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

November 2024
Global Policy

DOI:10.1111/1758-5899.13466

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Authors:

Andrea Capati

LUISS Guido Carli, Libera Università Internazionale degli Studi Sociali

Federico Trastulli

University of Verona

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.

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1 | THE FULL- SCALE RUSSIAN

INVASION OF UKRAINE AND

IMPLICATIONS FOR THE EU

THROUGH DOMESTIC POLITICS

On February 24, 2022, the full- scale Russian invasion

of Ukraine precipitated months of rising tension into an

ongoing international crisis. Such military aggression

follows on from the 2014 illegal annexation of Crimea,

through which Moscow first substantiated its long-

standing territorial claims over Ukraine. At that time,

the EU responded through several packages of restric-

tive measures, including visa bans and asset freezes

(European Council, 2014). However, the 2022 Russian

invasion of Ukraine represents a radical exacerbation

of that crisis and was immediately framed by EU lead-

ers as the ‘gravest threat to Euro- Atlantic security in

decades’ (European Council, 2023). This despite the

fact that the conflict did not directly involve the EU or

any of its member states.

In February 2022, the European Union (EU) found it-

self at a critical moment, facing an unprecedented chal-

lenge to peace and stability in the region. European

government leaders soon urged a joint response at the

EU level rather than differentiated national countermea-

sures. Immediately, the European Council condemned

Russia's ‘unprovoked and unjustified military aggres-

sion’ and agreed on a massive package of restrictive

measures. This time, however, the EU's response was

not confined to sanctions and extended to the provi-

sion of large- scale military support to Kiev (including

lethal weapons) through the European Peace Facility,

the generalised welcoming of Ukrainian refugees into

the Union's territory through the activation of dedicated

temporary protection schemes, as well as the pro-

spective enlargement to Ukraine through the start of

accession negotiations (Bosse,2024; Capati, 2024a).

Government representatives reiterated the EU's ‘un-

wavering support for the independence, sovereignty

and territorial integrity of Ukraine’, stressing ‘the

RESEARCH ARTICLE

A quiet convergence: The 2022 full- scale Russian invasion

of Ukraine and Italian Parties' positions on the European

Union

AndreaCapati1 | FedericoTrastulli2

Received: 27 May 2024

Revised: 21 Oc tober 2024

Accepted: 24 October 2024

DO I: 1 0.1111 /1 75 8- 58 99.13 4 66

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and di stribution in

any medium, provided the original work is properly cite d, the use is non-commercial and no modification s or adaptations are made.

1Departm ent of Political Science, Luiss

Guido Carli University, Rome, Italy

2Department of Human Sciences,

University of Verona, Verona, Italy

Correspondence

Federico Trastulli, Depar tment of

Human Sciences, Universit y of Verona,

Lungadige Porta Vittoria, 17 – 37129

Verona, Italy.

Email: federico.trastulli@univr.it

Funding information

HORIZON EUROPE Culture, Creativity

and Inclusive society, Grant/Award

Num ber : 1010608 25

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 frame-

work, we perform OLS regression analysis on a dataset of more than 10,000

Facebook posts retrieved via CrowdTangle. Our findings show that Italian par-

ties converged towards supportive EU positions following the full- scale Russian

invasion due to a decrease in anti- EU claims. Furthermore, the degree of con-

vergence of individual parties varied depending on their ideological orientation.

While extreme left- wing and green parties significantly decreased their discur-

sive 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 con-

text and policy fields involved in this crisis are associated with different party

reactions vis- à- vis the EU.

CAPATI and TRASTULLI

European Council will remain seized of the matter’

(European Council, 2022a, 2022b). This latest event

thus adds up to the ‘polycrisis’ the EU has experienced

over the last several years (Zeitlin etal.,2019), while

retaining its distinctiveness in terms of nature (exoge-

nous and unprovoked), policy area (common security

and defence) and implications (increased EU military

spending).

The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine has aroused

significant scholarly attention in the field of EU stud-

ies. So far, research has mostly concerned the impli-

cations of the war for European integration dynamics,

especially in the field of security, defence and enlarge-

ment (Anghel & Dzankić,2023; Genschel etal.,2023).

Academic work has also focused on more specific

aspects of EU governance and policies, such as the

increasing role of the European Commission as a geo-

political actor and the evolution of policymaking in the

adoption of restrictive measures (Håkansson, 2023;

Meissner & Graziani,2023). While there is a flourishing

literature on national party positions towards the full-

scale Russian invasion of Ukraine (Fagerholm, 2024;

Guerra,2024), no systematic analysis has so far been

carried out on national party attitudes towards the EU's

own response, including dynamics of political contesta-

tion along the EU issue dimension.1 This research gap

is all the more relevant as, ultimately, it may highlight

a potential for further EU integration or disintegration

to be pursued as part of national governments' policy

agenda. Indeed, parties in Western democracies are

fundamental actors within the functional model of party

government (e.g. Katz,1987; Mair,2008). Here, in me-

diating and representing societal preferences, parties

compete for power in elections by presenting distinct

and alternative programmatic platforms, which they are

then expected to translate into policy once in power

(and for which they are held accountable in subsequent

elections). Of course, this also applies to the increas-

ingly politicised issue of EU integration (e.g. Hutter

etal.,2016).

As the EU issue has been shown to become even

more salient in domestic politics when large- scale

crises occur (e.g. Braun et al., 2019), the immediate

aftermath of such critical events constitutes ideal fer-

tile ground to gauge the positional reaction of parties

along this dimension. Showing that parties do change

their EU positions in the wake of large- scale crises

and how—that is, differently depending on the specific

type of crisis (for instance, compared to the COVID- 19

pandemic, see e.g. Capati et al., 2024)—may help to

predict the different opportunities or risks for the EU

project through the political representation of increas-

ingly pro- European or Eurosceptic positions in the

future and the consequent domestic policy agendas

pursued by the Member States—were further large-

scale, economic, health, security and sociopolitical

crises to occur. Therefore, this may ultimately carry

important implications for the long- term dynamics of

European integration or disintegration (Vollaard,2014).

The paper thus raises the following research question:

How did the full- scale Russian invasion of Ukraine af-

fect Italian parties' positions on the EU in its immediate

aftermath?

Italy is an interesting case in this respect. On the

one hand, it has a longstanding partnership with

Russia based on close diplomatic, trade and energy

relations. Italian policymakers typically hold the view

that a secure European framework can only be estab-

lished through the involvement of Russia and, as a re-

sult, Rome has consistently advocated for engaging in

strategic dialogue with Moscow within both the EU and

NATO (Siddi,2019). On the other hand, especially since

the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, Italy has

struggled to balance its Euro- Atlantic outlook with the

desire to keep Russia ‘hooked’ into Western coopera-

tion structures. That was made even more difficult after

Policy Implications

• Strengthening EU security and defence

policy: The EU should address the func-

tional mismatch between policy require-

ments and the current institutional framework

in security and defence highlighted by the

Russian- Ukrainian war. Increased integra-

tion of defence capabilities among EU mem-

ber states and the supranationalisation of

decision- making procedures are essential

to enhance collective security and response

mechanisms.

• Promoting pro- European narratives: Support

for European integration can be bolstered by

political leaders framing crises as opportuni-

ties for strengthening the EU, as seen in the

convergence of Italian parties towards less

anti- EU stances. Developing strategic com-

munication campaigns to promote the ben-

efits of EU membership and integration can

mitigate Eurosceptic sentiments, especially

during crises.

• Understanding and addressing RRPs dynam-

ics: Given the consistent Euroscepticism of

Radical Right Parties (RRPs), research and

policy efforts should focus on understanding

the roots of their opposition and address-

ing the underlying grievances. Engagement

strategies should be designed to integrate

RRPs into broader EU discussions, poten-

tially reducing their oppositional stance by

addressing their concerns within a coopera-

tive framework.

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A QUIET CONVERGENCE

full- scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, following which

two successive Italian governments fully participated in

the enactment of sanctions towards Russia along with

all other EU member states. Those sanctions disrupted

bilateral trade, especially in the energy domain, thereby

raising pressures in Italy to lift restrictive measures

against Moscow, especially from domestic manufac-

turing sectors that have been most affected by them.

This precarious equilibrium leaves room for variation in

Italian political parties' positioning along the pro−/an-

ti- EU axis after Russia's full- scale invasion of Ukraine.

Drawing on a discursive neo- functionalist framework

(Capati, 2024b; Schmidt, 2024), we hypothesise that

Italian political parties converged towards supportive

positions in their discourse about the EU in the immedi-

ate aftermath of Russia's 2022 invasion. The argument

that an external military threat brings about collective

governance and community- building is among the most

prominent in both international relations, with structur-

alist theories of alliance formation (Morgenthau,1948;

Waltz, 1979) and comparative politics scholarship,

where it finds its most comprehensive elaboration

in bellicist theories of state- building (Kelemen &

McNamara,2022; Tilly,1990). To this effect, the secu-

rity challenge posed by the full- scale Russian invasion

of Ukraine urges immediate collective action by the

countries (i.e. EU member states) that feel threatened

by it, thus fostering increased support by domestic so-

cial and political actors towards the polity centre (i.e.

the EU). In turn, the need for collective action in the

face of an external security threat reinvigorates mutual

understanding and favours the emergence of solidar-

ity sentiments among the threatened states (Hooghe

etal.,2024), thereby enhancing trust and cooperation.

At the same time, at a lower level of analysis, sup-

port for collective action at a supranational level by

domestic agents, most notably political parties, in re-

sponse to a common external security challenge has

been shown to be contingent on their ideological con-

notation (Otjes et al., 2022). Therefore, while we ex-

pect an overall convergence of Italian political parties

in support of the EU following the Russian full- scale

invasion of Ukraine, we build on cleavage theory and

expect the degree of convergence of individual political

parties towards more pro- EU (or less anti- EU) positions

to vary depending on their ideological orientation. In

particular, we argue that, because of their comprehen-

sive and unconditional Euroscepticism (see Section2

below for a difference with radical left parties), radical

right parties (RRPs) are less likely than other parties

to display such a convergence following the beginning

of the war (on this point, see Hooghe etal.,2024). We

test our hypotheses by means of OLS regression anal-

ysis on a dataset of Facebook posts retrieved through

the Meta- owned CrowdTangle platform. We show that

the Italian party system converged in terms of EU posi-

tions in the immediate aftermath of Russia's full- scale

invasion of Ukraine. Such a convergence is driven by a

decrease in anti- EU claims rather than an increase in

pro- EU ones; it is, to this effect, a ‘quiet convergence’.

Furthermore, our analysis also confirms that contrary

to the overall trend, RRPs retained the same degree of

Euroscepticism before and after the war started, hence

not converging towards a more Eurosupportive (i.e.

less Eurosceptic) stance.

The remainder of the paper is organised as follows.

Section2 illustrates the paper's theoretical framework

and research hypotheses. Section 3 discusses re-

search design. Section 4 presents the results of our

empirical analysis. Finally, Section5 discusses the pa-

per's main findings and concludes.

2 | THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

AND HYPOTHESES

This paper builds an analytical framework based on

a combination of neo- functionalism (Schimmelfennig,

2018; Schmitter, 1970) and discursive institutionalism

(Schmidt,2008). On the one hand, neo- functionalism

focuses on the role of crises in driving forward European

integration by exposing the mismatch between the

EU's policy requirements (function) and its current insti-

tutional architecture (form). On the other hand, discur-

sive institutionalism investigates how such a mismatch

emerges through discourse, with political actors raising

discursive claims about the inconsistency between ef-

ficient policymaking and the current form of European

institutions.

We thus adopt a discursive neo- functionalist frame-

work (DNF) to examine how, following large- scale

critical events, the functional mismatch pushing the

integration process is ‘constructed’ by means of

ideas and discourse (Wendler & Hurrelmann, 2022).

Consistently with neo- functionalism, the paper iden-

tifies the mismatch between the current institutional

form of the EU and its governance features on the one

hand—that is, the exclusively intergovernmental mode

of governance of the EU's common foreign and security

policy and the decentralised control of resources in the

field of defence (including the absence of an EU- wide

defence system)—and the functional requirements

raised by the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine on the

other—that is, the need for more supranational modes

of governance which do not rely any longer on unanim-

ity rules and veto powers, as well as the centralisation

of military resources at the EU level—as a trigger for

pressures towards further European integration and

supranationalisation of its governance modes. It thus

highlights the role of national actors, such as political

parties, in the dynamics of support and political contes-

tation vis- à- vis the EU.

In drawing discursive institutionalist insights into

our theoretical model, we look at the ideas put forward

CAPATI and TRASTULLI

by political parties on social media, taking the form of

statements/claims in the context of ‘communicative dis-

course’ (i.e. discourse by political leaders to the mass

public) as opposed to ‘coordinative discourse’ (dis-

course among political leaders in the context of poli-

cymaking) (Schmidt,2008). As the literature suggests,

while of itself party positioning on specific policy issues

follows internal deliberations and ideational confronta-

tion between party leaders and rank- and- file members,

parties strategically communicate their positions exter-

nally (De Sio etal.,2017). This requires ‘the expansion

of debates from closed elite- dominated policy arenas

to wider publics, and here the mass media plays an

important role by placing political actors in front of a

public’ (Statham & Trenz,2013, p. 3).

The full- scale Russian invasion of Ukraine consti-

tutes a compelling contextual condition to gauge dis-

cursive neo- functionalist expectations. In his seminal

work on federalism, Riker argued that ‘the aggregation

of resources for war is the primary […] motive for fed-

eration’ (Riker,19 96, p. 12). Building on that, in their

recent research, Kelemen and McNamara (2022)

stressed the EU's uneven political development, char-

acterised by substantial regulatory authority and little

military capacity. They argue that such a ‘dysfunctional

path’ can be explained by the protracted absence of

war pressures or external military threats throughout

the European integration process, which was mainly

driven by economic, market- building dynamics. In this

vein, while market integration was the institutional re-

sult of transnational functional demands and supra-

national entrepreneurship, integration in the defence

sector never took place due to weak security concerns

(as well as the United States’ commitment to the protec-

tion of Europe through NATO). Consequently, to date,

the EU's security and defence architecture still relies on

decentralised, state- based resources and intergovern-

mental decision- making.

Hence, the Russian military aggression on Ukraine

potentially provides a ‘window of opportunity’ for EU

military capacity- building and supranationalisation.

First, the war highlights the functional mismatch be-

tween a large- scale policy challenge and the current

EU's institutional framework. To compensate for such

a mismatch, national political actors such as govern-

ment leaders and political parties are expected to sup-

port delegation of powers in specific policy areas to

the EU level, as they prioritise collective survival over

the protection of fully- fledged national sovereignty. The

prospect of war can thus foster EU defence integra-

tion because a ‘bigger government’ is presumed to be

more effective in fending off an external military threat

(Genschel et al., 2023). The EU structurally holds a

comparative advantage vis- à- vis individual member

states in the mobilisation of common resources to ad-

dress a common security concern thanks to the reali-

sation of economies of scale (Moravcsik,1998). Thus,

war creates a ‘functional demand of war- fighting’ that

should lead to power centralisation at the EU level

(Kelemen & McNamara, 2022, p. 968), which we ex-

pect to be reflected in political parties' discursive strat-

egies at the national level.

Second, as an immediate military threat, we expect

that the full- scale Russian invasion of Ukraine may

have at first forged a sense of belonging to the same

‘community of destiny’ in the member states, fostering

an alignment of interests and identities across the EU

(Genschel etal.,2023). The fear of suffering material

and ideational costs associated with war is expected to

have produced a ‘rally round the flag’ effect in defence

of collective identities and institutions (Mueller,1970).

Mechanism- wise, as both national governments and cit-

izens start perceiving their survival in terms of ‘collective

war- fighting imperatives’ (Kelemen & McNamara,2022,

p. 973), domestic party support for EU centralisation of

security and defence powers should increase. Contrary

to post- functionalist theorising, this contributes to a shift

from ‘constraining dissensus’—a condition whereby,

following the establishment of the 1992 Maastricht

Treaty and the European integration of ‘core state pow-

ers’ (Genschel & Jachtenfuchs, 2 014), the nature and

scope of EU decision- making processes becomes a

matter of domestic political debate beyond a restricted

circle of government officials, hence involving national

parliaments, parties and the mass public—back to ‘per-

missive consensus’—characterised by depoliticisation

and elite- driven inter- state agreements—which is the

neo- functionalist precondition for successful advances

in European integration (Hooghe & Marks,2009).

Based on the above, we specifically turn to the

Italian case and raise the following hypothesis at the

party- system level:

H1. Italian parties discursively converged

towards supportive positions on the EU in

the immediate aftermath of the full- scale

Russian invasion of Ukraine.

While we expect this hypothesis to hold at the party-

system level, the degree of convergence of individual

parties towards supportive discursive claims about

the EU likely varies depending on their ideology. The

literature has extensively shown how party positions

towards the EU are profoundly impacted by political

parties' cleavage origins and consequent deep- rooted

ideologies on both traditional and newer conflicts—

such as capital versus labour or the cultural/ethnic di-

vide between centre and peripheries on the one hand,

and ‘new politics’ issues such as the environment

and civil rights on the other (Inglehart,1984; Lipset &

Rokkan, 1967; Marks et al., 2002). These ideological

orientations hence reflect long- standing commitments

on key domestic issues, with European integration

being assimilated into them. As a consequence, works

A QUIET CONVERGENCE

informed by cleavage theory have hypothesised that

Western European political formations classified as be-

longing to the same party family will share similar posi-

tions towards the EU (Marks & Wilson,2000).

Moreover, existing works have further resorted to

the analytical differentiation between mainstream and

radical parties in investigating what determines party

positions in the EU. Mainstream parties—including

most Social Democratic, Christian Democratic, Liberal

and Conservative parties—are generally much more

supportive of European integration than radical par-

ties on both the ideological left and right, which tend to

share Euroscepticism as a common trait. Historically,

mainstream parties are mostly government parties,

having promoted and contributed to advancements in

European integration for a long time, whereas radical

left and right parties have found an additional dimen-

sion on which to build their political opposition to the

mainstream in anti- Europeanism. Thus, the relation be-

tween a party's positioning along the left–right contin-

uum and its attitude towards European integration can

be visualised as an inverted U- shaped curve, whereby

support for the EU tends to be lower in the peripher-

ies of the political spectrum (in correspondence with

far- left and - right parties) and higher at its centre (in

correspondence of mainstream parties) (Hooghe

etal.,2002; König etal.,2022).

Yet, the nature of far- left and far- right parties'

Euroscepticism should be further qualified. Indeed,

while radical left parties' opposition to the EU is largely

and historically economic in nature, targeting the idea of

a neoliberal Europe and the advancement of European

integration along free- market lines, RRPs' are against

the very idea of EU integration, which is perceived as

a form of supranational delegation undermining na-

tional identity and sovereignty (e.g. Marks etal.,2002;

Taggart,1998).2 As a result, far- left parties tend to mo-

bilise voters against the EU based on economic inse-

curity considerations, such as the negative effects of

integration on domestic welfare systems. On the con-

trary, far- right parties tap into more general feelings of

cultural insecurity in defence of the domestic commu-

nity and against continued supranational deterioration

of national sovereignty (De Vries & Edwards, 2009).

This form of unconditional Euroscepticism has been

integrated into the longstanding ideological appara-

tus of RRPs, which have traditionally been concerned

with the protection of national sovereignty and inde-

pendence vis- à- vis external or supra- national entities,

especially in the realm of ‘core state powers’ such as

security and defence (Genschel & Jachtenfuchs,2014).

In addition to aligning well with their ideological profile,

RRP leaders have also started mobilising Eurosceptic

claims strategically, in order to attract disaffected vot-

ers of mainstream parties (Carrieri,2023). Over time,

Euroscepticism has eventually become one of the most

salient issues for RRPs and their voters and has been

increasingly emphasised and owned by these forma-

tions (e.g. Fabbrini & Zgaga, 2023; Gómez- Reino &

Llamazares,2013).

This relationship between parties' ideological ori-

entation and EU positions has been shown to specif-

ically hold in Italy as well. For instance, the COVID- 19

outbreak was followed by both increased opposition to

(e.g. RRPs) and support for the EU (e.g. centre- left, lib-

eral and centre- right parties) (e.g. Capati etal.,2024).

To that effect, not even an unprecedented health and

socioeconomic crisis such as the COVID- 19 pandemic

was enough to produce a ‘rally round the flag’ effect for

RRPs, which remained vocal in their opposition to the

EU all along.

Based on the above, we hence raise a second re-

search hypothesis as follows:

H2. RRPs are less likely than other parties

to discursively converge towards supportive

positions on the EU in the immediate after-

math of the full- scale Russian invasion of

Ukraine.

3 | RESEARCH DESIGN

In line with our research goal of gauging the effect of

the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine on Italian parties'

EU positions in its immediate aftermath, we develop an

original research design that has the advantages of (a)

being able to measure the full- scale Russian invasion

of Ukraine (through temporal proxies); and (b) being

able to measure party positions on the EU in a con-

tinued timeframe before and after the crisis (through

social media data), which allows us to overcome the

limitations deriving from the more infrequent measure-

ment of party positions in traditional data sources (such

as party manifestos or expert surveys). In terms of tem-

poral framework, the watershed moment in order to

investigate the immediate impact of the 2022 Russian

invasion of Ukraine on domestic political contesta-

tion over the EU is Thursday 24 February 2022. This

day marked the beginning of the fully fledged military

conflict between the Russian and Ukrainian militaries,

both factually and symbolically introduced by Russian

President Vladimir Putin's televised address in the early

hours of the morning. The timeframe of our analysis

was thus centred around this key date. More specifi-

cally, to allow for both the potential effects of this cri-

sis on domestic political contestation over the EU to

unfold and an assessment of their evolution over time,

we collected post- crisis data for a three- month period

after the beginning of the conflict, that is between 24

February and 25 May 2022. Further, as this period of

time can only provide us with information as to politi-

cal parties' positions on the EU in times of crisis, we

also extended our timeframe to before the full- scale

CAPATI and TRASTULLI

Russian invasion of Ukraine by collecting data related

to 1 month before it, that is between 23 January and 23

February 2022. The inclusion of this pre- crisis period

will provide the necessary baseline for the assessment

of parties' EU positions in the wake of the conflict, re-

flecting the changed international context and policy

situation—in this case, in the field of common secu-

rity and defence—in which Italian parties' stances on

the EU are measured (i.e. pre- and post- full scale inva-

sion). Of course, this design choice comes with some

limitations, as the positions of Italian parties on the

conflict may change over a longer time period. Yet, the

shorter- term temporal focus on the first 3 months fol-

lowing Russia's full- scale invasion of Ukraine allows

us to gauge parties' immediate and, hence, ‘genuine’

reaction to this critical event, net of other potentially in-

tervening factors that may influence it in the longer term

(e.g. the development of voter preferences on the war,

the strategic positioning of international alliances and

the EU's own response to the conflict itself).

Spatially, we focussed on the Italian party system:

a substantively relevant case, because of both long-

term and contingent reasons. Indeed, in addition to the

context- specific implications of the Russian- induced

conflict highlighted above, political contestation and

specifically party competition over the EU has become

more and more relevant in recent years, with increas-

ing politicisation of and polarisation over the European

issue in Italy. Indeed, Euroscepticism has become much

more common both amongst Italian voters and parties,

especially during the economic, political, and migration

crises of the 2010s (e.g. Conti etal.,2020). By the same

token, the Eurosupportive camp has also expanded

over time, even with the emergence of parties specifi-

cally devoted to the mobilisation of the pro- EU side of

this divide (e.g. Più Europa). Therefore, this context is

ideal for gauging how political contestation and, more

precisely, party positions concerning the EU changed in

the aforementioned peculiar times of crisis.

To do so, we look at parties' communication on so-

cial media by leveraging data on Facebook posts gath-

ered through Meta's platform for academic research,

Crowdtangle.3 Facebook serves this purpose effectively

as political parties utilise it for communication with the

broader public that is continuous in nature, as opposed

to electoral manifestos. Facebook posts also have the

advantage of being unmediated, providing us with in-

sights into the claims parties intend to advance, rather

than what the news media deem interesting to report

(Horn & Jensen,2023). Furthermore, compared to polit-

ical formations in other European countries, Italian par-

ties are especially active on Facebook: a social media

that lends itself particularly well—for example, com-

pared to Twitter—to discourse and engagement around

topics potentially mobilised from a populist perspective

(e.g. Ernst etal., 2019), such as EU integration.4 Lastly,

previous research has shown that Italian parties tended

to avoid placing significant emphasis on the full- scale

Russian invasion of Ukraine in their 2022 electoral

manifestos as they did not want to commit themselves

to potentially controversial positions in the run- up to the

general election (Trastulli & Mastroianni, 2024). They

thus relied on their social media platforms to discuss

the response to the Ukrainian crisis, thereby increasing

the salience of the EU in their Facebook posting.

For our data to be as representative as possible of

the variety of Italian party positions on the EU, we gath-

ered posts from all formations that were both present

and active on Facebook during our timeframe. This

resulted in the selection of the following 19 parties,

well- representative of the diverse ideological configu-

rations in the Italian party system: Articolo Uno, Azione,

Coraggio Italia, Europa Verde, Fiamma Tricolore, Forza

Italia, Fratelli d'Italia, Italia Viva, Italia al Centro, Lega,

Movimento 5 Stelle, Noi con l'Italia, Partito Comunista,

Partito Democratico, Partito Socialista Italiano (PSI),

Più Europa, Potere al Popolo, Radicali, and Sinistra

Italiana.5 As a result, our dataset comprises a total of

10,641 posts, of which 2731 in the month before the

full- scale Russian invasion of Ukraine and 7910 in the

three subsequent months.

Methodologically, our work was informed by two

relevant approaches: the press- release assumption

(e.g. De Sio etal., 2017; Kreiss, 2016), whereby so-

cial media is employed as a strategic tool by parties

for their political communication towards the general

public; and saliency theory (e.g. Budge,2015; Budge

& Farlie,1983), according to which parties define their

political positions by placing a different amount of

emphasis on different issues. These methodological

premises constitute the basis for the empirical analy-

sis of Italian parties' EU positions through Facebook

posts, which occurred in multiple steps. To start with,

two independent coders performed a claims analy-

sis (Koopmans & Statham, 1999) of Italian parties'

Facebook posts in order to identify the content of their

discursive claims on this social media. We coded the

claim in the Facebook post according to a pre- defined

codebook (see Table A1 in the Appendix) and thus

established whether the claim is or is not on the EU

and, in the former case, whether it supports, opposes

or is unclear with respect to it.6 Incidentally, pro- EU

posts included calls for institutional reforms pointing

to deeper policy integration or the supranationalisa-

tion of decision- making procedures—including in the

field of common security and defence—as well as the

respect for EU values and principles, whilst anti- EU

posts comprised demands for the renationalisation of

policy competences from the EU and the preservation

of national sovereignty. To fully leverage this granular

data, collected at the post level over time and across

multiple parties, we subsequently constructed a time-

series cross- section (TSCS) dataset, where the unit

of analysis is represented by each party for each day.

A QUIET CONVERGENCE

Consequently, this allowed us to build synthetic mea-

sures of Italian parties' posts on the EU issue and their

related position, that is the proportion of posts on the

EU—equating to the salience of the EU issue—and,

more specifically, pro- EU, anti- EU, or positionally un-

clear posts for each party- day combination.

On this basis, we operationalised the variables of in-

terest for our statistical analyses, performed by means

of OLS regression models with panel- corrected stan-

dard errors (PCSE) (e.g. Beck & Katz,1995) and lagged

dependent variables.7 In terms of dependent variables,

we relied on party- day proportion indexes concerning

Anti- EU posts and Pro- EU posts. Our focal variable,

instead, relates to the temporal dimension concerning

before and after Russia's full- scale invasion of Ukraine.

It follows that this War variable is most readily oper-

ationalised through a dichotomous indicator, taking

value (0) before February 24, 2022, and value (1) during

and after this date. Further, to ensure the robustness of

our findings and a complete assessment of how such a

temporal dynamic unfolded, we also provide two addi-

tional operationalisations: an ordinal Months variable,

dividing the timeframe into homogeneous, approxi-

mately 4- week periods (January 23 to February 24,

February 25 to March 27, March 28 to April 27 and April

28 to May 25), and a continuous Date variable.

Of course, several other factors may influence

parties' EU positions, of which some are at the party

level—for example, party size, positions along the

economic left–right and sociocultural dimensions, and

being a populist formation (e.g. Hooghe et al., 2002;

Hooghe & Marks,2009; Kriesi etal.,2012; Mair,2013;

Prosser, 2015; Spoon & Williams, 2017 )—and oth-

ers are at the party- system level—for example, party

system fractionalisation and polarisation (e.g. Arnold

et al., 2012). While the latter do not vary within our

spatial–temporal framework, the former all remain con-

stant for each analysed party and, in the test of H1,

are hence controlled for with the inclusion of party- fixed

effects.

Lastly, to specifically test H2, we interact our focal

predictor with a Party family categorical variable, which

classifies formations as extreme left- wing/communist,

democratic socialist, centre- left/social democratic,

centrist, centre- right/Christian democratic, RRPs, ex-

treme right- wing/neofascist, green, and other. This al-

ternative specification also controls for the Government

status of individual formations, as this constitutes both

an important predictor of parties' EU positions in light

of the Eurosupportive ‘responsibility’ considerations

that apply to governing parties (e.g. Mair,2013; Marks

etal.,2002; Spoon & Williams,2017), and an interest-

ing source of variation within the analysed party fami-

lies. We hence distinguish between parties being in the

opposition of, providing external support to, or partak-

ing in Mario Draghi's government during our selected

timeframe.8

4 | RESULTS

We now move to our empirics. Before delving into

the results of our analysis, our Crowdtangle data on

Facebook posts provides us with interesting descrip-

tive insights into Italian parties' approach to this social

media platform in terms of their presence and strategic

use.

In this regard, as summarised in Table1, Lega ap-

pears as the most frequent user of Facebook for its po-

litical communication by far, accounting for almost three

out of every 10 posts in our dataset (3124 posts). In

conjunction with another leader- centred party, Matteo

Renzi's Italia Viva (1709 posts), these two formations

post almost half of all Facebook output by Italian par-

ties in the analysed timeframe. The only other party

getting closer to posting 1000 times on Facebook is

Movimento 5 Stelle, historically and traditionally con-

nected to the use of the internet and social media as

part of its identity. Further, party size seems to be pos-

itively associated with Facebook usage (i.e. the larger

the party—in electoral terms—the higher the number

of posts), although not without notable exceptions

such as the relatively low number of posts by Partito

Democratico.

Table1 also zooms in on Italian parties' Facebook

posts concerning the EU.9 Salience- wise, on aver-

age, just under 1 out of every 10 posts in our dataset

are thematically connected to the EU. This amount

of salience is not only relevant of itself given the in-

creasing multidimensionality of political contestation in

Western Europe (e.g. Bakker etal.,2018; Steenbergen

etal.,2007) but also points to a continued increase in

relevance over time of the European issue within the

Italian party system in recent years.10 As per Table1,

this trend seems to be mainly driven by the strategic

approach of pro- European mainstream formations from

the centre- left, centre, and centre- right ‘striking back’

(e.g. Carrieri,2021) and emerging amongst the top rel-

ative emphasisers of the European issue, alongside a

few other formations.

At the aggregate level, the Italian party system

emerges as much more pro- (6.38%) than anti-

European (1.62%). At the individual level, this is not only

driven by expected centre- left (Partito Democratico

and PSI), centre (e.g. Più Europa), and centre- right

(e.g. Forza Italia) formations, but is also evident by the

almost complete lack of parties not even once express-

ing pro- EU positions (barring a communist and a neo-

fascist formation). Conversely, individual- level degrees

of Euroscepticism are much lower and about half of

Italian parties never posted anti- EU messages in the

analysed timeframe. Amongst the party families most

prominently expressing anti- EU positions are those to

the left of mainstream centre- left parties, notably the

Partito Comunista; RRPs (such as Fratelli d'Italia and

Lega); and neofascist parties.

CAPATI and TRASTULLI

This descriptive snapshot illustrates a mostly pro-

European Italian party system in a context of increased

EU salience. How did the 2022 Russian invasion of

Ukraine impact this configuration? We probe this ques-

tion empirically through our TSCS data. An initial hunch

is provided by the t- tests reported in TableA4 in the

Appendix, comparing whether the mean values of both

the salience of the EU issue and our dependent vari-

ables on Anti- EU posts and Pro- EU posts are signifi-

cantly different between the analysed pre- and post- war

periods. As evident, the only statistically significant dif-

ference in the mean values of the dependent variables

is the reduction in systemic Euroscepticism, which is

more than halved (from 2.7% to 1.2%) in the post- war

period compared with the pre- war one. No statistically

significant difference between the two periods, instead,

can be detected for the overall salience of the EU or

for pro- European Facebook posts. Though only prelim-

inary, such tests seem to point to an interesting sce-

nario that speaks to our H1, to be further gauged in more

fully- fledged statistical tests. That is, while the Russian-

Ukrainian war does not seem to be associated with a

further politicisation of the EU issue, Italian parties ap-

pear to have converged towards pro- European positions

after Russia's full- scale invasion of Ukraine, more spe-

cifically through a moderation of anti- European claims.

This picture is confirmed by our regression mod-

els. Indeed, in the context of constant salience of

political contestation over the EU pre- and post- war

(see TableA5 in the Appendix), the Russian full- scale

invasion of Ukraine does exert a statistically significant

effect on Italian parties' EU positions. More exactly, as

per Table2, the war is associated with a statistically

significant (at p < 0.001) reduction in Anti- EU posts by

1.5%,11 while as anticipated there is no effect on the

overall amount of Pro- EU posts.12

Furthermore, the alternative operationalisation of

our focal variable (Date and Months) allows us not

only to gauge the robustness of our findings but also to

better understand exactly how the temporal dynamics

concerning the reduction of Anti- EU posts after the be-

ginning of the war unfolds. Indeed, by dividing our time-

frame into two large periods, the focal variable we have

so far employed may wash away a significant amount

of detail concerning the temporal evolution of Italian

parties' EU positions after the war. Such longitudinal

dynamics are hence better clarified by our additional

tests, reported in TableA6 in the Appendix. On the one

hand, the replication employing Date as our focal vari-

able shows how there is a steady decrease of Anti- EU

posts over the entirety of our analysed timeframe, on

a daily basis, while again no significant effect is found

for Pro- EU posts. Yet, it must be noticed how the size

of this daily reduction in Euroscepticism is very small

(0.02%). The main models in Table2 help us comple-

ment this picture: by distinguishing between before and

after the Russian full- scale invasion of Ukraine, this de-

cline in anti- EU sentiment occurs after it and is, indeed,

much larger in size. But how and when, exactly, did

this post- war decrease in Anti- EU posts come about?

TAB LE 1 Information on Italian parties' Facebook posts in the analysed timeframe.

Party Number of posts (as % of N posts)

% of party

posts on EU

% of party anti- EU

posts

% of party pro- EU

posts

Articolo Uno 328 (3.09%) 4.57% 0.30% 2 .74%

Azione 414 (3.90%) 8 .94% 07.7 3 %

Coraggio Italia 178 (1.68%) 5.62% 0 4.49%

Europa Verde 431 (4.06%) 18.79% 3.02% 12.3%

Fiamma Tricolore 20 6 (1. 94%) 3.40% 3.40% 0

Forza Italia 449 (4.23%) 17.5 9 % 0.45% 15 .14%

Fratelli d'Italia 513 (4.8 4%) 3.31% 1.3 6% 0.39%

Italia Viva 1709 ( 16 .11% ) 12.58% 011.23%

Italia al Centro 113 (1.07%) 3.54% 02.65%

Lega 3124 (29. 46 %) 4.58% 2.43% 1.18 %

Movimento 5 Stelle 879 (8.29%) 10. 81% 0.46% 8.65%

Noi con l'Italia 114 (1. 36%) 4.17% 04 .17 %

Partito Comunista 370 (3.49%) 11.6 2 % 10. 54% 0.27%

Partito Democratico 235 (2.2 2%) 2 2 .13 % 02 2.13%

Partito Socialista Italiano

(PSI)

108 (1.02%) 19.4 4% 019.4 4%

Più Europa 389 (3.67%) 20.57% 020.05%

Potere al Popolo 375 (3. 56%) 4.23% 3.97% 0

Radicali 352 (3.32%) 10.80% 09.66%

Sinistra Italiana 286 (2.70%) 9.09% 2.80% 1.75%

Tot a l: 106 41 Average: 9.29% Average: 1.62% Average: 6.38%

A QUIET CONVERGENCE

Our understanding of such temporal dynamics is fur-

ther clarified by the replication employing Months as

the focal variable. That is, Italian parties did not react

instantaneously to this critical event in terms of their

EU stances in this early timeframe, but rather needed

some time to gradually adjust their positions. Indeed,

the results reported in TableA6 show how the statisti-

cally significant and negative effects on Anti- EU posts

are only found in the second and third months after

February 24, 2022, with both the statistical significance

and size of such decrease in Eurosceptic positions in-

creasing with each month passing.

So far, these results could lead us to speculate about

a potential scenario in which, in the context of a largely

Eurosupportive party system, those parties that were

already pro- EU stayed the course, whereas those for-

mations that were more hostile towards the EU tem-

porarily ‘buried the hatchet’, perhaps because of the

gravity of the perceived common security threat to the

EU bloc. Yet, the test of H2 allows us to add nuance

by verifying whether, as posited theoretically, some for-

mations from specific and more ideologically extreme

party families are more constrained in the moderation

of their anti- EU stances than others.

The answer is provided in our regression models in

Table3, where we interact our focal variable War with

the Party family of the analysed Italian formations.13

As evident by this interaction, the post- war decrease

in Anti- EU posts is chiefly driven by Communist par-

ties14 (alongside the Greens15 and, to a lesser extent,

centre- right formations16). Instead, there is no signifi-

cant interaction effect in the case of RRPs (or, for that

matter, neofascist parties), meaning that—differently

from extreme left- wing parties—their degree of anti-

Europeanism does not decrease after the 2022 Russian

invasion.17 We argue that this, in line with our confirmed

H2, is because of the different nature of these parties'

opposition to European integration as such, more thor-

ough, ideational and structural rather than related to

specific policy areas (e.g. social and economic policy in

the case of far- left parties). Lastly, it must be noted how

the interaction between War and Party family bears no

statistically significant result for Pro- EU posts: neither

the Eurosupportive nor the Eurosceptic parties change

their pre- existing approach regarding posts in favour of

the EU after the war. Therefore, in the aggregate, these

results point to a ‘quiet convergence’ in the Italian party

system towards pro- EU positions after the 2022 Russian

invasion of Ukraine, specifically driven by a moderation

of anti- EU discourse on the part of some—but not all

(e.g. RRPs)—traditionally Eurosceptic formations.

5 | CONCLUSION

The full- scale Russian invasion of Ukraine broke out

exactly when the EU started to see the first signs of re-

covery from the economic and social disruption caused

by COVID- 19, creating a new large- scale and supra-

national challenge. While being the latest in a series

of crises faced by the EU in recent years, this conflict

stands out due to its unique characteristics as an exter-

nal and unprovoked shock in the realm of security and

defence policy, potentially carrying existential implica-

tions for the Union and its citizens and hence changing

the international context surrounding the related policy

dilemmas at the national and supranational levels. This

significant crisis drew scholarly attention to changes in

European integration at large, as well as on specific EU

governance mechanisms and policy areas.

Yet, the academic literature has thus far overlooked

the impact of the Russian aggression on Ukraine on do-

mestic politics and party- political contestation along the

EU issue dimension, which is fundamental to steer indi-

vidual member states policy course on EU integration

and may hence carry significant political implications.

With both broader (e.g. the Italy's international colloca-

tion, including vis- à- vis the EU's role in this crisis) and

more specific (e.g. sending weapons to Ukraine) issues

promptly made very salient by the conflict, in this paper

we investigated how EU party positions shifted in Italy

in the immediate aftermath of Russia's 2022 invasion

of Ukraine. Overall, our findings indicate an immediate

convergence of Italian political parties towards sup-

portive stances on European integration in the wake

of the full- scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, driven by

a reduction in anti- EU discursive claims at the party-

system level.

TAB LE 2 War and anti- /pro- EU Italian parties' Facebook posts. Full models.

Anti- EU posts Pro- EU posts

War = Pre- full- scale invasion (reference)

War = Post- full- scale invasion −1.529*** (0.399) 1.066 (0.882)

Party- fixed effects ✓ ✓

Lagged dependent variable 19.24*** −5.609 10.2 9** −3.498

Constant 1.305*** (0.359) 1.378 −1.110

N1860 1860

R20.173 0 .17 5

Note: Panel- corrected standard errors (PCSE) regressions with lagged dependent variable and par ty- fixed ef fects. PCSEs in parentheses.

*p < 0.0 5, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.0 01.

CAPATI and TRASTULLI

At the level of party families, mainstream parties

maintained similar degrees of pro- Europeanism be-

fore and after the conflict, while extreme left- wing and

green parties significantly decreased their discursive

opposition to the EU. Interestingly, anti- Europeanism

did not abate in RRPs, which remained consistent in

their Eurosceptic claims throughout the analysed time-

frame. We argue that, ultimately, this may be down to

the different nature of Euroscepticism of far- left and far-

right parties. As the external threat of the full- scale in-

vasion of Ukraine directly pertains to the policy domain

of common security and defence policy, a moderation of

anti- EU sentiment turned out to be easier for far- left par-

ties, which are traditionally against EU economic and

social policy approaches, rather than for RRPs, which

are instead wary of any further supranational integration

of military powers that the war functionally demands.

Further, Italian RRPs either openly displayed sympa-

thies to Russia (e.g. FdI) or reportedly had close ties

with Russia (e.g. Lega) (e.g. Biancalana, 2023), which

contributes to accounting for the overall lack of modera-

tion in their Euroscepticism as Russia invaded Ukraine.

Of course, our interest in the early party- political re-

action to this critical event vis- à- vis the EU is centred

around short- term response dynamics, which are more

contingent—perhaps even ‘emotional’—and hence un-

affected by the subsequent moderation that governing

responsibility concerns have later brought upon even

RRPs such as Lega within the Draghi government or

Fratelli d'Italia within the current Meloni government

(but in opposition during our timeframe). Yet, our re-

search interest was gauging exactly this ‘genuine’ re-

action of parties, net of other subsequent intervening

factors that may influence it in the longer term (e.g. to

mention but one, the very responsibility concerns that

even RRPs face once they are in government).

Italian parties reacted differently to different large-

scale crises vis- à- vis the EU: whilst they became more

polarised in the face of the health crisis and widespread

social and economic disruption of COVID- 19 (e.g. Capati

etal.,2024), they generally converged towards deepened

EU integration in the face of the common security threat

represented by the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.

We argue that, ultimately, these different reactions may

TAB LE 3 Interaction bet ween War and Party Family and anti- /pro- EU Italian parties' Facebook posts. Full models.

Anti- EU posts Pro- EU posts

War = Pre- full- scale invasion (reference)

War = Post- full- scale invasion −0 .0 0131 (0.00334) 1.721 − 2 .14 4

Party family = Extreme left- wing/communist 11.47*** −2.418 −12.02*** −2.181

Party family = Democ ratic socialist 0.704 −1.0 86 −10.84*** −2 .611

Party family = Centre- left/Social democratic −0.00944 (0.00884) 8.321 −5.829

Party family = Centrist (reference)

Party family = Centre- right/Christian democratic 0.338* (0.146) −5.128 −2.811

Party family = R RPs 1.9 84** (0.721) −11.43*** −2.1 02

Party family = Extreme right- wing/Neofascist 0.765 −1.79 5 −12.02*** −2 .17 0

Party family = Green s 5.769** −1. 835 2.379 −4.099

Party family = Other (Movimento 5 Stelle) 1.519* (0.700) −7.7 8 5 * * −2.929

Post- full- scale invasion# Extreme left- wing/communist −7. 2 7 1* * −2.635 −1.59 7 −2.158

Post- full- scale invasion# Democratic socialist 0.298 −1. 322 −0.649 −2.852

Post- full- scale invasion# Centre- left/Social democratic −0.00639 (0.00778) −2.724 − 6. 814

Post- full- scale invasion# Centrist (reference)

Post- full- scale invasion# Centre- right/Christian democratic −0.343* (0.170) 1.772 −3. 274

Post- full- scale invasion# RRPs −1.0 47 (0.781) −1.871 − 2.181

Post- full- scale invasion# Extreme right- wing/Neofascist 0.114 −1.951 −1.72 1 −2 .14 4

Post- full- scale invasion# Greens −5.370** −1.9 70 −5.371 − 4.602

Post- full- scale invasion# Other (Movimento 5 Stelle) −1.485 (0. 801) 1.485 −3.250

Government status = In opposition (reference)

Government status = E xternal support −0.523 (0.628) −5.696*** −1.66 7

Government status = In government −0.463 (0.626) 0.365 (0.721)

Lagged dependent variable 20.77*** −5.556 12.75*** −3.445

Constant 0.492 (0.627) 12.02*** −2 .170

N1860 1860

R20.169 0.158

Note: Panel- corrected standard errors (PCSE) regressions with lagged dependent variable and par ty- fixed ef fects. PCSEs in parentheses.

*p < 0.0 5, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.0 01.

A QUIET CONVERGENCE

reflect both, on the one hand, the different policy realms

affected by different crises and the related responses at

the EU level expected by parties based on the ideolog-

ical roots of their pro- Europeanism or Euroscepticism.

On the other, they may also reflect the different inter-

national contexts and climate elicited by different crises

(i.e. greater solidarity during the COVID- 19 pandemic,

greater fear during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine)

and against which domestic parties' positional change

vis- à- vis the EU is gauged. At any rate, in turn, these dif-

ferent positional reactions signal the potential for further

EU integration or disintegration to be pursued within the

domestic policy agendas of national governments as a

result of political representation in a party government

model—especially if further large- scale crises were to

occur in the future.

Our paper makes both a theoretical and an empirical

contribution. Theoretically, we show the consistency of

a DNF framework—based on the combination of discur-

sive institutionalism and neo- functionalism—in explain-

ing party competition on the EU following an existential

shock of a military nature. Following neo- functionalist

theorising, our analysis highlights how the full- scale

Russian invasion of Ukraine, immediately framed as an

EU crisis by political leaders in the European Council,

has the potential to push forward European integration

by disclosing the need for collective action in the face of

a common external threat, in turn promoting community-

building and solidarity sentiments within EU member

states. By subsequently integrating discursive institu-

tionalist insights, we show how such pro- integration

attitudes emerge through Italian parties' narratives on

European integration, specifically in the form of claims or

statements about the EU in the context of communica-

tive discourse between those parties and the mass pub-

lic. What we called the ‘quiet convergence’ of national

parties around the EU issue is arguably a contributing

factor behind both the Union's cohesive response to the

Russian war of aggression against Ukraine—including

several restrictive measures on Moscow, the opening

of accession negotiations with Kiev, and the solidaris-

tic welcoming of Ukrainian refugees into the EU's terri-

tory—and steps taken by supranational institutions and

member state governments alike to advance European

integration in the security and energy fields, includ-

ing through the establishment of the European Peace

Facility and the REPowerEU programme. In this light,

our findings largely confirm Jean Monnet's prediction

that ‘Europe will be forged in crisis’ and show how that

is reflected in parties' social media communication strat-

egies at the national level. Empirically, our regression

analysis of Italian parties' Facebook posts, aimed at un-

covering their positions through social media discourse,

sheds light on how EU issues feed back into national

politics, with the capacity to either change or reinforce

pre- existing ideological orientations on European inte-

gration. As the EU grapples with the aftermath of this

crisis, the Italian case serves as a noteworthy example

of how external shocks can reshape the dynamics of

domestic competition and revamp a founding member's

relationship with the European integration project.

Our paper opens several avenues for scholarly work.

First, as our exclusive focus on the single Italian case

constitutes a limitation of our analysis, future research

should extend the investigation concerning the effects

of the Ukrainian crisis on domestic politics to political

contexts with different cleavage structures, levels of

party system fragmentation and polarisation, and dem-

ocratic features. This would allow for gauging whether

our findings hold elsewhere, contributing to the expla-

nation of under which institutional and political condi-

tions, crisis- driven party convergence in support of the

EU is likely to emerge.

Second, similar comparative analyses can further as-

sess our findings on the consequences of the Russian

aggression for domestic politics and party competition

against the effects of other, more or less recent exog-

enous shocks. This is particularly interesting as, based

on recent research, the immediate aftermath of the

COVID- 19 pandemic and the 2022 Russian invasion of

Ukraine conflict seemed to be pulling domestic party

competition over the EU issue in different directions.

Indeed, the former was associated with further politici-

sation and polarisation along this issue dimension (e.g.

Capati etal.,2024), while the latter with a convergence

towards pro- EU stances in the face of unchanged sa-

lience. Why is it that these two major crises are related to

different patterns of domestic party competition over the

EU issue? Is this, as we suppose, ultimately due to the

different nature of the two crises and, hence, the different

positional responses demanded of parties vis- à- vis the

EU? Future research should further delve into this puzzle.

Along these lines, future work should also explore

more contemporary developments concerning the im-

pact of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine on Italian

party competition vis- à- vis the EU. As the full- scale con-

flict has now entered its third year, did this crisis bring

about a persistent change in how Italian parties relate

to the EU, or did their reactions during the immediate

aftermath give way to more traditional stances later on?

Because our paper highlights the political potential of

crises on domestic contestation about the EU and, ul-

timately, national policy orientations on EU integration,

longer- term analyses are needed to understand whether

security and defence crises can lead to structural effects

on parties' EU positions, with important implications for

understanding how the EU project may evolve.

Finally, RRPs have been gaining popular sup-

port over the past few years and currently either hold

government positions in countries such as Italy, the

Netherlands, Slovakia and Hungary, or prominent

opposition standing in the likes of Germany. This is

a consequential trend because, as has been argued

in a vast and consolidated literature, Eurosceptic

CAPATI and TRASTULLI

dissatisfaction decreases loyalty to the EU in national

constituencies, with the potential to set in motion dy-

namics of open contestation of the European project

and, thus, of European disintegration (e.g., Hooghe &

Marks,2009). Hence, in light of our findings, the more

generalised nature of RRPs' opposition to the EU and

their apparent inability to display any degree of conver-

gence towards conciliatory positions on European in-

tegration should be further explored in both ‘ordinary’

and crisis times.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors wish to thank the Executive Editor and

Editorial Assistant of Global Policy for their edito-

rial assistance and the three anonymous referees for

their helpful comments on the manuscript. The paper

was presented on October 17, 2024, in the context of

the ‘European Elections 2024’ workshop at the Italian

Ministry of the Interior (Palazzo del Viminale).

FUNDING INFORMATION

Andrea Capati acknowledges financial support from the

European Union's Horizon Europe project REGROUP

(Rebuilding Governance and Resilience out of the

Pandemic) under Grant no. 101060825. Open access

funding for this article was provided by the University of

Verona under the CRUI- CARE agreement.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT

The authors declare none.

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT

Raw data were generated at CrowdTangle. The em-

ployed dataset and software syntax are available on

request.

ORCID

Andrea Capati https://orcid.

org/0000-0002-2486-567X

Federico Trastulli https://orcid.

org/0000-0001-9232-8860

ENDNOTES

1 With the notable exception of Hooghe etal.,2024, which however

mainly focus on populist and Eurosceptic parties.

2 Of course, far- left parties that also call into question European

integration from a more ‘sovereignist’ perspective have emerged

over time —for example, minor Italian party Patria e Costituzione.

3 As we are interested in party competition, and in order not to

meaninglessly inflate our observations with inappropriate units

of analysis, we solely focus on political parties' official Facebook

pages— not their leaders'. Parties are a more complex entity

than individual leaders and their positions are often the results

of collective decision- making and internal compromise. Hence,

individual leaders' positions cannot be assumed to always and

necessarily correspond to parties' positions on each and every

matter. Incidentally, our data shows that whenever an individual

leaders' position is endorsed by a political formation, the parties'

official page shares the post from the leader's page.

4 This comparability in social media usage by Italian parties be-

tween Facebook and its more direct competitor Twitter (now X)

comes particularly in handy, given the lat ter's recent restrictions

on API access.

5 Due to the low numerosity of their posts, we did not include Centro

Democratico and Patria e Costituzione.

6 As recommended by the methodological literature (e.g. Lombard

et al., 2010), a prior intercoder reliability test was performed on

a random sample of posts constituting 10% of the entire data-

set, which led to satisfactory results (e.g. Cohen's κ = 0.893; see

Tab l e A2 in the Appendix).

7 This choice of method appears most appropriate due to the pres-

ence of issues traditionally associated with TSCS data, namely

panel heteroskedasticity and autocorrelation, as highlighted by

our diagnostic tests.

8 The values of Party family and Government status for each party

are reported in TableA3 in the Appendix.

9 Note that all information about posts concerning the EU is net of

the 35 uncoded posts in our dataset, as in these cases no textual

information could be retrieved by Crowdtangle and, hence, the-

matically coded. Such posts usually consist of videos or other con-

tent posted by parties without any accompanying text information.

10 For instance, previous research showed that about 6% of Italian

parties' Facebook posts were about the EU around the outbreak

of the pandemic (Capati et al.,2024). Notwithstanding the differ-

ent data sources and analysed parties, this level of salience at

the party- system level was already higher than the one measured

through MARPOR data on party manifestos for the 2018 general

election, just below 3%.

11 We have rescaled all dependent variables by multiplying them by

100, so as to allow for more directly intelligible interpretation in

percentage terms.

12 Note that, as a robustness test, we have replicated our main

models by means of panel- data fractional regressions estimated

through a multilevel generalised linear model. As per TableA7 in

the Appendix, these replications confirm our results.

13 The reference category of Party family in this interaction is consti-

tuted by the ideologically central family of centrist parties.

14 While the Communist Party remains largely Eurosceptic, and in

principle against the EU's response to the Russian invasion of

Ukraine in terms of adopting sanctions against Russia and pro-

viding weapons to Ukraine (e.g. ‘While the Draghi government

keeps on pushing for military escalation and sending new and

more powerful weapons to Ukraine, the skyrocketing of military

expenditures and the suicidal politics of [EU] sanctions, the situ-

ation is rapidly worsening for our industries and workers […]’, see

https:// www. faceb ook. com/ 10005 05578 96513/ posts/ 52960 39454

015 31 ), it also becomes much less vocal in its opposition to the EU

following Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

15 The Greens have supported the EU's response to the Russian

invasion of Ukraine in terms of sanctioning Moscow (e.g. ‘I can

only be satised for the largely shared adoption by the European

Parliament of an amendment on EU sanctions against Russia that

I have signed […]’, see https:// www. faceb ook. com/ 10006 44556

49461/ posts/ 35104 51503 87337 ) but have opposed it when it came

to sending weapons to Kiev (e.g. ‘I nd the bellecist drift that our

country is headed for absurd, so much so that they are proposing

to cut VAT for weapons' producers […]’, see https:// www. faceb

ook. com/ 10006 44556 49461/ posts/ 35046 61137 78574 ).

16 Both Forza Italia and Italia al Centro have supported the EU's

response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, including the

most controversial issue of providing military assistance to Kiev

(e.g. ‘Nobody is happy to send weapons, but we must help the

Ukrainian people to help themselves […]’, https:// www. faceb ook.

com/ 10004 44983 76758/ posts/ 51146 01203 47263 ).

A QUIET CONVERGENCE

17 This persistent Euroscepticism is also validated externally by sev-

eral public statements of party leaders such as Giorgia Meloni

(e.g. ‘The EU integration process has betrayed its original spirit

because it put to the forefront  nancial markets and not people,

seeking to level of f people's identities instead of valuing them […]

This Europe does not unite, rather it divides. And we Italians, who

have paid for the EU's choices more than others, should be united

in denouncing the EU's mistakes’, interview to Il Foglio on 13 April

2022, https:// www. ilfog lio. it/ polit ica/ 2022/ 04/ 13/ news/ l- europ a-

secon do- melon i- 39049 15/ ) and Matteo Salvini (‘Italy is able to

govern itself on its own. The EU should rather think about peace

and jobs, not handing out grades’, interview to Huffington Post on

22 May 2022, https:// www. huffi ngton post. it/ polit ica/ 2022/ 05/ 22/

news/ salvi ni_ - 94405 99/ ) during this period.

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(2024) A quiet convergence: The 2022 full- scale

Russian invasion of Ukraine and Italian Parties'

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o r g /1 0.1111 / 175 8 - 5 8 9 9 .13 4 6 6

A QUIET CONVERGENCE

APPENDIX

TAB LE A1 Codebook for claims analysis of Facebook posts.

Coding category Description

Anti- EU posts Posts expressing a desire for less European integration, posts against the EU, explicit attacks against the

EU and related keywords, criticisms of the EU, posts on the idea of ‘the EU is not doing enough’ on a specific

subject, posts against European measures or deeming them insufficient, posts on ‘defending Italy in Europe’,

posts on the idea of national sovereignty as opposed to European integration.

Pro- EU posts Posts expressing a desire for more European integration and related reforms, posts in favour of European

ideas and values, posts on the EU as a source of authority and positively evaluating its approval, Europe as a

benchmark for reforms, critical posts towards eurosceptics, posts in favour of an expansion of the EU's policy

remit, posts in favour of the measures adopted by the EU.

Positionally unclear

posts on the EU

Posts on the EU as merely as a topic and without any clear positional stance, neither supportive nor critical of

it.

Other posts Posts on different topics than the EU.

Missing If no textual information is present in the CrowdTangle dataset.

TAB LE A2 Intercoder reliability tests.

Per cent Agreement 96,98%

Scott's Pi 0.89279596467829

Cohen's Kappa 0.89286774599044

Krippendorff's Alpha 0.89284653261948

Number of Agreements 1028

Number of Disagreements 32

Number of Cases 1060

Number of Decisions 2120

TABLE A3 Values of Party family and Government status per party.

Party Party family Government status

Articolo Uno Democratic socialist Government

Azione Centrist External support

Coraggio Italia Centre- right/Christian democratic External support

Europa Verde Green Opposition

Fiamma Tricolore Extreme right- wing/Neofascist Opposition

Forza Italia Centre- right/Christian democratic Government

Fratelli d'Italia RRP Opposition

Italia Viva Centrist Government

Italia al Centro Centre- right/Christian democratic External support

Lega RRP Government

Movimento 5 Stelle Other Government

Noi con l'Italia Centre- right/Christian democratic Government

Partito Comunista Extreme left- wing/Communist Opposition

Partito Democratico Centre- left Government

Partito Socialista Italiano (PSI) Centre- left External support

Più Europa Centrist Government

Potere al Popolo Extreme left- wing/Communist Opposition

Radicali Centrist External support

Sinistra Italiana Democratic socialist Opposition

CAPATI and TRASTULLI

TABLE A4 T- tests on pre- and post- outbreak of the war mean values of posts on the EU, Anti- EU Posts, and Pro- EU Posts.

Variable

Pre- outbreak of the war mean

(percentage of daily posts by

part y)

Post- outbreak of the war mean

(percentage of daily posts by

part y) Statistical signicance

Posts on the

10.78% 10.0 9% Not statistically significant (Pr(|T| > |t|) = 0.5)

Anti- EU posts 2.7% 1.2 % p < 0 .001

Pro- EU posts 6.9% 7.7 % Not statistically significant (Pr(|T| > |t|) = 0.37)

TABLE A5 War and EU salience in Italian parties' Facebook posts. Full model.

Posts on the EU

War = Pre- outbreak (reference)

War = Post- outbreak −0.631 −1.00 8

Party- fixed effects ✓

Lagged- dependent variable 13.88*** −2.9 61

Constant 4.693** −1. 662

N1860

R20.128

Note: Panel- corrected standard errors (PCSE) regressions with lagged dependent variable and par ty- fixed ef fects. PCSEs in parentheses.

*p < 0.0 5, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.0 01.

TAB LE A6 Date/Months and anti- /pro- EU Italian parties' Facebook posts. Full models.

Anti- EU

posts

Pro- EU

posts

Anti- EU

posts

Pro- EU

posts

Date −0.0237*** (0.00491) −0.0173 (0.0108)

Month = Pre- outbreak of the war (reference)

Month = First post- outbreak of the war −0.671 (0 .4 81) 1. 28 9 −1.0 73

Month = Second post- outbreak of the war −1.3 57 ** (0.494) 0.849 −1. 054

Month = Third post- outbreak of the war −2.174*** (0.486) − 0. 641 −1.0 81

Party- fixed effects ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

Lagged- dependent variable 18.69*** −5.600 10 .19 * * −3.494 18.80*** −5.598 10.06** −3.499

Constant 1057.7*** (219.4) 775.2 (480.0) 1.15 2 ** (0.353) 1.751 −1.09 8

N1860 1860 1860 1860

R20.17 7 0.175 0.176 0 .176

Note: Panel- corrected standard errors (PCSE) regressions with lagged dependent variable and par ty- fixed ef fects. PCSEs in parentheses.

*p < 0.0 5, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.0 01.

TAB LE A7 War and anti- /pro- EU Italian parties' Facebook posts: Robustness test. Full models.

Anti- EU posts Pro- EU posts

War = Pre- outbreak (reference)

War = Post- outbreak −1.099*** (0. 220) 0.219 ( 0.147 )

Lagged dependent variable 1.919* (0.750) 0.718* (0.300)

Party- fixed effects ✓ ✓

Constant −3.853*** −1.0 14 −2.468*** (0.369)

var(_cons[Party]) 9.17e - 3 5 (1.66e - 18) 3.39e- 35 ( 6 .14 e - 19 )

N1098 1667

Note: Panel- data fractional regressions estimated through multilevel generalised linear model. Standard errors in parentheses.

*p < 0.0 5, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.0 01.

A QUIET CONVERGENCE

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES

Andrea Capati is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the

Department of Political Science at Luiss Guido Carli

University. His research interests lie in the institu-

tions and policies of Economic and Monetary Union

(EMU). He has recently published in Comparative

European Politics, Journal of European Integration,

Politics and Governance and European Politics and

Society.

Federico Trastulli is a Postdoctoral Researcher

in Political Science in the Department of Human

Sciences at the University of Verona. He researches

political parties, voting behaviour and the dimen-

sions of political conflict in Italy and Western Europe.

He has published in Perspectives on Politics,

Representation, Italian Political Science Review,

Frontiers in Political Science, among others.

Italian parties and the European Union's response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine: A qualitative content analysis

Article

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Andrea Capati

This paper analyses Italian party positions on the EU's response to the Russo-Ukrainian war, singling out the adoption of sanctions against Russia, the provision of military support to Kiev, enlargement to Ukraine and the welcoming of Ukrainian refugees into the Union's territory as the four main dimension of such a response. The paper draws on the literatures on cleavage politics, the inverted U curve and the differentiated forms of politicisation, thereby testing theory-driven research hypotheses through a qualitative content analysis of Italian parties' Facebook posts in the three months following the outbreak of the conflict, combining an inductive and a deductive approach. The findings show that party families are a good explanatory factor behind Italian party positions vis-à-vis the EU's response to the war outbreak as parties belonging to the same family shared a similar stance on the four dimensions of such a response. On the contrary, the Europeanism/Euroscepticism divide does not explain Italian party positions on the EU's reaction to the Ukrainian conflict as Europeanist parties split over the EU's provision of weapons to Ukraine about as much as Eurosceptic partis split over the adoption of sanctions against Moscow. Finally, the paper shows that policy issues in the EU's response to the war (such as sanctions and arms delivery) were much more salient for and contested by Italian political parties than constitutive issues (such as enlargement and asylum).

Italian parties and the European Union's response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine: A qualitative content analysis

Article

Full-text available

Nov 2024

Andrea Capati

The discursive framing of European integration in EU-wide media: actors, narratives and policies following the Russian invasion of Ukraine

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Jul 2024
Comp Eur Polit

Andrea Capati

This article examines how major EU-wide media discursively framed European integration in terms of prevalent actors, narratives and policy areas in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Based on the combination of theoretical insights from discursive institutionalism and the grand theories of European integration, the article performs a qualitative analysis of textual content in six of the most influential EU-wide media sources as of 2023, taking the form of a competitive theory testing. Challenging the established literature on EU-related national media coverage, it finds that, consistently with discursive neo-functionalism, the Russian military aggression of Ukraine has led to the discursive empowerment of EU supranational actors, most notably the European Commission, and to an increased salience of more European integration and transnational solidarity narratives. This has happened despite the fact that the conflict was mainly framed as falling within the realm of intergovernmental policy areas, such as energy policy, security and defence.

The Russian threat and the consolidation of the West: How populism and EU-skepticism shape party support for Ukraine

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Mar 2024

Support for Ukraine against Russian aggression has been strong across Europe, but it is far from uniform. An expert survey of the positions taken by political parties in 29 countries conducted mid-2023 reveals that 97 of 269 parties reject one or more of the following: providing weapons, hosting refugees, supporting Ukraine's path to European Union membership, or accepting higher energy costs. Where the perceived threat from Russia is most severe, we find the greatest levels of support for Ukraine. However, ideology appears to be far more influential. The level of a party's populist rhetoric and its European Union skepticism explain the bulk of variation in support for Ukraine despite our finding that many strongly populist and European Union-skeptical parties take moderate pro-Ukraine positions when in government.

What's new under the sun? A corpus linguistic analysis of the 2022 Italian election campaign themes in party manifestos

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Sep 2023

In this article, we introduce an innovative approach to examining campaign themes in Italy, by performing an original corpus linguistic analysis of the party manifestos related to the crucial 2022 election. Through its systematicity and flexibility, our approach allows us to gauge theory-driven propositions using a large amount of so far unexplored textual data. As anticipated, the 2022 Italian party manifestos are characterised by a somewhat balanced configuration of emphasis across a variety of themes, of which some are more controversial and others more widely shared among voters and parties. Further, we also corroborate that parties primarily focus on those themes that historically fit them best, ideologically and in terms of perceived competence. Lastly, salient ‘issues of the day’ are differently emphasised by Italian parties, which particularly avoid devoting considerable attention to the highly sensitive Russian-Ukrainian war.

Theorising European integration: the four phases since Ernst Haas’ original contribution

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Apr 2024

Vivien Schmidt

Far left and far right party reactions to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

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May 2024

Andreas Fagerholm

The Russian-Ukrainian war has shattered the European far right. The opposing influences of Steve Bannon and Aleksandr Dugin

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Dec 2023

Nicola Guerra

The EU's Response to the Russian Invasion of Ukraine: Invoking Norms and Values in Times of Fundamental Rupture

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Dec 2023

Giselle Bosse

The European Union's response to the Russian Federation's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has been widely perceived as unprecedented. This article examines how this could be, considering the long track record of disagreement amongst EU member states over foreign policy vis‐à‐vis Russia. It is argued that whilst the Russian invasion had a decisive impact on member states' security threat perceptions, realist explanations of the EU's forceful response encounter limitations: Germany and France, the EU's most influential powers, were not the drivers of the EU's joint actions during the first months following the invasion, as they struggled to redefine their national security interests. Against this background, this article takes a different perspective. It asks in what kind of intersubjective context the EU's initial response became meaningful and rational, allowing for agreement to emerge amongst the member states on a set of unprecedented measures. This article proposes a theoretical approach that takes into account the role of norms, rationalities and speech acts in a changing context and of social interaction therein. It is demonstrated that, given the dramatic rupture following the invasion, the EU's response in 2022 was embedded in, and structured by, a priori understandings and justifications generated by the EU in response to Russia's war against Ukraine starting in 2014, including normative considerations.

European Federalism The Lessons of Past Experience

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Oct 1996

William H Riker

This constitutional and institutional development of the European Community, and federalism in particular, are widely and intensely debated. The issue of federalism has proved to be divisive and misunderstood. This book provides a critical reappraisal of the political, economic, and socio-cultural potential of current federal political-institutional arrangements. It includes both an analysis of their necessary preconditions as well as evaluation of their advantages and disadvantages compared with other forms of state organisation. The authors examine the issue at the level of the Community, the member states, and the states of Central and Eastern Europe reflecting the increasing interdependence and interplay of these three levels; nation states in all parts of Europe influencing only one another and the Community, and being influenced by it. The book concludes with an overall assessment of the federalizing processes at work in Europe, both at the Community and nation state level, and pints out the problems, paradoxes and likely outcomes of these processes.

The Ukraine war and the emergence of the European commission as a geopolitical actor

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