@tomtheuns
Assoc. Prof. Political Theory & European Politics, Leiden University | Democracy | EU private handle: views mine Out now: PROTECTING DEMOCRACY IN EUROPE https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/9781911723745 Prev. UWC; Maastricht; Oxford; Sciences Po
The Hungarian govt. is suing the EU court for fining them for breaking EU law (read that twice)
Their three legal arguments:
1. It’s unfair
2. They don’t like it
3. Give me a break
🛎️ This Wednesday in #ECPRSeminars on #PoliticalTheory ⤵️
🗣️ Dorota Mokrosinska argues that journalists can sometimes engage in political activism without violating objectivity, because objectivity does not require strict neutrality
💻 11 Mar, 16:00–17:00 GMT buff.ly/p6zcPNm
#Activism
Would be more of it wasn’t for the… electoral threshold!
*ducks*
📣New article out in @ejprjournal.bsky.social, co-authored with the wonderful @christinaluiset.bsky.social 📣
Do national stereotypes about 'hardworking' or 'lazy' Europeans actually shape public support for #EU solidarity?
They do - and we show how. 🔎🇪🇺
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
spoiler: they won’t be in Switzerland
Op prominente plekken in Nijmegen hangen verkiezingsposters voor NSC - een partij die niet eens meedoet aan de raadsverkiezingen in die stad. Hoe komt dat? De ontrafeling van een mysterie: waarom ik van regiojournalistiek houd. www.gelderlander.nl/nijmegen/nsc...
I trust you Jorge! but... source?
leuk dit
Isn’t about time each and every EU national leader expresses solidarity and support with Spain 🇪🇸 ?
Honored to have contributed to this excellent collection edited by @rohanmukherjee.bsky.social of papers looking at how domestic changes have shaped India's foreign policy over time but especially the last decade. I focused on the regional origins of India's FP
www.ippjournal.org/volume-5-num...
This is an *excellent* opportunity for students interested in refugee/migration issues in political philosophy
👇👇👇👇
I was thinking about this yesterday. As academics, we’re trained to pick up on contradiction. A good theory or policy can’t be contradictory or incoherent.
But empirical reality (e.g people’s views, preferences, goals) *can* and often *are* contradictory
We shouldn’t try to deny/explain this away
The main reason we can be confident in the success of this plan is how successful similar plans have been in the past.
Works when you’re shrooming too
May I gently suggest that if you are hiring people who think the Middle East is short on geopolitics then you might want to consider whether that is in the long-term interest of your hedge fund
Quo vadis, EU?
Sometimes it’s difficult to say things that are obviously true
Many centrists, sure. But it was a pretty widely shared view from liberals (like the Parti Libéral in Belgium) and center left (Parti Radical in France) to socialists like Kent and Nelken in Spain. Arguably all of whom could be labeled progressive by the standards of the day
A thought for colleagues preparing public international law lectures for next week 🙏
**JOB ALERT**
Come work with me in my new COUNTERRR project: We're hiring a PostDoc (2 years) @polscileiden.bsky.social to work on government and community responses to jihadi insurgencies in the Sahel
*Deadline: 26 March 2026*
careers.universiteitleiden.nl/job/Postdoct...
If Harvard wants its professors called political scientists it should name the department “political science” like a normal university. “It’s the department that studies history but we’re Harvard so we call it the Wing of Heritology”
😂
Just opened: 2 calls for positions in political theory in the "Moralizing Politics" project led by C. Rostbøll @ucph.bsky.social
1️⃣PhD Scholarship, "The Dignity of Work": candidate.hr-manager.net/ApplicationI...
2️⃣PhD Scholarship, "Cancel Culture": candidate.hr-manager.net/ApplicationI...
⏰ April 13
Was going to say Condoleezza Rice, but she wasn't actually elected to anything... LB Pearson was a historian, Liz Warren a lawyer (there are plenty of lawyers). Daniel Patrick Moynihan had a PhD in history but his chair in Harvard was in Government. Does that count?
Some good news & important (Grand Chamber) ruling. Tbomk, 1st ever ruling connected to the deliberate destruction of media pluralism in autocratising Member State aka 🇭🇺 Just infuriating it took irresponsible amount of time to get the ruling (more than 5 years for a MS subject to Art 7 procedure!!!)
I agree, but what a desperate gamble for opposition parties. It must be so hard to try to trust Magyar, a former Fidesz loyalist.
If TISZA does win in April despite Orbán’s dirty tricks all eyes must remain on Hungary to keep them honest.
The first set of postdocs for our ERC project on popular government have just been advertised. These 3 postdocs will be based at UC Louvain with my co-PI Pierre-Etienne Vandamme and focus on contemporary democratic theory. Apply! jobs.uclouvain.be/Personnelsci...
How democracies survive autocratization 🛡️
New comparative research by @gpanzano.bsky.social & @lucatomini.bsky.social
show that democracies don’t survive backsliding because of single heroic actions. Survival depends on coordinated resistance 💪
Plus ca change... "Brussels scrambles for a way around Orbán"...
Also, Art 7(1) TEU procedure was activated in Sept 2018 and the Council has repeatedly failed to make any effective use of it while ignoring calls to activate sanctioning arm of Art 7 for years
www.politico.eu/newsletter/b...
Het Nederlands Helsinki Committtee presenteert vandaag haar rapport Tegenmacht onder druk, waarin zeer gedetailleerd wordt gedocumenteerd hoe de ruimte voor het maatschappijk middenveld in Nederland krimpt www.nhc.nl/macs-country...