A quiet convergence: The 2022 full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine and Italian Parties' positions on the European Union

Abstract

We investigate the impact of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine on domestic party competition over the European Union (EU) in its immediate aftermath, with a focus on the case of Italy. Drawing on a discursive neo-functionalist framework, we perform OLS regression analysis on a dataset of more than 10,000 Facebook posts retrieved via CrowdTangle. Our findings show that Italian parties converged towards supportive EU positions following the full-scale Russian invasion due to a decrease in anti-EU claims. Furthermore, the degree of convergence of individual parties varied depending on their ideological orientation. While extreme left-wing and green parties significantly decreased their discursive opposition to the EU, anti-Europeanism did not abate in radical right parties, which remained consistent in their Eurosceptic stances throughout the analysed timeframe. Compared to COVID-19, the different surrounding international context and policy fields involved in this crisis are associated with different party reactions vis-à-vis the EU.