ANTOANETA DIMITROVA

Antoaneta Dimitrova is a leading political scientist whose work centres on European Union governance, enlargement, and the democratic transformation of post-communist states. She is Professor of Comparative Governance at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs, at Leiden University in the Netherlands. Her research investigates how EU policies shape domestic reforms in candidate and neighbouring countries, focusing on democratic institutions, state capacity, and the broader challenges of European integration. Dimitrova has offered influential analyses of Europeanization, examining the mechanisms through which the EU exports governance models and conditionality to Central and Eastern Europe. She has explored both the transformative successes of EU-driven reforms and the persistent limits of compliance and institutional resilience in post-communist states. Her academic career is closely tied to international collaborative projects and policy-oriented research. She leads the Diplomacy and Global Affairs Research Group at Leiden University and has coordinated or contributed to major international initiatives on EU enlargement, external governance, and democracy support.

She contributed to EU-STRAT: The EU and Eastern Partnership Countries (2016–2019), a project examining Ukraine, Moldova, and Belarus. EU-STRAT analysed how domestic elite structures, state capture, and regional dynamics influence the success of EU-supported reforms, and highlighted the limits of EU soft power in environments affected by competing narratives, including from Russia.