Dimiter Toshkov
Biographic Data
| ID | 332828 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Dimiter Toshkov |
| GIVEN NAMES | Dimiter |
| FAMILY NAME | Toshkov |
| SIGNATURE | TOSHKOV D |
| AFFILIATIONS | Leiden University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7444-9340 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 44 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 803 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 44 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 17 |
Motivated causal judgments and responsibility for civilian casualties in military conflicts
Causal judgments are ubiquitous in politics and crucial for assigning responsibility and blame. Cognitive science has demonstrated that people are more likely to pick factors as “causal” when they make a difference for the outcome across a range of counterfactual scenarios, with the scenarios sampled based on statistical and prescriptive normality. We propose that this makes causal judgments susceptible to motivated reasoning and ingroup favoriti…
Political Ideology, Policy Attitudes, and Public Support for European Integration
This article maps in a comprehensive way the relationships between support for European integration, left–right ideological positions, and policy attitudes towards redistribution, immigration, and gay rights. I introduce the use of flexible non-parametric methods (generalized additive models) and more appropriate measures of dependence (the distance correlation coefficient) to explore and measure the strength and forms of these relationships acro…
We're All in This Together?’ A Survey Experiment on the Perceived Legitimacy of Region‐Specific Crisis Interventions in Germany and the Netherlands
In responding to crises, governments often need to enact restrictions on the freedoms of citizens that might be perceived as intrusive and unfair. Yet, government interventions need to retain legitimacy in the eyes of citizens. We study the perceived legitimacy of pandemic crisis interventions with a focus on the effects of multi‐level governance and region‐specific interventions. Such territorially‐differentiated measures are often appropriate f…
Enforcement and public opinion: The Perceived Legitimacy of Rule of Law Sanctions
The EU has powerful enforcement mechanisms to curb democratic backsliding and support the rule of law in its member states. While (the threat of) enforcement is necessary, sanctions might be difficult to accept as legitimate when they hurt a citizen's country. We study the perceived legitimacy of EU enforcement actions. We develop hypotheses about the influence of national identity, party support, procedural fairness, descriptive norm prevalence,…
The political effects of intra-EU migration: Evidence from national and European elections in seven countries
This article studies the impact of immigration from Central and Eastern Europe on support for Eurosceptic parties. The analysis covers 30 national and European Parliament elections in seven Western, Northern and Southern European countries (2004 to 2019). For each election, I analyse how the local-level share of the vote for right- and left-wing Eurosceptic parties varies as a function of the levels and changes in the local-level share of Central…
Framing international cooperation: Citizen support for cooperation with the European Union in Eastern Europe
Multilevel governance and responses to the Covid-19 pandemic: A systematic literature review
As the Covid-19 pandemic demanded coordinated action from governments at all levels, the role of federalism, decentralization, supranational authorities and other multilevel governance (MLG) institutions and processes in responses to it has come under much scholarly scrutiny. Three years on, much of this literature remains fragmented and in need of synthesis. In this systematic literature review we summarize the literature on the effects of MLG o…
Who is Afraid of More Women in Politics, and Why? An Analysis of Public Opinion in 28 European Countries
The politics and administration of institutional change
Does the Election Winner–Loser Gap Extend to Subjective Health and Well-Being
Political scientists have studied extensively the gap between winners and losers of democratic elections with regard to satisfaction with democracy. We ask whether the winner–loser gap extends beyond the political domain to subjective health and well-being as well. Building on insights from biology and coalitional psychology, we hypothesize that winning and losing elections could affect one’s outlook on life, happiness, and subjective health. We …
The Relationship Between Age and Happiness Varies by Income
The link between age and happiness has been the subject of numerous studies. It is still a matter of controversy whether the relationship is U-shaped, with happiness declining after youth before bouncing back in old age, or not. While the effect of age has been examined conditional on income and other socio-demographic variables, so far, the interactions between age and income have remained insufficiently explored. Using data from the European So…
Government capacity, societal trust or party preferences: What accounts for the variety of national policy responses to the Covid-19 pandemic in Europe
European states responded to the rapid spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 with a variety of public policy measures. In this article we ask what can account for this variation in policy responses, and we identify a number of factors related to institutions, general governance and specific health-sector related capacities, societal trust, government type, and party preferences as possible determinants. Using multivariate regression and surviva…
Beyond the U-curve: Citizen preferences on European integration in multidimensional political space
One of the major findings of the literature on Euroscepticism is that support for European integration generally declines as one moves closer to the extremes of the left-right ideological spectrum. However, in multidimensional policy space, Euroscepticism varies in more complex ways. This article explores the relief of Euroscepticism for citizens in four European states – the Netherlands, Germany, Italy and France – based on data from voting advi…
Standing up for Democracy? Explaining Citizens’ Support for Democratic Checks and Balances
Winners and losers of elections have different stakes in protecting democratic institutions. We provide new evidence for the effects of partisanship and economic performance on support for checks and balances and acceptance of their infringement. Using survey data from 26 European countries, we show that voters who feel close to a political party that lost the elections support checks and balances significantly more than other citizens. We also f…
Fathers, faith, and family gender messages: Are religiosity and gender talk related to children's gender attitudes and preferences
This study examines the links between parents’ religiosity, the way parents implicitly talk about gender with their preschoolers, and children's gender attitudes and preferences. Additionally, we focused on the degree to which parents’ gender talk mediates the relation between religiosity and children's gender attitudes and preferences. In a sample of 134 families (81 in which at least 1 parent was Christian) with a child aged 4-6 years, we obser…
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…
How to estimate the policy preferences of party supporters: Disaggregating data from voting advice applications versus modeling survey responses
Valid and reliable estimates of the policy preferences of political parties' supporters are essential for the study of political representation. However, such estimates are not directly available from standard surveys of public opinion, which are typically representative by design only at the national level and rarely ask questions about public support for specific policies. In this article, we explore the possibility to use data from voting advi…
Congruence between voters and parties: The role of party‐level issue salience
The level of congruence between parties and their voters can vary greatly from one policy issue to another, which raises questions regarding the effectiveness of political representation. We seek to explain variation in party–voter congruence across issues and parties. We focus on the hypotheses that (1) average proximity between the positions of voters and the party they vote for will be highest on the issues that the party emphasises in the ele…
The dual role of state capacity in opening socio-political orders: Assessment of different elements of state capacity in Belarus and Ukraine
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…
Government Capacity, Societal Trust or Party Preferences? What Accounts for the Variety of National Policy Responses to the Covid-19 Pandemic in Europe?
European states responded to the rapid spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 with a variety of public policy measures. Governments across the continent acted more or less swiftly to close down schools, restrict arrival into their countries and travel within their territories, ban public meetings, impose local and national lockdowns, declare states of emergency and pass other emergency measures. Importantly, both the mix of policy tools as well …
When Business and Politics Mix: Local Networks and Socio-political Transformations in Ukraine
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…
Party government and policy responsiveness. Evidence from three parliamentary democracies
Does party government moderate the responsiveness of public policy to public opinion? Analysing a new dataset, we examine whether the ability of governments to respond to the public on 306 specific policy issues in Denmark, Germany and the UK is affected by the extent of coalition conflict and by the fit of the considered policy changes with the government preferences. We find a systematic but relatively weak positive impact of public support on …
The opinion‐policy nexus in Europe and the role of political institutions
A strong link between citizen preferences and public policy is one of the key goals and criteria of democratic governance. Yet, our knowledge about the extent to which public policies on specific issues are in line with citizen preferences in Europe is limited. This article reports on the first study of the link between public opinion and public policy that covers a large and diverse sample of concrete public policy issues in 31 European democrac…
Dynamics of Regulatory Policymaking in Sweden: The Role of Media Advocacy and Public Opinion
While extensive literatures study the responsiveness of policy to public opinion and the influence of interest groups, few studies look at both factors simultaneously. This article offers an analysis of the influence of media advocacy and public opinion on political attention and policy change for four regulatory issues over a relatively long period of time in Sweden. The data pools together measures of public support for specific policies with n…
The impact of the Eastern enlargement on the decision-making capacity of the European Union
This contribution investigates the impact of the Eastern enlargement on the\ndecision-making capacity of the European Union. On the basis of new data\non the number and types of legal acts produced by the EU (1994–2014) and\non the time between the proposal and adoption of legislative acts (1994–\n2012), the contribution argues that enlargement has had a rather limited\nimpact on legislative production and duration and that it is extremely hard\n…
No, Accession to the European Union Does Not Increase the Homicide Rate
In a recent article Sylwia Piatkowska, Steven Messner and Lawrence Raffalovich (PMR) (2016) argue that ‘entry into the EU is positively associated with levels of homicide in the 10 Eastern European countries that joined the EU in 2004 and 2007’ (pp. 151, 158), with the implication that accession to the European Union (EU) caused higher homicide rate in the countries that joined the union. In this note, I challenge this conclusion and argue that t…
Government capacity, societal trust or party preferences: What accounts for the variety of national policy responses to the Covid-19 pandemic in Europe
European states responded to the rapid spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 with a variety of public policy measures. In this article we ask what can account for this variation in policy responses, and we identify a number of factors related to institutions, general governance and specific health-sector related capacities, societal trust, government type, and party preferences as possible determinants. Using multivariate regression and surviva…
The opinion‐policy nexus in Europe and the role of political institutions
A strong link between citizen preferences and public policy is one of the key goals and criteria of democratic governance. Yet, our knowledge about the extent to which public policies on specific issues are in line with citizen preferences in Europe is limited. This article reports on the first study of the link between public opinion and public policy that covers a large and diverse sample of concrete public policy issues in 31 European democrac…
Embracing European Law: Compliance with EU Directives in Central and Eastern Europe
Accession to the European Union (EU) demands the adoption of a vast body of legislation. This paper analyses compliance with EU directives in eight post-communist countries during the Eastern enlargement and tries to account for the puzzling embrace of EU law in Central and Eastern Europe. Drawing on a new data set tracking the transposition of a sample of 119 directives, the paper finds effects of both political preferences and government capaci…
Public opinion and policy output in the European Union: A lost relationship
The European Union (EU) is assumed to suffer from a democratic deficit. It is often posited that in the EU there is only a weak and indirect connection between public preferences and policy change. This article investigates empirically whether any relationship exists between public support for European integration and EU policy output (1973—2008). Using a new indicator of policy output — the volume of important legislation produced in a semester …
Comparing transposition in the 27 member states of the EU: The Impact of Discretion and Legal Fit
Transposition performance differs significantly across countries and policy sectors in the EU. In this article we analyse the transposition efforts of all 27 member states with regard to four EC directives expected to create considerable difficulties for compliance at the national level. Using Cox proportional hazards regression, we find that discretion and legal fit are significant factors in explaining transposition. Furthermore, we discover th…
Standing up for Democracy? Explaining Citizens’ Support for Democratic Checks and Balances
Winners and losers of elections have different stakes in protecting democratic institutions. We provide new evidence for the effects of partisanship and economic performance on support for checks and balances and acceptance of their infringement. Using survey data from 26 European countries, we show that voters who feel close to a political party that lost the elections support checks and balances significantly more than other citizens. We also f…
Congruence between voters and parties: The role of party‐level issue salience
The level of congruence between parties and their voters can vary greatly from one policy issue to another, which raises questions regarding the effectiveness of political representation. We seek to explain variation in party–voter congruence across issues and parties. We focus on the hypotheses that (1) average proximity between the positions of voters and the party they vote for will be highest on the issues that the party emphasises in the ele…
The Dynamics of Domestic Coordination of EU Policy in the New Member States: Impossible to Lock In
Published online: 12 Nov 2007
Agenda responsiveness in the European Council: Public Priorities, Policy Problems and Political Attention
The existence of political responsiveness in multi-level systems like the EU remains an open question despite significant recent research on the topic. This article studies whether the European Council responds to the shifting policy priorities of European citizens. More specifically, it explores the synchronic and diachronic associations between what people consider to be the most important problems and the political attention devoted to these i…
The dynamic relationship between asylum applications and recognition rates in Europe (1987–2010)
The intensity of asylum flows over the last 20 years represents a significant challenge to national and European policy making. This article studies the dynamic reciprocal effects between asylum applications and recognition rates in 29 European countries over 24 years. Furthermore, it explores the impact of the national economic and political context on these two aspects of asylum policy. Using a wide range of statistical models and approaches, t…
The Europeanization of asylum policy: An assessment of the EU impact on asylum applications and recognitions rates
Asylum policy in the European nation-states has been a subject of increasing influence form the European Union over the last 12 years since the call for the establishment of a Common European Asylum System. This article presents an assessment of the EU impact on the asylum policy outcomes in the 27 member states, Norway and Switzerland. The article focuses on three central hypotheses about the effects of Europeanization – a race to the bottom, co…
Does Immigration Undermine Public Support for Integration in the E uropean U nion
It is well established that negative attitudes towards immigrants are strongly associated with lower public support for E uropean integration. But the impact of actual immigration levels on immigration attitudes is still contested. As a result, the relationship between immigration levels and EU public support remains uncertain from a theoretical point of view. We offer an empirical study of the link between immigration from the new EU member stat…
The effect of stakeholder involvement on legislative duration: Consultation of external actors and legislative duration in the European Union
Despite the increased use of stakeholder consultations, little is known about their impact on the legislative process. We examine how consultation of external actors during policy preparation affects decision-making duration and efficiency. We test our predictions on EU legislative decision-making and we find that although stakeholder consultations in policy preparation may increase the democratic legitimacy of decision-making, they result in eff…
The impact of the Eastern enlargement on the decision-making capacity of the European Union
This contribution investigates the impact of the Eastern enlargement on the\ndecision-making capacity of the European Union. On the basis of new data\non the number and types of legal acts produced by the EU (1994–2014) and\non the time between the proposal and adoption of legislative acts (1994–\n2012), the contribution argues that enlargement has had a rather limited\nimpact on legislative production and duration and that it is extremely hard\n…
The Inter-institutional Division of Power and Time Allocation in the European Parliament
This paper examines whether the European Parliament strategically adapts to the inter-institutional balance of power by allocating its resources so that it spends more time in those areas of competence where it has the greatest power. Focusing on the legislative area, the authors examine whether differences in the inter-institutional division of power between different legislative procedures affect how long the EP spends on reaching its first rea…
Party government and policy responsiveness. Evidence from three parliamentary democracies
Does party government moderate the responsiveness of public policy to public opinion? Analysing a new dataset, we examine whether the ability of governments to respond to the public on 306 specific policy issues in Denmark, Germany and the UK is affected by the extent of coalition conflict and by the fit of the considered policy changes with the government preferences. We find a systematic but relatively weak positive impact of public support on …
In search of the worlds of compliance: Culture and transposition performance in the European Union
This paper tests the argument that assigning countries into three worlds of compliance helps to explain transposition performance in the European Union. Looking into what cultural features distinguish the 'culture of compliance' worlds shows that attitudes towards law-abidingness and rule-following, and trust in the EU institutions, are not directly related to membership in the three types. Then, focusing on the explanatory potential of the typol…
Does the Election Winner–Loser Gap Extend to Subjective Health and Well-Being
Political scientists have studied extensively the gap between winners and losers of democratic elections with regard to satisfaction with democracy. We ask whether the winner–loser gap extends beyond the political domain to subjective health and well-being as well. Building on insights from biology and coalitional psychology, we hypothesize that winning and losing elections could affect one’s outlook on life, happiness, and subjective health. We …
Beyond the U-curve: Citizen preferences on European integration in multidimensional political space
One of the major findings of the literature on Euroscepticism is that support for European integration generally declines as one moves closer to the extremes of the left-right ideological spectrum. However, in multidimensional policy space, Euroscepticism varies in more complex ways. This article explores the relief of Euroscepticism for citizens in four European states – the Netherlands, Germany, Italy and France – based on data from voting advi…
Enforcement and public opinion: The Perceived Legitimacy of Rule of Law Sanctions
The EU has powerful enforcement mechanisms to curb democratic backsliding and support the rule of law in its member states. While (the threat of) enforcement is necessary, sanctions might be difficult to accept as legitimate when they hurt a citizen's country. We study the perceived legitimacy of EU enforcement actions. We develop hypotheses about the influence of national identity, party support, procedural fairness, descriptive norm prevalence,…
How to estimate the policy preferences of party supporters: Disaggregating data from voting advice applications versus modeling survey responses
Valid and reliable estimates of the policy preferences of political parties' supporters are essential for the study of political representation. However, such estimates are not directly available from standard surveys of public opinion, which are typically representative by design only at the national level and rarely ask questions about public support for specific policies. In this article, we explore the possibility to use data from voting advi…
National Parliaments and Transposition of EU Law: A Matter of Coalition Conflict
This article analyses to what extent the mechanism of the coalition conflict model of executive‐legislative relations can account for the extent and policy direction of parliamentary control over domestic transposition, focusing on EU migration law. Our empirical approach is based on an in‐depth cross‐country comparison of the transposition of the Returns Directive in Austria, Germany, France, and the Netherlands. We find that in all four countri…
Timing is everything? Organized interests and the timing of legislative activity
Transposition of EU social policy in the new member states
This article analyses transposition of European Union (EU) social policy legislation in the new member states (NMS) from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). In order to account for the varying rate of adoption of EU law at the national level the article develops several hypotheses about the impact of government preferences and administrative capacity on the pace of transposition in the social policy field. The hypotheses are tested on a new dataset…
Dynamics of Regulatory Policymaking in Sweden: The Role of Media Advocacy and Public Opinion
While extensive literatures study the responsiveness of policy to public opinion and the influence of interest groups, few studies look at both factors simultaneously. This article offers an analysis of the influence of media advocacy and public opinion on political attention and policy change for four regulatory issues over a relatively long period of time in Sweden. The data pools together measures of public support for specific policies with n…
Transposition of EU social policy in the new member states
This article analyses transposition of European Union (EU) social policy legislation in the new member states (NMS) from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). In order to account for the varying rate of adoption of EU law at the national level the article develops several hypotheses about the impact of government preferences and administrative capacity on the pace of transposition in the social policy field. The hypotheses are tested on a new dataset…
In search of the worlds of compliance: Culture and transposition performance in the European Union
This paper tests the argument that assigning countries into three worlds of compliance helps to explain transposition performance in the European Union. Looking into what cultural features distinguish the 'culture of compliance' worlds shows that attitudes towards law-abidingness and rule-following, and trust in the EU institutions, are not directly related to membership in the three types. Then, focusing on the explanatory potential of the typol…
The Dynamics of Domestic Coordination of EU Policy in the New Member States: Impossible to Lock In
Published online: 12 Nov 2007
Embracing European Law: Compliance with EU Directives in Central and Eastern Europe
Accession to the European Union (EU) demands the adoption of a vast body of legislation. This paper analyses compliance with EU directives in eight post-communist countries during the Eastern enlargement and tries to account for the puzzling embrace of EU law in Central and Eastern Europe. Drawing on a new data set tracking the transposition of a sample of 119 directives, the paper finds effects of both political preferences and government capaci…
Comparing transposition in the 27 member states of the EU: The Impact of Discretion and Legal Fit
Transposition performance differs significantly across countries and policy sectors in the EU. In this article we analyse the transposition efforts of all 27 member states with regard to four EC directives expected to create considerable difficulties for compliance at the national level. Using Cox proportional hazards regression, we find that discretion and legal fit are significant factors in explaining transposition. Furthermore, we discover th…
The Inter-institutional Division of Power and Time Allocation in the European Parliament
This paper examines whether the European Parliament strategically adapts to the inter-institutional balance of power by allocating its resources so that it spends more time in those areas of competence where it has the greatest power. Focusing on the legislative area, the authors examine whether differences in the inter-institutional division of power between different legislative procedures affect how long the EP spends on reaching its first rea…
Public opinion and policy output in the European Union: A lost relationship
The European Union (EU) is assumed to suffer from a democratic deficit. It is often posited that in the EU there is only a weak and indirect connection between public preferences and policy change. This article investigates empirically whether any relationship exists between public support for European integration and EU policy output (1973—2008). Using a new indicator of policy output — the volume of important legislation produced in a semester …
Timing is everything? Organized interests and the timing of legislative activity
Policy‐making Beyond Political Ideology: The Adoption of Smoking Bans in Europe
Policy‐making is embedded in politics, but an increasing number of issues, like obesity, tobacco control, or road safety, do not map well on the major dimensions of political conflict. This article analyzes the enactment of restrictions on smoking in bars and restaurants in 29 European countries – a conflictual issue which does not fit easily traditional party ideologies. Indeed, the comparative empirical analyses demonstrate that government ideo…
The Political Economy of Noncompliance: Adjusting to the Single European Market
The Europeanization of asylum policy: An assessment of the EU impact on asylum applications and recognitions rates
Asylum policy in the European nation-states has been a subject of increasing influence form the European Union over the last 12 years since the call for the establishment of a Common European Asylum System. This article presents an assessment of the EU impact on the asylum policy outcomes in the 27 member states, Norway and Switzerland. The article focuses on three central hypotheses about the effects of Europeanization – a race to the bottom, co…
The effect of stakeholder involvement on legislative duration: Consultation of external actors and legislative duration in the European Union
Despite the increased use of stakeholder consultations, little is known about their impact on the legislative process. We examine how consultation of external actors during policy preparation affects decision-making duration and efficiency. We test our predictions on EU legislative decision-making and we find that although stakeholder consultations in policy preparation may increase the democratic legitimacy of decision-making, they result in eff…
Policy without Politicians: Bureaucratic Influence in Comparative Perspective
The dynamic relationship between asylum applications and recognition rates in Europe (1987–2010)
The intensity of asylum flows over the last 20 years represents a significant challenge to national and European policy making. This article studies the dynamic reciprocal effects between asylum applications and recognition rates in 29 European countries over 24 years. Furthermore, it explores the impact of the national economic and political context on these two aspects of asylum policy. Using a wide range of statistical models and approaches, t…
Adopting open source software in public administration: The importance of boundary spanners and political commitment
Agenda responsiveness in the European Council: Public Priorities, Policy Problems and Political Attention
The existence of political responsiveness in multi-level systems like the EU remains an open question despite significant recent research on the topic. This article studies whether the European Council responds to the shifting policy priorities of European citizens. More specifically, it explores the synchronic and diachronic associations between what people consider to be the most important problems and the political attention devoted to these i…
Exploring the Performance of Multilevel Modeling and Poststratification with Eurobarometer Data
This text reports the results of an evaluation of the performance of multilevel regression modeling and poststratication (MRP) in reconstructing state-level estimates from federal-level data. The evaluation makes use of Eurobarometer data and relies on the fact that Eurobarometer provides representative survey data for each European Union state to further explore the performance of MRP. I repeatedly draw subsets of the entire Eurobarometer sample…
Does Immigration Undermine Public Support for Integration in the E uropean U nion
It is well established that negative attitudes towards immigrants are strongly associated with lower public support for E uropean integration. But the impact of actual immigration levels on immigration attitudes is still contested. As a result, the relationship between immigration levels and EU public support remains uncertain from a theoretical point of view. We offer an empirical study of the link between immigration from the new EU member stat…
National Parliaments and Transposition of EU Law: A Matter of Coalition Conflict
This article analyses to what extent the mechanism of the coalition conflict model of executive‐legislative relations can account for the extent and policy direction of parliamentary control over domestic transposition, focusing on EU migration law. Our empirical approach is based on an in‐depth cross‐country comparison of the transposition of the Returns Directive in Austria, Germany, France, and the Netherlands. We find that in all four countri…
No, Accession to the European Union Does Not Increase the Homicide Rate
In a recent article Sylwia Piatkowska, Steven Messner and Lawrence Raffalovich (PMR) (2016) argue that ‘entry into the EU is positively associated with levels of homicide in the 10 Eastern European countries that joined the EU in 2004 and 2007’ (pp. 151, 158), with the implication that accession to the European Union (EU) caused higher homicide rate in the countries that joined the union. In this note, I challenge this conclusion and argue that t…
The impact of the Eastern enlargement on the decision-making capacity of the European Union
This contribution investigates the impact of the Eastern enlargement on the\ndecision-making capacity of the European Union. On the basis of new data\non the number and types of legal acts produced by the EU (1994–2014) and\non the time between the proposal and adoption of legislative acts (1994–\n2012), the contribution argues that enlargement has had a rather limited\nimpact on legislative production and duration and that it is extremely hard\n…
Dynamics of Regulatory Policymaking in Sweden: The Role of Media Advocacy and Public Opinion
While extensive literatures study the responsiveness of policy to public opinion and the influence of interest groups, few studies look at both factors simultaneously. This article offers an analysis of the influence of media advocacy and public opinion on political attention and policy change for four regulatory issues over a relatively long period of time in Sweden. The data pools together measures of public support for specific policies with n…
The opinion‐policy nexus in Europe and the role of political institutions
A strong link between citizen preferences and public policy is one of the key goals and criteria of democratic governance. Yet, our knowledge about the extent to which public policies on specific issues are in line with citizen preferences in Europe is limited. This article reports on the first study of the link between public opinion and public policy that covers a large and diverse sample of concrete public policy issues in 31 European democrac…
Government Capacity, Societal Trust or Party Preferences? What Accounts for the Variety of National Policy Responses to the Covid-19 Pandemic in Europe?
European states responded to the rapid spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 with a variety of public policy measures. Governments across the continent acted more or less swiftly to close down schools, restrict arrival into their countries and travel within their territories, ban public meetings, impose local and national lockdowns, declare states of emergency and pass other emergency measures. Importantly, both the mix of policy tools as well …
When Business and Politics Mix: Local Networks and Socio-political Transformations in Ukraine
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…
Political science (38 works) · Economics (36 works) · Politics (35 works) · Law (34 works) · Law (33 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (20 works) · European union (20 works) · European Union Policy and Governance (20 works) · Political economy (20 works) · Political Influence and Corporate Strategies (16 works)