Party competition during COVID-19: Issue dimensions and populism in the European Parliament

The COVID-19 pandemic constitutes an exceptional crisis which required immediate reactions from political decision-makers, including the European Parliament. While the dominant pattern of conflict in the EP has been for a long time the economic left-right dimension or the pro/anti-European Integration dimension, it is less clear whether party behavior in the EP is fundamentally different structured with regard to COVID-19. Moreover, there is little systematic research on the question of how different party families – including populist and radical right parties – have reacted to the COVID-19 crisis. Did parties “rally around the flag” by showing higher levels of agreement with government? And if so, was that a short or long-term response? Using a large dataset of all roll-call votes from the European Parliament in 2020, our analysis explores party position taking before and during the pandemic, including votes on COVID and non-COVID issues. Preliminary findings show that “old” issue dimensions still hold during COVID, as well as the radical right parties’ tendency to have lower levels of agreement with government compared to other parties.