Partisanship Under Geopolitical Threat: A Comparative Analysis of Parties’ Defence Preferences in Europe After The Russian Invasion Of Ukraine

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine is widely framed as a wake-up call for European defence. Nevertheless, the question remains how European national parties’ defence preferences have changed after the war in Ukraine. Understanding national parties’ defence preferences matters because they co-constitute governments in European party-centric democracies, which, in turn, adopt defence policies. One possibility is that parties, regardless of ideology, adopt more militaristic positions and converge on defence policy, following a rally-round-the-flag logic. Alternatively, partisan divisions may persist or even increase due to the growing salience of defence, in line with the dynamics of issue ownership. However, research has yet to systematically examine which of these scenarios has materialized and how international factors, such as a rise in geopolitical threat, impact partisan debates. Hence, this article fills that gap by mapping changes in defence preferences across ten European democracies, chosen for geographic distribution and differing military capabilities (Austria, Belgium, Estonia, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Sweden, and the United Kingdom). We analyse party manifestos between 2010 and 2025 to track shifts in the salience of defence, positional change, and inter-party contestation following the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The results show that heightened geopolitical threat can reconfigure parties’ defence preferences. Regarding defence salience, right-of-centre parties increase their emphasis on defence, whereas left-of-centre parties decrease it. In terms of positions, nearly all parties shift towards a more pro-defence stance, with the exception of radical left-wing parties. Hence, parties diverge in how much they emphasize defence, combined with a convergence on what they ultimately say. These findings help us understand how the European defence ecosystem is being constructed and which hurdles it faces, as defence policy remains dominated by national governments and their constituting parties.