Dr Mihail Chiru
Mihail Chiru has been a Lecturer in Politics at the University of Oxford since 2019, first affiliated with the Russian and East European Studies programme and then with the Department of Politics and International Relation. Before joining Oxford, he taught at the University of Southampton and at the Central European University. His work focuses on legislative behaviour, party politics and voting behaviour in the European Union and Central and Eastern Europe and has appeared in a wide range of journals such as European Journal of Political Research, West European Politics, Journal of European Public Policy, or Party Politics.
Dr Chiru’s research has benefitted from funding from the European Parliament Research Service and the Romanian Ministry of Education and Research. In 2023 he received the Achieving Impact Award from Oxford’s Department of Politics and International Relations for his work with the European Parliament's Special Committee on the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dr Chiru’s ongoing research focuses on three broad agendas. The first explores how the pursuit of single-shot and relational clientelism affects the functioning and organizational characteristics of political parties in young democracies. The second agenda assesses the responses of the European Parliament to the democratic backsliding crises in several EU Member States and whether backsliding has contributed to the consolidation of an East-West cleavage in the EU. The third research agenda is centered around the evolution of programmatic linkages between citizens and political parties in Eastern Europe.
