Toxic friend? The impact of the Russian invasion on democratic backsliding and PRR cooperation in Europe

Abstract

After the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the democratic backslider parties in Hungary (Fidesz) and Poland (Law and Justice) took conflicting positions on Russia, putting their ongoing cooperation in the Rule of Law (RoL) conflict and within the broader alliance of populist radical right (PRR) parties in question. Building on and advancing the theoretical framework of democratic backsliding, PRR party cooperation and authoritarian diffusion, we assess the impact of exogenous shocks triggered by external authoritarian actors on these types of cooperation. We examine the voting patterns of Fidesz, Law and Justice and other PRR parties in the European Parliament (EP), considering their assertiveness towards Russia and the RoL conflict before and after the full-scale invasion. We find that although the invasion made the PRR parties converge on their levels of assertiveness towards Russia, it remains a divisive issue. Moreover, the invasion did not influence the dynamics of democratic backsliding.

More than neighbours: Assessing crisis narratives of Nordic-Baltic elites in the context of European Union’s eastern border

“…Specifically, this article focuses on the EP's activities and debates during emergencies. Recent studies on MEPs’ voting behaviour and attitudes in times of crisis have covered the recent financial (Roger et al 2017) and migration (Högenauer, 2017) crises, the COVID-19 pandemic (Braghiroli 2022), democratic backsliding inside the EU (Chiru and Wunsch 2023), and the consequences of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine (Braghiroli 2023; Holesch and Zagórski 2023). Their main institutional foci of these studies were either the way MEPs’ voted on the crisis or the way they narrated it, thereby highlighting supranational patterns of cooperation and competition and national versus partisan principal-agent dynamics.…”