Dimiter Toshkov

Causal effect of intergroup contact on exclusionary attitudes | PNAS The effect of intergroup contact has long been a question central to social scientists. As political and technological changes bring increased inte...

'The contact [on a public transit system in the US] results in exclusionary attitudes toward the outgroup', according to the conclusions of this RCT www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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...

💡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 ⬇️

New call for the SGEU FUTURE Grants European Consortium for Political Research

🚨 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...

Why do people support policies that go against their interests?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"say no more"

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...

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...

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 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

as an editor, you can always choose not to share crappy reviews with the author or explain which points you don't consider valid. the technology cannot be an excuse.

the bigger goal should be to introduce more accountability in the review process for everyone involved: reviewers, editors & authors

in that case, yes, and it would need an ethics approval, but I don't see how it applies to reviews I receive in my correposndance with a journal.

ha, but would I be infringing your copyright by making your review of my work public, if the review is anonymous?

What is a potential negative consequence of making the reviews public while they remain anonymous? I can only see upsides: sharing knowledge, giving context for the readers of your work, shaming journals for fwd-ing crappy reviews, etc.

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)?

Great list of methodological results/advice articles

If you are a complete novice to R, you can follow the slides to get a start, and if you have some experience already, you can find tips to streamline your workflow & bring your dataviz game to the next level. The slides also have plenty of up-to-date resources for further reading.

Happy leaRning!

Introduction to R for social scientists covering fundamentals, data wrangling, data analysis with statistical models, and data visualisation

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....

Overall, while the restrictive policy measures introduced to curb COVID-19 have been painful economically and infringed on personal freedoms, they saved lives.

But they mostly 'worked' during the first year of the pandemic.

A major strength of our approach is the fine-grained weekly, province-level data on *excess mortality* - the best measure of the death toll of the pandemic - estimated from micro-level data from the CBS.

There is significant variation not only over time, but across provinces as well.