Michal Ovádek
Lecturer in European Institutions, Politics and Policy at University College London
michalovadek.github.io
- weird to me! I'd say I review 3-5x of what I submit in an average year and think it's a totally doable amount of work
- Reposted by Michal OvádekWe are pleased to announce that the call for the 4th Annual Early Career Workshop on Social Science Approaches to Law and Courts is now live. If you are a PhD student or postdoc working in this area, you can send us your abstract via this link: qualtrics.ucl.ac.uk/jfe/form/SV_...
- For the 4th consecutive year @uclspp.bsky.social will be co-hosting a workshop for early career scholars in law and courts. We are trying to nurture an international, interdisciplinary and methodologically diverse community of scholars in this subfield. Apply via qualtrics.ucl.ac.uk/jfe/form/SV_...
- Reposted by Michal OvádekSchumer and Jeffries negotiating to limit the number of journalist arrested by the Department of Justice each year to a maximum of 20.
- maybe just to put this in context this is someone whose own psychological state is regularly questioned on the domestic scene (post-assassination attempt)
- Reposted by Michal OvádekNEW PAPER ALERT! My paper, with @bjornhoyland.bsky.social , on how “policy loss” shapes support for the EU has just been published in @cpsjournal.bsky.social. Check it out! 1/
- it's common (and maybe good) that this type of organising comes from outside opposition parties in democracies. The question then is of course how the party establishment responds to the new leaders these events are going to produce anyway: the US government is executing protestors in the street
- a footnote to this discussion is that the EP acquired the power to request these opinions from the CJEU only in 2003, along with the general power to request the annulment of EU legislation
- Reposted by Michal OvádekRecently accepted by #QJE, “The Price of Housing in the United States, 1890–2006,” by Lyons (@ronanlyons), Shertzer (@econhist-allday), Gray (@econhistoryorbust), and Agorastos: doi.org/10.1093/qje/...
- Reposted by Michal OvádekWe just published the methodology behind CoPE, our 9B parameter model that matches GPT-4o at content classification at 1% the size! The model is already open source, but now we're sharing our training technique. blog.zentropi.ai/how-we-built... 🧵 1/6
- I am visiting @eui-eu.bsky.social this term for my sabbatical. If you find yourself passing through Florence, do say hello!
- Reposted by Michal OvádekWhat do people in England think about their local area? In this short report I take a look at surveys we conducted with @yougov.co.uk in 2022, 2024 and 2025 to gain some insights... Some key findings...
- Reposted by Michal OvádekThere is one week left to apply for @uclspp.bsky.social's new Lecturer in British and Comparative Politics role! Importantly, the successful candidate will also join our senior team and contribute to our research and impact activities. Applicants must have, or be near to finishing, a PhD. Apply 👇
- been away from the Northern line for 3 weeks and the first ride back is always a bit of a shock to the system
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- can't wait to dig into the data with @tommasopavone.bsky.social. This is probably one of the largest survey experiments ever run in Slovakia, a country you will not find analysed in the big journals very often
- Can reflecting on past democratic backsliding episodes “inoculate” citizens into vigilant liberal democrats? Drawing on the Slovak case, @movadek.bsky.social & I will find out: our registered report is in-principle accepted @thejop.bsky.social & survey results forthcoming! See tinyurl.com/uv5wybhs
- reading open-text reflections on democracy and media by a representative sample of citizens
- Reposted by Michal OvádekThe Abundance movement often points to environmental groups as the obstacles to building. But who actually files the lawsuits blocking projects? It’s not environmental groups. It’s been lawyered-up HOAs protecting property values all along. Regulation by litigation is the problem.
- the Netherlands was at one point the closest among continental European countries in creating a genuine international university environment. As that process reverses, I don't think we are going to see anything similar anywhere else in the current political and economic moment
- Not exactly a Xmas merrymaking post, but I wrote something on the changing environment for international academics in the Netherlands and how it has changed over the last 10 years: open.substack.com/pub/alexandr...
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- well, well, well if it isn't the book I started working on in 2017: academic.oup.com/book/61769
- perfectly timed for the proofs of my book
- the parliament in Slovakia just abolished an office for the protection of whistleblowers. Among others it shielded policemen who previously investigated corruption charges against politicians and oligarchs close to the current government
- same model specification with marginaleffects::plot_predictions(): condition="treated" on the left, by="treated" on the right I'll be mightily surprised if there aren't multiple replication notes highlighting this discrepancy in the coming years across various fields
- why do we need gambling ads everywhere when scores of Londoners are weekend after weekend banking their plans on the normal functioning of the overground. The risk appetite in this city is already on a different level
- Reposted by Michal OvádekJoin and help to lead the Constitution Unit! @uclspp.bsky.social is looking for a Lecturer in British and Comparative Politics who will also join our senior team and contribute to our research and impact activities. Applicants must have, or be near to finishing, a PhD. Apply 👇
- Reposted by Michal OvádekNot a drill - there's a Britain-focused lectureship (FT, permanent) available. www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DPQ588/l...
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- in addition to this being essentially an export tariff on UK services (novel!), international students have never been cross-subsidizing domestic students more than at present. So why not ask them to chip in some more while also putting more stress on a sector that's already under pressure
- i: Reeves to unveil £600m raid on foreign student university fees #TomorrowsPapersToday
- in one of my experiments with Claude code it produced a plausibly looking but suspicious figure claiming to represent some requested data analysis. When asked to explain how it got there the reply was along the lines of "sorry this is actually all made up, I couldn't run the real analysis"
- heartening to see that occasionally Good Things can still happen
- turns out project fear was in fact too optimistic over the long run
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- wouldn't be surprised if the celebrity traitors finale had lower than expected viewer numbers tonight
- Excited to post a new working paper with @instrumenthull.bsky.social and Michal Kolesár: arxiv.org/abs/2511.03572 Will post a thread on it soon, but if you're interested in judge/examiner designs, I think you'll find this guide very helpful!
- this paper is a great contribution to the judicial behaviour literature in a number of ways (and will go straight into my judicial politics course at UCL)
- 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
- Reposted by Michal OvádekAcademics in Assyria in the 7th c BC complain that admin is preventing them from doing research and teaching
- only a few days left to submit your paper/panel/abstract to the judicial politics section! don't miss out on the hottest property in next year's conference calendar
- 🚨 EPSS Belfast 2026 Call for Papers - One week to go! 🚨 Don't forget to submit your paper or panel proposal to the European Political Science Society @epssnet.bsky.social 2026 conference - just one week to go before the deadline: epssnet.org/belfast-2026...