Note: For more information, see the accompanying paper in European Union Politics.
The left panel displays predicted support for Ukraine (vertical axis) for parties in government (light grey line) and parties in opposition (dark grey line) at different levels of populism (horizontal axis). The right panel does the same for opposition to the European Union. The slopes are much steeper for opposition parties than for parties in government. This reveals that populism and EU opposition significantly reduces support for Ukraine, but mostly among opposition parties.
These are striking and even counter-intuitive findings because prior research attributes much of the effect of EU-scepticism and populism to their association with the basic dimensions of political contestation on economic left-right and GALTAN. We find that populism and EU-scepticism are robust in the presence of these ideological controls.
Our study was completed in the spring of 2023, after the coldest months of winter in Europe but prior to Ukraine’s summer counter-offensive. Two years after Russia’s full-scale invasion and war against Ukraine, party-based support for Ukraine has likely declined somewhat since our survey. This makes it all the more important to understand what drives support (or its absence) for Ukraine among the political parties of Europe. The recent reversal of Robert Fico’s opposition to arming Ukraine upon attaining the Prime Minister’s office in Slovakia suggests that there is merit to our argument about the moderating effect of government participation.
For more information, see the authors’ accompanying paper in European Union Politics
Note: This article gives the views of the authors, not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy or the London School of Economics. Featured image credit: CC-BY-4.0: © European Union 2023– Source: EP
Source link : https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2024/03/21/how-populism-and-eu-scepticism-shape-party-support-for-ukraine/
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Publish date : 2024-03-21 07:00:00
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