Tommaso Pavone

About Me

I am Assistant Professor of European Politics in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto in its St. George Campus, where I am also Director of the the Centre for the Study of France and the Francophone World (CEFMF), an Associate Graduate Faculty member of the Centre for European and Eurasian Studies (CEES), as well as Visiting Researcher at the ARENA Center for European Studies at the University of Oslo. In 2024 I received the Carolina de Miguel Moyer Young Scholar Award from the Council of European Studies (CES), which recognizes the emerging scholar under age forty “who is judged to have made (through a body of publications) the most significant contribution to the interdisciplinary study of Europe.”

Previously, I was Assistant Professor of Law and Politics in the School of Government and Public Policy (SGPP) at the University of Arizona. I completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship at PluriCourts Centre at the University of Oslo (2019-2021) and received my Ph.D. in 2019 from the Department of Politics at Princeton University, where I specialized in comparative politics, judicial politics, and law and society, with a regional focus on Europe and the European Union (EU). At Princeton, I was a 2018-2019 Graduate Fellow at the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS), a Graduate Associate in the Program in Law and Public Affairs (LAPA) and the European Union Program, editorial assistant at World Politics, and the founder/coordinator of the Department of Politics’ Qualitative Research Seminar.

My comparative research probes the often concealed - and sometimes contentious - politics through which judges, lawyers, and policymakers shape political development, social change, and the rule of law, particularly in Europe and the EU. My new book with Cambridge University Press - titled The Ghostwriters: Lawyers and the Politics Behind the Judicial Construction of Europe - reconstructs how entrepreneurial lawyers promoted European integration by encouraging deliberate law-breaking and mobilizing national courts against their own governments. This book was supported by over $35,000 in competitive grants, including from the National Science Foundation, and won seven prizes from the Law and Society Association (LSA), American Political Science Association (APSA), European Union Studies Association (EUSA), and American Society of International Law (ASIL). From 2022-2027 I am also a part of a large interdisciplinary research project - Enforcing the Rule of Law (ENROL): What can the European Union do to prevent rule of law deterioration from within? - that received NOK 25 million (approximately $3 million) in competitive funding from the Research Council of Norway (RCN). As a co-researcher in this project, I am drawing on comparative and EU theories of the politics of law enforcement, institutional change, and political entrepreneurship to understand why EU institutions have been reluctant to defend democracy and the rule of law in autocratizing member states - and why they may now be changing tact.

My research has been published or is forthcoming in leading peer-reviewed journals, including American Political Science Review, World Politics, Law & Society Review, Journal of European Public Policy, Journal of Law & Courts, Journal of European Integration, Law & Social Inquiry, European Law Journal, European Constitutional Law Review, and Constitutional Studies. I have also contributed chapters to several edited volumes. This research has received coverage in high-profile press outlets, including The New York Times, Financial Times, Politico, and euobserver. My teaching experience spans courses in law and social change, law and political development, European politics, comparative politics, judicial politics, constitutional law, and qualitative methods. I am also active in monitoring the rule of law in Europe as a founding member of The Good Lobby Profs - a group of 60+ academics in Europe promoting the respect of the rule of law by providing pro bono expert analysis to defend and strengthen respect for democracy, the rule of law and human rights.

In addition to my Ph.D., I hold an M.A. degree in Politics from Princeton University (2015), an M.A. degree in social sciences from the University of Chicago (2012), and a B.A. degree in public policy from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor (2010).

Outside of the academic life, I enjoy weather forecasting, cooking, attending and listening to opera, and hiking. Click here for my contact information.