When ideology meets geopolitics: party positions towards Russia in EU member states

Abstract

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine transformed the European Union’s relationship with Russia into a central issue of foreign and security policy. Although the EU and its member states moved broadly toward containment, disagreement over how European countries should approach Russia has persisted within national party systems. This thesis examines whether parties’ preferred strategic approaches toward Russia are structured by party-level ideology, country-level geopolitical vulnerability, and their interaction. Party preferences are conceptualized along an engagement-containment spectrum, ranging from cooperation with Russia to countering Russian aggression. The study uses the 2024 Chapel Hill Expert Survey and analyses 236 parties across 26 EU member states through multilevel linear models. The findings show that most variation occurs within countries, although country-level differences remain meaningful. At the party level, position on European integration is the strongest and most robust predictor: the more Eurosceptic parties are relative to their domestic competitors, the more likely they are to prefer a more engagement-oriented approach toward Russia. At the country level, geographical exposure to Russia is associated with a more containment-oriented baseline, especially in countries bordering Russia. Distance to Russia also conditions ideological structuring: the difference between more pro-European and more Eurosceptic parties is larger in geographically closer contexts and weaker in more distant contexts. Bordering countries also show strong ideological structuring, but this operates alongside a higher general containment baseline rather than simply following the same distance gradient. Energy dependence does not show a clear general baseline effect, but in more energy-dependent countries, the gap between more pro-European and more Eurosceptic parties becomes larger. The thesis concludes that party preferences toward Russia are shaped by ideology, while geopolitical context shapes both national baselines and the expression of ideological differences.