comparative perspective in the context of current studies of democratic backsliding, Europeanization and politicisation of European integration
Reforming judicial recruitment and training in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia under EU guidance
How successful is the EU at institutionalising judicial reforms in accession countries of the Western Balkans? Does its aid and assistance deliver formal compliance and sustainable institutionalisation of new rules and processes? Using a neo-institutionalist approach, we assess the extent to which new EU-supported measures introduced to improve the recruitment and training of judges and public prosecutors in Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina are bein…
The uncertain road to sustainable democracy
This article proposes that to understand backsliding in Central and Eastern Europe, we need a broad “Tillyian perspective” emphasising elite–citizen interactions and the role of the state. The article views backsliding as the outcome of processes of state capture by rent-seeking elites united in party ideological or network configurations. Simultaneously, citizen protests provide an indication of (Tillyian) struggles for the growth of democracies…
What do citizens want? And why does it matter? Discourses among citizens as opportunities and constraints for EU enlargement
This article examines the role of citizens’ discourses as constraints and opportunities for future enlargements. Public opinion is an increasingly important factor influencing EU’s integration capacity. When governments’ decisions on enlargement are challenged in referenda, the credibility of the EU’s promise is diminished and integration capacity is negatively affected. We take a discursive institutionalist approach that focuses on citizens’ per…
The power of implementers
In this article we focus on compliance with European Union (EU) directives in the context of multilevel governance. Policies specified by EU directives move through different decision-making stages before they are implemented. We integrate these decision-making stages and actors in a game-theoretical model aiming to explain implementation in the EU setting. Practice and organizational literature findings already indicate that in this setting form…
European Union enlargement and integration capacity
This contribution introduces the concept of integration capacity and summarizes our research on the European Union (EU)’s integration capacity in Eastern enlargement. Integration capacity refers to the ability of the EU to prepare non-members for membership (external integration capacity) and to preserve its functioning and cohesion once they join (internal integration capacity). In general, we find strong evidence for the EU’s external capacity …
Post‐Accession Policy‐Making in Bulgaria and Romania
This article investigates whether EU accession can help Bulgaria and Romania limit state capture and the undue influence of business actors on the policy process. Particularly vulnerable to such influence, Bulgarian and Romanian institutions are monitored through the EU's co‐operation and verification mechanism and the Commission and ECJ infringement procedures. We argue that, under certain conditions, these tools can improve the quality of democ…
Shaping Convergence with the EU in Foreign Policy and State Aid in Post-Orange Ukraine
This essay analyses convergence with EU rules in Ukraine in two policy areas—foreign and security policy and state aid regulation. Comparing the two, we find different levels of convergence, somewhat higher in foreign policy (but slowing down after 2010) than in state aid law regulation. We explain this by analysing the presence and actions of oligarchs as veto players that have had an extensive influence on policy in the Ukrainian political syst…
Research Design in European Studies
Living in Parallel Universes? Implementing European Movable Cultural Heritage Policy in B ulgaria
This article proposes an analytical model of implementation that is used to examine the implementation of the E uropean U nion's cultural heritage policy in B ulgaria. It begins by outlining a rational choice framework conceptualizing implementation as a three‐stage game with key roles for an enforcer, domestic policy‐makers and implementing actors. This model is then applied to the case of transposition and implementation of the EU rules regardi…
The Elements of Russia’s Soft Power
Soft power can be exerted by a variety of actors using different channels and tools. This paper focuses on actors and channels transmitting Russian messages and discourses in the Eastern Partnership countries. It contributes to enhancing our understanding of Russian influences in the region in two ways. First, it maps the network of influential actors who have the potential to transmit Russian messages and target various audiences. Second, it off…
Enlargement, Institution-Building and the EU's Administrative Capacity Requirement
Does the EU governance of the Central and Eastern European candidate states unleash a process of Europeanisation? It is argued here that the current enlargement has generated its own mode of governance, characterised by asymmetry and conditionality. Enlargement governance has recently focused on developing administrative capacity or 'institution-building', defined as the creation of institutions necessary for the adoption and implementation of th…
The New Member States of the Eu in the Aftermath of Enlargement
During the enlargement negotiations with the post-communist states from Central and East Europe, the European Union required sets of rules to be established creating independent administrations, judiciary, competition regulators and other key institutions. This article argues that the fate of these institutional rules adopted in response to the EU's conditions for membership is an important, under-researched part of the post-enlargement research …
The Search for Convergence of National Policies in the European Union
This article addresses the question of whether European integration leads to convergence in the domestic policies of the member states of the European Union. Some recent studies claim that as a result of European integration the national policies of the member states are becoming more alike. The existence of various exemptions and `flexibility' arrangements in the revisions of the Treaty of Rome as well as problems with implementation seem to con…
International actors and democracy promotion in central and eastern Europe
This article focuses on the key influence of international organizations, and specifically the European Union, in the process of democratization in central and eastern European (CEE) states. It argues that the process of accession to the EU by these post-communist states undergoing regime change, including the pressure to conform to the EU's pre-membership conditions, has led to the emergence of a unique model of democracy promotion through integ…
Constraining external governance
The question of how effective the EU's external governance is cannot be answered without looking at the broader geographical and historical framework in which the Union extends its influence. We argue that interdependence between Ukraine and Russia in several key aspects shapes the context within which the EU and Russia compete to export their policies. Based on an analysis comparing the institutional rules underpinning the EU's external governan…
The uncertain road to sustainable democracy
This article proposes that to understand backsliding in Central and Eastern Europe, we need a broad “Tillyian perspective” emphasising elite–citizen interactions and the role of the state. The article views backsliding as the outcome of processes of state capture by rent-seeking elites united in party ideological or network configurations. Simultaneously, citizen protests provide an indication of (Tillyian) struggles for the growth of democracies…
The Dynamics of Domestic Coordination of EU Policy in the New Member States
Published online: 12 Nov 2007
European Union enlargement and integration capacity
This contribution introduces the concept of integration capacity and summarizes our research on the European Union (EU)’s integration capacity in Eastern enlargement. Integration capacity refers to the ability of the EU to prepare non-members for membership (external integration capacity) and to preserve its functioning and cohesion once they join (internal integration capacity). In general, we find strong evidence for the EU’s external capacity …
Post‐Accession Policy‐Making in Bulgaria and Romania
This article investigates whether EU accession can help Bulgaria and Romania limit state capture and the undue influence of business actors on the policy process. Particularly vulnerable to such influence, Bulgarian and Romanian institutions are monitored through the EU's co‐operation and verification mechanism and the Commission and ECJ infringement procedures. We argue that, under certain conditions, these tools can improve the quality of democ…
A hominid tooth from Bulgaria
What do citizens want? And why does it matter? Discourses among citizens as opportunities and constraints for EU enlargement
This article examines the role of citizens’ discourses as constraints and opportunities for future enlargements. Public opinion is an increasingly important factor influencing EU’s integration capacity. When governments’ decisions on enlargement are challenged in referenda, the credibility of the EU’s promise is diminished and integration capacity is negatively affected. We take a discursive institutionalist approach that focuses on citizens’ per…
Shaping Convergence with the EU in Foreign Policy and State Aid in Post-Orange Ukraine
This essay analyses convergence with EU rules in Ukraine in two policy areas—foreign and security policy and state aid regulation. Comparing the two, we find different levels of convergence, somewhat higher in foreign policy (but slowing down after 2010) than in state aid law regulation. We explain this by analysing the presence and actions of oligarchs as veto players that have had an extensive influence on policy in the Ukrainian political syst…
The power of implementers
In this article we focus on compliance with European Union (EU) directives in the context of multilevel governance. Policies specified by EU directives move through different decision-making stages before they are implemented. We integrate these decision-making stages and actors in a game-theoretical model aiming to explain implementation in the EU setting. Practice and organizational literature findings already indicate that in this setting form…
Living in Parallel Universes? Implementing European Movable Cultural Heritage Policy in B ulgaria
This article proposes an analytical model of implementation that is used to examine the implementation of the E uropean U nion's cultural heritage policy in B ulgaria. It begins by outlining a rational choice framework conceptualizing implementation as a three‐stage game with key roles for an enforcer, domestic policy‐makers and implementing actors. This model is then applied to the case of transposition and implementation of the EU rules regardi…
Civil society and external actors
What is the importance of linkages between civil society and external actors? In this article we map the landscape of civil society organisations in Belarus and Ukraine linked to the EU or Russia. Compiling an extensive dataset of organisations, we identify which domains they belong to. We find that linkages with Russia prevail in the culture domain and are based on shared past and exclusive identities. By contrast, linkages with the EU operate i…
Understanding Europeanization in Bulgaria and Romania
This special issue provides a much-needed occasion for reflection on Bulgaria and Romania's integration into the European Union (EU) and subsequent Europeanization. Reflection and empirical examination are much needed to put both countries' records and development in a broader comparative perspective in the context of current studies of democratic backsliding, Europeanization and politicisation of European integration
Mobilizing against Democratic Backsliding
Several central and eastern European countries have experienced democratic erosion of different kinds. While the Czech Republic and Poland have faced democratic backsliding, for example, others, such as Bulgaria and Romania, are better characterized as struggling with democratic stagnation. Regardless of the type of democratic erosion, robust protest movements have challenged democratic erosion. What motivates protestors who face different types …
How the EU–Ukraine Association Agreement and its Consequences Necessitated Adaptation and Drove Innovation in the EU
Given its depth and ambition, the Association Agreement (AA) concluded between the EU and Ukraine may have been expected to result in significant reverse influence on the EU. However, this article shows that this influence is indirect, arising from mechanisms and international processes brought into sharp relief by the AA. These are: the power asymmetry between the parties, politicization of the agreement and geo‐politicization as a form of conte…
The dual role of state capacity in opening socio-political orders
State capacity declines with democratization, yet high state capacity supports the stability of both democracies and autocracies. Ukraine has been a paradigmatic example of capacity decline in democratization and Belarus of an authoritarian regime with high capacity. We set out to discover which aspects of state capacity might contribute to opening or stability. Conceptualizing capacity as containing administrative, informational and public servi…
Rhetorical action in a liberal international order in crisis
Security and Global Affairs
When Business and Politics Mix
This article identifies patronage networks in three Ukrainian regions and develops some ideas on the relation between these networks, economic and political openness, and the provision of public goods. The research represents a rich empirical study linking business and politics in three regions (Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, and Ivano-Frankivsk) with different levels of openness and democratic reform. Formal and informal ties between politics and business a…
Framing international cooperation
Battered by Geopolitical Winds, Bulgaria Struggles to Restart Much Needed Reforms
Reforming judicial recruitment and training in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia under EU guidance
How successful is the EU at institutionalising judicial reforms in accession countries of the Western Balkans? Does its aid and assistance deliver formal compliance and sustainable institutionalisation of new rules and processes? Using a neo-institutionalist approach, we assess the extent to which new EU-supported measures introduced to improve the recruitment and training of judges and public prosecutors in Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina are bein…
Private Interests and Public Administration
Private Interests and Public Administration
The Search for Convergence of National Policies in the European Union
This article addresses the question of whether European integration leads to convergence in the domestic policies of the member states of the European Union. Some recent studies claim that as a result of European integration the national policies of the member states are becoming more alike. The existence of various exemptions and `flexibility' arrangements in the revisions of the Treaty of Rome as well as problems with implementation seem to con…
Bulgaria
To the careful observer, of whom there have been too few, Bulgaria presents a democratization paradox. Cursory assessments by those who appear not to have studied the country in depth have often tended to be negative, consigning Bulgaria to the long-term laggard category. Such assessments are influenced by the image of the Balkans as backward. Some writers with deeper knowledge of Central and Eastern Europe have reached the same conclusion. For e…
Slovakia
From Czechoslovakia to Slovakia Slovakia's post-communist transition has followed a winding path. When still part of Czechoslovakia in the early 1990s, it was categorized with Poland and Hungary as on the fast track to reform. Its separation from Czechia was accompanied by the emergence of a more authoritarian government that quickly turned Slovakia into the black sheep of this Visegrad family, its route to the European Union blocked by failure t…
Enlargement, Institution-Building and the EU's Administrative Capacity Requirement
Does the EU governance of the Central and Eastern European candidate states unleash a process of Europeanisation? It is argued here that the current enlargement has generated its own mode of governance, characterised by asymmetry and conditionality. Enlargement governance has recently focused on developing administrative capacity or 'institution-building', defined as the creation of institutions necessary for the adoption and implementation of th…
International actors and democracy promotion in central and eastern Europe
This article focuses on the key influence of international organizations, and specifically the European Union, in the process of democratization in central and eastern European (CEE) states. It argues that the process of accession to the EU by these post-communist states undergoing regime change, including the pressure to conform to the EU's pre-membership conditions, has led to the emergence of a unique model of democracy promotion through integ…
The Dynamics of Domestic Coordination of EU Policy in the New Member States
Published online: 12 Nov 2007
Constraining external governance
The question of how effective the EU's external governance is cannot be answered without looking at the broader geographical and historical framework in which the Union extends its influence. We argue that interdependence between Ukraine and Russia in several key aspects shapes the context within which the EU and Russia compete to export their policies. Based on an analysis comparing the institutional rules underpinning the EU's external governan…
The European Union and the European States
The New Member States of the Eu in the Aftermath of Enlargement
During the enlargement negotiations with the post-communist states from Central and East Europe, the European Union required sets of rules to be established creating independent administrations, judiciary, competition regulators and other key institutions. This article argues that the fate of these institutional rules adopted in response to the EU's conditions for membership is an important, under-researched part of the post-enlargement research …
Speeding up or Slowing down? Lessons from the Last Enlargement on the Dynamics of Enlargement-Driven Reform
2011). Speeding up or Slowing down? Lessons from the Last Enlargement on the Dynamics of Enlargement-Driven Reform. South European Society and Politics: Vol. 16, Part I. Turkey and the European Union: Accession and Reform. Guest Edited by Gamze Avcı and Ali Çarkoğlu, pp. 221-233
A hominid tooth from Bulgaria
Shaping Convergence with the EU in Foreign Policy and State Aid in Post-Orange Ukraine
This essay analyses convergence with EU rules in Ukraine in two policy areas—foreign and security policy and state aid regulation. Comparing the two, we find different levels of convergence, somewhat higher in foreign policy (but slowing down after 2010) than in state aid law regulation. We explain this by analysing the presence and actions of oligarchs as veto players that have had an extensive influence on policy in the Ukrainian political syst…
Research Design in European Studies
Living in Parallel Universes? Implementing European Movable Cultural Heritage Policy in B ulgaria
This article proposes an analytical model of implementation that is used to examine the implementation of the E uropean U nion's cultural heritage policy in B ulgaria. It begins by outlining a rational choice framework conceptualizing implementation as a three‐stage game with key roles for an enforcer, domestic policy‐makers and implementing actors. This model is then applied to the case of transposition and implementation of the EU rules regardi…
Post‐Accession Policy‐Making in Bulgaria and Romania
This article investigates whether EU accession can help Bulgaria and Romania limit state capture and the undue influence of business actors on the policy process. Particularly vulnerable to such influence, Bulgarian and Romanian institutions are monitored through the EU's co‐operation and verification mechanism and the Commission and ECJ infringement procedures. We argue that, under certain conditions, these tools can improve the quality of democ…
What do citizens want? And why does it matter? Discourses among citizens as opportunities and constraints for EU enlargement
This article examines the role of citizens’ discourses as constraints and opportunities for future enlargements. Public opinion is an increasingly important factor influencing EU’s integration capacity. When governments’ decisions on enlargement are challenged in referenda, the credibility of the EU’s promise is diminished and integration capacity is negatively affected. We take a discursive institutionalist approach that focuses on citizens’ per…
The power of implementers
In this article we focus on compliance with European Union (EU) directives in the context of multilevel governance. Policies specified by EU directives move through different decision-making stages before they are implemented. We integrate these decision-making stages and actors in a game-theoretical model aiming to explain implementation in the EU setting. Practice and organizational literature findings already indicate that in this setting form…
European Union enlargement and integration capacity
This contribution introduces the concept of integration capacity and summarizes our research on the European Union (EU)’s integration capacity in Eastern enlargement. Integration capacity refers to the ability of the EU to prepare non-members for membership (external integration capacity) and to preserve its functioning and cohesion once they join (internal integration capacity). In general, we find strong evidence for the EU’s external capacity …
The uncertain road to sustainable democracy
This article proposes that to understand backsliding in Central and Eastern Europe, we need a broad “Tillyian perspective” emphasising elite–citizen interactions and the role of the state. The article views backsliding as the outcome of processes of state capture by rent-seeking elites united in party ideological or network configurations. Simultaneously, citizen protests provide an indication of (Tillyian) struggles for the growth of democracies…
Reforming judicial recruitment and training in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia under EU guidance
How successful is the EU at institutionalising judicial reforms in accession countries of the Western Balkans? Does its aid and assistance deliver formal compliance and sustainable institutionalisation of new rules and processes? Using a neo-institutionalist approach, we assess the extent to which new EU-supported measures introduced to improve the recruitment and training of judges and public prosecutors in Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina are bein…
Grand Challenges in Studying Comparative Governance
SPECIALTY GRAND CHALLENGE article Front. Polit. Sci., 20 May 2020 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fpos.2020.00003
When Business and Politics Mix
This article identifies patronage networks in three Ukrainian regions and develops some ideas on the relation between these networks, economic and political openness, and the provision of public goods. The research represents a rich empirical study linking business and politics in three regions (Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, and Ivano-Frankivsk) with different levels of openness and democratic reform. Formal and informal ties between politics and business a…
Enlargement by Stealth
This article argues that the EU’s enlargement negotiations with Eastern European applicants have become possible to a large extent by the introduction of objective assessment by the Commission, which allowed integration to proceed despite the threat of deadlock. The process of negotiations and preparation, however, should be better seen as a constant switching between the technical parts of the acquis and their (potential) political consequences.…
Understanding Europeanization in Bulgaria and Romania
This special issue provides a much-needed occasion for reflection on Bulgaria and Romania's integration into the European Union (EU) and subsequent Europeanization. Reflection and empirical examination are much needed to put both countries' records and development in a broader comparative perspective in the context of current studies of democratic backsliding, Europeanization and politicisation of European integration
Political science (34 works) · Law (31 works) · Economics (28 works) · European Union Policy and Governance (28 works) · Law (27 works) · Politics (26 works) · Political economy (22 works) · European union (21 works) · International trade (16 works) · Sociology (16 works)