Toxic friend? The impact of the Russian invasion on democratic backsliding and PRR cooperation in Europe

Abstract Following the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the ‘democratic backslider’ parties in Hungary (Fidesz) and Poland (Law and Justice) took differing stances on Russia, bringing their positions on the Rule of Law (RoL) conflict and within the broader alliance of Populist Radical Right (PRR) parties into question. Building on and advancing the theoretical framework of democratic backsliding and PRR party cooperation, this article assesses the impact of exogenous shocks triggered by external authoritarian actors on these types of collaborations. A detailed examination of the voting patterns of Fidesz, Law and Justice and other PRR parties in the European Parliament (EP) is undertaken, and their stances towards Russia and the RoL conflict before and after the invasion are weighed. The findings show that the invasion did not influence the dynamics of democratic backsliding. Despite the rhetoric, it actually brought Fidesz and Law and Justice closer together. While the attack led to a convergence of assertiveness towards Russia among the PRR parties, the Putin regime remains a divisive issue within the PRR family. The different positions towards Russia did not affect the support of PRRs for the backsliders.

Since the invasion, Hungary and Poland, two backsliding states ruled by Populist Radical Right (PRR) parties, took conflicting positions. The Hungarian Civic Alliance (Magyar Polgári Szövetség/Fidesz) and the Polish Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość/PiS) parties diverged on questions of sanctions against the Putin regime, military and financial help for Ukraine and the perception of Russia as a military threat. Consequently, while Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán tried to walk a middle path between the EU and Russia, the Polish government became one of Kyiv's most vocal advocates. Since both parties cooperate within EU structures in a backsliding coalition (Holesch and Kyriazi 2022), protecting each other in the Rule of Law (RoL) conflict with the EU, their conflicting positions could compromise the future of the alliance (Jaraczewski and Theuns 2022).
Both parties are also key players in the unification effort of PRR parties in the European Parliament (EP). 1 In the past, some of the PRR parties -especially Fidesz and the French National Rally -were Putin's 'strange bedfellows' (Polyakova 2014: 36), which helped spread Russian anti-democratic and illiberal narratives in the EU (Golosov 2020). After the Russian aggression in 2022, other far-right parties, such as PiS and Fratelli d'Italia (FdI, Brothers of Italy) reacted with hostility to the invasion. The far-right may have come to view the Putin regime as a 'toxic friend' , prompting a need for a reassessment of the Russian influence.
Building on and advancing the theoretical framework of democratic backsliding and PRR party cooperation, this article examines the influence of an external authoritarian actor, such as Russia, on the condition of democracy in the EU. Our examination focusses not only on the long-term effects, but primarily on the outcomes resulting from the recent Russian aggression. Considering the EU as a multi-level policy, we define political parties as critical strategic actors whose between-party power dynamics can explain crucial patterns of democratic backsliding 2 and PRR cooperation. Due to its importance, we examine the engine of democratic backsliding, the Fidesz-PiS coalition, without neglecting the cooperation with other PRR parties. In detail, we conduct this analysis by examining the voting behaviour of Fidesz, Law and Justice and other PRR parties in the EP, focussing on two issues: their assertiveness towards Russia and the RoL conflict.
Evidence gathered from the Roll Call Votes (RCVs) of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) from July 2019 to June 2022 shows that the Russian influence did not break the backsliding coalition. Specifically, considering assertiveness towards Russia, we find that the voting behaviour of Fidesz and PiS did not, as widely assumed, diverge after the invasion but instead converged due to Fidesz's increasing assertiveness. Also, contrary to some commentators' claims about the 'end of the affair' between Fidesz and PiS or the 'end of the Budapest-Warsaw axis' (Coakley 2022;Jaraczewski 2022;Przybylski 2022;Tamma 2022), both parties have maintained similar voting patterns in the RoL conflict, and still support each other.
Considering the broader unification effort of the far right, these parties, taken together, became slightly more assertive towards Russia after the invasion, mainly due to a shift among the previously non-assertive parties from the Identity and Democracy (ID) political group of the EP. However, stances on Russia can still be considered a wedge, which makes the unification of all PRR parties in times of war, and probably for some years thereafter, unlikely. Finally, due to the fact that governments and parties might have multifaceted approaches to international issues, defend their interests and build coalitions correspondingly, the Russian aggression did not influence PRR voting on the RoL questions, as they still widely supported the backsliders.
This article makes significant contributions to the discussions on democratic backsliding and the authoritarian backlash across several strands of literature. First, by examining how different levels of assertiveness towards Russia affect the votes (and not merely rhetoric) of PRR parties, we advance the theoretical understanding of the phenomenon of external influences on backsliding cooperation in the EU. Second, our work provides additional insights into the collaboration between PRR parties, both within and outside EU institutions. Additionally, by examining the external 'shadow' of Russia and the effects of its invasion, we contribute to the authoritarian diffusion literature by explaining the influence of autocracies on the EU's condition of democracy. Finally, it also offers a methodological contribution by highlighting the advantages of including abstention and non-voting in EP voting behaviour analyses.
We gather these contributions in six sections. After this introduction, we discuss the theoretical background to our study. The subsequent section develops the hypotheses, followed by a description of the data. We subsequently present our empirical findings on the roll-call voting patterns, considering the assertiveness towards Russia and the Rule of Law conflict. Finally, our conclusion discusses the implications of our study for democratic backsliding and PRR cooperation in Europe and provides suggestions for future research.

Exogenous threats to democracy
At least since Gourevitch's (1978) seminal work, it has been widely acknowledged that international factors and domestic politics are strongly interconnected and should be examined concurrently. External influence can be assessed by its outcomes but also by examining interactions between domestic and external actors (Grimm 2015). While the research on democratic backsliding is still evolving, and no systematic theories of this phenomenon exist (Waldner and Lust 2018), its occurrence is typically attributed to domestic factors such as executive aggrandisement (Bermeo 2016) or growing partisan polarisation (Haggard and Kaufman 2021). Only recently have scholars gradually incorporated external influence as a factor of interest in their research (Hyde 2020;Meyerrose 2020).
Even less has been written on the impact of authoritarian actors on backsliding cooperation. Besides China and Saudi Arabia, scholars have predominantly highlighted Russia as an authoritarian state that seeks to degrade democracy. Geography matters, and empirical evidence shows that the Putin regime was able to weaken democratisation through extensive ethnic, economic, geopolitical, and military links with the post-Soviet states (Cameron and Orenstein 2012). Especially in Central Asia, Russia acted as a regional hegemon using military interventions or threats, financial support for similar governments, norm diffusion through regional organisations and media or economic blackmail (Grimm 2015;Jackson 2010;Tolstrup 2009). Lately, Russia's authoritarian shadow has increasingly connected with its aggressive foreign policy in the immediate EU neighbourhood with its interventions in Georgia (2008) and Ukraine (2014)(2015)(2016)(2017)(2018)(2019)(2020)(2021)(2022)(2023).
At least since the 2010s, the Putin regime started openly contesting the EU, seeing its promotion of democracy as a potential threat. We find growing Russian influence in EU member states, for example, in countries such as Hungary and Cyprus (Orenstein and Kelemen 2017). Russia and its ruling party, United Russia, also created authoritarian linkages with the European populist parties through participation in various networks (Futák-Campbell and Schwieter 2020). While the Putin regime used these links to spread anti-democratic propaganda, hoping to undermine the EU, the PRR parties gained financial support and global recognition (Golosov 2020;Krekó et al. 2015).
Authoritarian actors can also trigger exogenous shocks, directly and indirectly affecting domestic democratic development. For example, research shows that the second and third waves of democratisation started after the end of the Second World War and the end of the Cold War (Huntington 1993). Wars can be considered 'turning points' (Widmaier et al. 2007: 747), which also have lasting consequences on different power relations between external and domestic actors.
Up to 40 states (including China and India) refrained from supporting the UN General Assembly motion to condemn Russian aggression towards Ukraine in March 2022. Even if there were no European countries on that list, and despite a relatively strong and united reaction by the EU to the aggression, both the Hungarian and the Polish governments instrumentalised the war to consolidate power through the 'rally around the flag' effect (Mueller 1973), which helped them to continue implementing illiberal policies. Moreover, in the Polish case, PiS tried to convince the Commission not to apply EU sanctions due to RoL violations, as Poland unconditionally helped Ukrainian refugees fleeing the war.

Democratic backsliding and the rule of law conflict in the EU
Internal autocratisation processes that lead to a full-fledged autocracy are called 'democratic breakdown' (Stepan and Linz 1978: 1) or 'democratic collapse' (Diskin et al. 2005: 291). Democratic backsliding, however, is not a radical break but rather an irregular series of incremental actions resulting in a diminished form of democracy (Waldner and Lust 2018). The weakening or abolition of any institutional bodies is usually state led, with the ruling parties using executive aggrandisement or subtle strategic manipulation of elections (Bermeo 2016).
The breadth and depth of democratic backsliding in the world are contested, depending on the definition of democracy used and its measurement (Haggard and Kaufman 2021;Jee et al. 2022). Most studies agree that the backsliding of democracy went exceptionally far in Hungary and Poland (e.g. Cianetti and Hanley 2021). 3 These practices in both states are usually described in terms of attacks on the RoL and the EU's liberal democratic institutions, which are defined by Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) (Bozóki and Hegedűs 2018;Sadurski 2019).
Exogenous factors fostering democratic backsliding are relevant during two phases: the grip on power and persisting with a backsliding trajectory. Considering the former, two international crises helped the backsliders get into government. The deep economic recession after the 2008 global financial crisis was one reason for Fidesz's electoral win in 2010 (Buzogány 2017). In Poland, PiS responded to the European 'refugee crisis' of 2015 with an ethnopopulist strategy based on the defence of tradition, nation, and religion, which helped PiS to win that year's presidential and parliamentary elections (Vachudova 2021).
When examining backsliding continuity, the EU's role as a multi-level polity, which provided both legitimation and cohesion funding (Bozóki and Hegedűs 2018), and the limitations of its judicial mechanisms (Blauberger and Kelemen 2017) have been found to be relevant. In addition, the Commission was reluctant to punish backsliders, as it internalised a non-coherent definition of democracy (Oleart and Theuns 2022). An essential element in maintaining a state on a backsliding track is the ruling party's cooperation with other like-minded parties in the EU. Scholars have identified friendly partisan politics towards Fidesz within the European People's Party (EPP) while analysing Hungary (Kelemen 2020). The most developed cooperation in the EU is the Hungarian-Polish backsliding coalition in the Council, where Fidesz and PiS have restricted the EU's capacity to impose Article 7 sanctions on these states (Holesch and Kyriazi 2022).
MEPs from PRR parties have previously supported the governing backsliders (Meijers and van der Veer 2019; Chiru and Wunsch 2023), even though, due to their low numbers, their support was somewhat symbolic. Nonetheless, as PRRs are winning elections, e.g. Fratelli d'Italia in the parliamentary elections in Italy in September 2022, and joining the Council, the weight of PRRs is changing and worth closer analysis.
The decisions in both fields examined here, the RoL conflict and aspects of Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), often happen behind closed doors in the Council, which hides most mechanisms. Empirically more convincing is the analysis of voting behaviour in the EP, which gives the relevant actors more space for manoeuvre. The EP can not only exert influence through debates or the adaptation of resolutions in the CSFP (Raunio and Wagner 2020) but also in questions of democratic backsliding, as the EP is one of the most appropriate arenas to apply social pressure (Meijers and van der Veer 2019).

Cooperation of PRRs in the European Parliament
Partisanship patterns are more visible in the EP than in the Commission or the Council (Lindberg et al. 2008), and parties' cooperation in the EP has been well examined. In general, scholarship has focussed on different voting dimensions based on roll-call voting data. It has identified a left-right dimension (Hix and Lord 1997), the GAL (green/ alternative/libertarian) vs TAN (traditional/authoritarian/nationalist) dimension (Hooghe et al. 2002) or an EU integration dimension (Roger, Otjes and van der Veer 2017), as that determining the voting behaviour of MEPs.
MEPs' voting behaviour is multi-faceted as they must balance different voter 'sensitivities' , their national parties, and their European Party Groups (EPGs) (Chiru and Stoian 2019;Mühlböck 2012). Nonetheless, the largest EPGs, such as EPP or Socialists and Democrats (S&D), show high levels of party congruence (McElroy and Benoit 2010). While EP coalitions among these actors tend to be around policy, once established, they are quite constant over time (Hix and Høyland 2013). This is different with PRRs, whose broader collaboration in the EP has been relatively deficient (Brack 2017). PRRs tend to block each other regarding specific policy reform processes (Falkner and Plattner 2020). They are ambivalent in their stances and can mix soft and hard rhetoric on EU-related issues (Heinisch et al. 2021). PRRs usually conduct 'respectability' calculations at home when choosing coalition strategies (McDonnell and Werner 2018: 747).
The fragmentation of PRRs into different groups within the EP is another caveat to stronger cooperation. In the EP, Fidesz was a member of the EPP from 2000 but was suspended from membership of the EPP party alliance in March 2019. Fidesz left the EPP Party Group to avoid expulsion in March 2021. PiS belongs to the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) Party Group, while most other PRRs are part of the Identity and Democracy Group.
Other essential differences exist between Central and Eastern European PRRs and Western PRRs. While the former are net recipients of EU funding and depend on EU money for social spending, protectionism and state interventionism (Buštikova 2018), the latter resist the transfer of funds through the EU to the poorer East (Diermeier et al. 2021). Combined with a nationalist spine, all these factors make PRR coalitions inherently unstable and volatile (Heinisch et al. 2021) and can lead to sudden changes in their voting behaviour.
At the same time, we have seen a never-ending and permanently failed unification effort of PRRs since the 1990s (Fieschi 2000;Startin 2010). The latest unification wave started before the Russian invasion, when in July 2021 in several European capitals, PRR leaders simultaneously signed a document calling for deep reform of the EU (De la Baume 2021). Most of the signatories (but without, e.g. Finns Party and Danish People's Party) met at networking events in Warsaw (December 2021) and Madrid (January 2022). If successful, the unification of the PRRs would create the third most substantial party group in the EP in the ninth legislature (2019-2024), which would then be able to influence policy decisions in critical fields.

Different levels of backslider assertiveness towards Russia
Long-term authoritarian Russian influence and its full-scale invasion of Ukraine (as an exogenous shock) put these different levels of PRR rapprochement to the test. While Fidesz and PiS cooperate closely in the EU, they are vastly divided in terms of cooperation with the Putin regime. Taking history into account, we might expect the opposite, as both states had several times been victims of Russian or Soviet Union aggression. The democratic beginnings between 1989-1991 in both states started with the withdrawal from the Soviet/Russian sphere of influence. Viktor Orbán made a career out of his criticisms of the failing Soviet Union (Buzogány 2017).
However, in 2014, Fidesz started a Russia-friendly foreign policy under the so-called 'Eastern Opening' (Végh 2015: 47). In the same year, Hungary signed a contract with Russian Rosatom on the Paks II Nuclear Power Plant. Russia financed the project with a 10 billion Euro loan. Considering its gas and oil dependency on Russia, Hungary was already well above the EU median in 2014, and these numbers have risen since (Harper 2022). Further, during the first Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014, while condemning Russia's annexation of Crimea, the Fidesz government emphasised its impartiality in the Ukrainian-Russian conflict. When Orbán advocated building an 'illiberal democracy' in Hungary, he referred, among other things, to Russia as a successful illiberal model (Orbán 2014). All these factors led to the diminutive description of Hungary as Putin's 'Trojan horse' in the EU (Müller 2014: 1).
Even though the similarity of national-conservative ideas, such as nation and religion, or the illiberal playbook, such as the attack on LGBTIQ + rights, suggest ideological proximity not only between Fidesz and United Russia (Ambrosio, 2020) but also between United Russia and PiS, the Polish governing party has an entirely different level of assertiveness towards Russia than Fidesz (Varga and Buzogány 2021). For centuries, Russia has been considered the greatest threat to the Polish nation (Turkowski 2022). Since the first Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014, both main parties, Civic Platform (Platforma Obywatelska) and PiS, have developed a critical stance towards Russia. Since the death of Polish president Lech Kaczyński in an air crash in 2010 near the Russian city of Smolensk, PiS party leader Jarosław Kaczyński has accused the Putin regime of the murder of his twin brother. Around this event, he constructed a cult with religious characteristics (Szeligowska 2014), which became a tool for fuelling domestic political conflict and a mobilising force for the PiS voters (Markowski 2016). Since then, anti-Putinism has become an essential aspect of the PiS party ideology. Poland, particularly under PiS rule, also took a different direction in its energy policy. As it was widely dependent on the Russian energy supply, it started diversification measures in 2014 to reduce that reliance -in line with the European Energy Union framework (Harper 2022).
Different levels of authoritarian penetration and energy dependency can be seen as an important wedge, which, when hit with an additional exogenous shock such as the Russian invasion, might be expected to weaken cooperation. Historical evidence and recent events might lead us to expect such a pattern. During the first Ukraine crisis in 2014, PiS, at this time in opposition, reacted harshly to Orbán's approximation to Russia. Moreover, after Putin visited Orbán in Budapest in February 2015, Kaczyński refused to meet Orbán in Poland, indicating Orbán's lack of European solidarity (Bielecki and Giziński 2015). As a result, the rapprochement between both illiberal parties has been frozen.
After the recent invasion of Ukraine in 2022, we discover the same patterns. In an interview after the invasion, Orbán defended Russian security concerns due to possible NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) enlargement. He claimed that Poland would like to move the alliance's Eastern borders up to the Russian borders (Mandiner 2022). Furthermore, he made Hungarian non-involvement in the war the main plank of his successful electoral campaign in the first part of 2022. The Hungarian Prime Minister also asked for an independent investigation to decide whether Russia was responsible for war crimes in Bucha (Nepszava, 2022).
After Orbán's statements about Bucha, the reactions of leading PiS politicians put in doubt how far Hungary might remain a partner for Poland. Kaczyński said: 'If Orbán does not see the crimes, he should go to an eye doctor' , adding that 'further cooperation with Hungary is impossible unless Hungary's approach to Russia's aggression changes' (Perszon 2022: 1). As a result, the Polish government did not congratulate Orbán on his victory in the parliamentary elections in April 2022, and the re-elected Hungarian Prime Minister refrained from his traditional first visit to Warsaw. In his July 2022 speech in Baile Tusnád, Orbán said that cooperation with Poland had experienced a deadlock as Poles felt that the Ukrainian war was their war, which they wanted to fight against Russia (Orbán 2022). Following our theoretical discussion, the historical evidence, and the recent rhetoric of both party leaders, we formulate the following hypotheses: H1: In EP votes related to assertiveness towards Russia, Fidesz MEPs vote in a non-assertive way, while PiS MEPs vote more assertively.
H1a: The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 exacerbated this divergence.

The influence of the invasion on the backsliding coalition
While both parties are divided over the issue of relationships with Russia, they have aligned policies in their ongoing conflict with the EU. Both parties collaborated during the 2015 'migration crisis' within the Visegrád Group (V4), supporting each other with respect to refugee relocation quotas (Braun 2020). They also rejected the Banking Union (Mérő and Piroska 2016) and opted out of the European Public Prosecutor's Office (Csehi 2023). Furthermore, they are cooperating in the RoL conflict, where both governments defend themselves with a veto before the Article 7 proceedings, and PiS copies Fidesz's backsliding policies, such as those attacking the judiciary, media freedom, or the election process, and helps Hungary with internal legitimisation (Holesch and Kyriazi 2022;Pirro and Stanley 2022). Both parties have also cooperated to prevent the 'RoL conditionality' , which blocks EU funding in cases of corruption in EU member states (European Court of Justice 2022; Łacny 2021).
When, after the 2022 Ukraine invasion, the Hungarian government under Fidesz lived up to its name as Russia's 'Trojan horse' , it became widely isolated in the EU. However, the opposite could be observed in the relationship between the EU and Poland, which became a model country for some member states in handling the war. Poland made an enormous effort to receive millions of Ukrainian refugees and tried to lead the EU's joint action against Russia. In June 2022, the Commission and Council 'rewarded' this by approving its national programs in the Next Generation recovery funding framework (Council 2022), while putting it on hold for Hungary. Also, despite creating the foundation for starting 'RoL conditionality' against both member states, the Commission ultimately triggered it only for Hungary. Some observers went so far as to suggest that the invasion had weakened the illiberal axis, which could mean a return of Poland to 'Europe's democratic fold' (Kuisz and Wigura 2022: 1).
However, as the shared interest of defending themselves vis-à-vis the Commission is key for democratic backsliding in both countries and the connections developed between them in the matter of the RoL conflict are far-reaching, we argue that the Russian invasion did not influence PiS and Fidesz MEPs votes on RoL, as both governments would rather not link these issues. Besides that, they have maintained amicable relations regarding the RoL and more confrontational positions regarding assertiveness towards Russia since 2015. Therefore, while the invasion certainly pushed Polish-Hungarian relations to a new low, it did not alter their tactical cooperation over the RoL (Szczerbiak 2022), and their relationship might persist due to their shared commitment to dismantling it. Consequently, we formulate the following hypotheses:

The Putin regime and PRRs' unification
Besides examining the influence of Russia on EU member states, the literature also focussed on Russian connections to far-right parties (Polyakova 2014;Umland 2017). 4 Since the 2010s, the Dutch Party voor de Vrijheid (PVV), French National Front, Austria's Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (FPÖ) and the German Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) have sought to have the Putin regime as an ally (Futák-Campbell and Schwieter 2020). Russia provided financial support to many of them, with the financing of the National Front being the most well-known case (Orenstein and Kelemen 2017).
In general, before the Putin regime invaded Ukraine in 2014, European parties paid little attention to Russia and mostly had positive views (Onderco 2019). Putin sympathisers can be found across different (left and right) party families (Snegovaya 2022). Considering the votes in the EP between 2004 and 2012, the EP's stance towards Russia was everything but unified. MEPs' voting positions towards Russia were determined by their partisan memberships, while the influence of nationality stayed minimal (Braghiroli 2015). Most PRRs have shown low assertiveness towards Russia, e.g. the ENF (Europe of Nations and Freedom) group voted in 93 per cent of examined cases to protect Russian interests (Braghiroli 2015).
Between 2014-2019, PRRs were much more divided during EP votes than the members of other party groups. However, the differences became smaller when the vote was divided between PRR parties from the 'East' and 'West' , e.g. in questions of economic relations with Russia (Diermeier et al. 2021). Besides that, large FDI inflows from Russia to EU member states increased the likelihood of MEPs voting against policies supporting Ukraine (Norrevik 2021).
Recent historical evidence from official statements and the cooperation of PRRs within networking events shows that divisions over Russia have hindered unification efforts. For example, shortly before Russia's invasion of Ukraine, PiS organised a far-right unification meeting in December 2021. In addition to the two governing backsliders, some Western PRRs, such as the French Rassemblement National (RN), the Italian Lega, Fratelli d'Italia and Spain's Vox, were invited. The meeting revealed deep-rooted discrepancies over growing Russian-Ukrainian tensions, with RN leader Marine Le Pen arguing that Ukraine belongs to Russia's sphere of influence.
At the next meeting, held in Madrid at the end of January 2022, Russia's aggression was already tangible. Although the Polish Prime Minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, forced through a Russia-critical reference in the conclusions, Marine Le Pen did not sign the declaration, publishing an alternative version without the phrase critical of Putin (Bielecki 2022). Moreover, Orbán visited Putin in Moscow just the next day. The leaders of Fratelli d'Italia, Giorgia Meloni, and of Lega, Matteo Salvini, did not attend this meeting. Furthermore, their positions were conflicting. While Salvini had strong connections to Russia in the past (Futák-Campbell and Schwieter 2020), Meloni positioned her party during the 2022 electoral campaign as firmly anti-Putin (Roberts and Leali 2022).
While these meetings and statements have revealed a division over Russia among PRRs, do they withstand empirical scrutiny? Did the Russian aggression produce any shifts in the voting behaviour of MEPs from these parties? Preliminary evidence suggests that, after the invasion, there is more consensus in the EP on the issue of Russia, with some parties traditionally more accommodating towards Moscow having moderated their positions (members of ID among them) (Hix 2022

The influence of the invasion on RoL voting in the EP
Even though it is not only PRRs that pursue democratic backsliding -see the Romanian Social Democrats (Iusmen 2015) or the case of Bulgaria (Rone 2023) -and not all PRRs attack the RoL and the institutions of liberal democracy, the actors engaged in these actions and those pushing the PRR unification process broadly overlap (Chiru and Wunsch 2023). Compared to Eastern Europe, we find few episodes of democratic backsliding in Western Europe, as not many parties in power have sought to yet backslide a Western EU member state. Nonetheless, the inclusion of the FPÖ in the governing coalition in 2000 led to unilateral sanctions of the EU-14 against Austria and refinement of the Article 7 proceedings (Sadurski 2010). We also find other episodes of far-right co-rule in Western EU member states, such as Italy, e.g. with the most recent win of Fratelli d'Italia in September 2022.
When examining the voting of European parties and their stand on the backsliding question in the EP, scholars found some differences within the EPP when Fidesz was still a member (Herman et al. 2021). Cooperation of PRRs was detected only in EPGs, but even there, important voting discrepancies on the RoL question existed (Chiru and Wunsch 2023). Other analyses of MEPs' replies to democratic backsliding in Poland and Hungary revealed that parties with traditional-authoritarian-nationalist (TAN) ideological positions reduced the importance of democratic backsliding and voted against sanctions for Hungary and Poland (Meijers and van der Veer 2019). Even if democratic backsliding did not act as a catalyst for PRRs' unification in the EU, certainly these parties are 'sympathetic to backsliders irrespective of their orientation, for both ideological and strategic reasons' (Chiru and Wunsch 2023: 67). Given that the convergence of PRRs regarding Euroscepticism is high (Caiani 2018: 573;Santana et al. 2020), and it is through these lenses that PRRs see the conflict over RoL with the EU, we do not have reason to believe that the Russian invasion should affect their positions. Consequently, we hypothesise that:

Data
We examine these hypotheses by analysing the voting patterns in the EP between 2019 and 2022. Using data from Vote Watch EU (2022), we have developed original measures of 'defence of RoL' and, following Hix (2022), 'assertiveness towards Russia' from all available Roll Call Votes (RCVs) in the EP from the start of the ninth parliamentary term in July 2019 until June 2022. 5 From more than 13,000 votes, containing final votes on resolutions and individual votes on paragraphs and amendments (including split votes when significant), we selected those related to assertiveness towards Russia and the RoL (see Tables A6 and A7 in the Online Appendix for the complete list of votes considered). In our analysis, we distinguish votes cast before and after Russia's invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, to spot the possible shifts among the actors involved. As discussed above, we define Russia's invasion of Ukraine as an external shock affecting all actors' behaviour with measurable effects.
Regarding assertiveness towards Russia, only proposals whose policy direction can be determined without ambiguity (either in favour or against an assertive approach towards Russia) have been included. As a result, the final selection comprises 304 votes, of which 270 assertive votes are in favour and 34 against. 6 199 votes related to assertiveness towards Russia were cast before the invasion (167 in favour and 32 against) and 105 after (103 in favour and 2 against).
Considering the RoL, we define 'the key principles of the rule of law [that] are common to all Member States' with 'legality, legal certainty, prohibition of the arbitrary exercise of executive power, effective judicial protection by independent and impartial courts respecting fundamental rights in full, the separation of powers, permanent subjection of all public authorities to established laws and procedures, and equality before the law' (European Commission 2021). However, only votes related directly to the RoL in the strictest sense have been included, leaving votes related to human rights aside. This decision was made consciously -due to issues such as migration or LGBTIQ + rights, which are important for PRRs -so as not blur the picture. Altogether, 151 votes were selected (82 in favour and 69 against) as votes on the RoL. 7 128 votes related to the RoL were cast before the invasion (76 for and 52 against) and 23 after (10 for and 13 against).
By pooling and averaging relevant votes together, we created two indexes. The first is Assertiveness towards Russia, which takes values between 0 and 1, where 0 = Full compliance with the position of Russia and 1 = Full assertiveness towards Russia. The second index is Defence of the Rule of Law, which takes values from 0 = Attack on the RoL to 1 = Defence of the RoL. We also created two additional subindexes for each of the indexes considering only the votes before and after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. To create all of these indexes, votes in favour (or against, where relevant) are coded as 1= assertiveness towards Russia/ defence of the RoL, and votes against (or in favour, where relevant), abstentions, and not voting are coded as 0 (leaving aside those MEPs who were absent). We argue that not voting or abstaining might be considered at least as non-assertiveness towards Russia or the non-defence of RoL. However, we also perform a robustness check recording the votes differently, considering only votes in favour vs against (or vice versa), leaving aside all other categories (abstention, absent, did not vote, see Tables A2 and A3 in the Online Appendix). To account for the relevance of the votes, we also ran the analysis again, considering only final votes, leaving aside individual votes on paragraphs and amendments (see Tables  A4 and A5 in the Online Appendix).

Assertiveness towards Russia
Figure 1 (see also Table A1 in the Online Appendix) plots the scores of the index of assertiveness towards Russia by party membership of MEPs of essential players in ECR and ID, together with the independent ones from Fidesz. We selected parties that were present at the Warsaw and Madrid summits and had more than two MEPs (thus, excluding the Bulgarian National Movement (IMRO), the Conservative People's Party of Estonia (EKRE), the Electoral Action of Poles in Lithuania -Christian Families Alliance (EAPL-CFA), the PiS satellite party Solidarna Polska Zbigniewa Ziobro in Poland and the Romanian Christian-Democratic National Peasants' Party (PNTCD)). For interest, we have also included the German AfD, which still remains outside these structures.
Overall, as Figure 1 shows, the MEPs from these parties were strongly divided on the issue of Russia before the invasion. This division ran from the most hawkish positions of Vox, PiS, and Fratelli d'Italia (means of 0.925, 0.921, and 0.844, respectively, on a 0-1 scale, where 1 is full assertiveness towards Russia) to the MEPs of FPÖ, AfD, and RN who most frequently voted compliantly with Russian interests (0.120, 0.088, 0.034, respectively). Hungarian Fidesz was the most assertive of the non-assertive group of parties (0.331).
Although the overall difference in means of assertiveness of MEPs of PRR parties before and after the invasion is non-significant, with only a slight increase in the mean (from 0.530 to 0.574), the differences between positions among single parties are substantial. While PiS's and Vox's assertiveness has decreased 8 , Fidesz's more than doubled (from 0.331 before the invasion to 0.675 after). These findings are contrary to our expectations, as we hypothesised a divergence of positions of these parties concerning assertiveness towards Russia. From what we can deduce from EP votes, not only did Russia's 2022 aggression not produce more division between PiS and Fidesz, but it actually -and contrary to the rhetoric -brought these parties together. The same goes for the division over Russia in the PRR 'family' considered here. Particularly the French RN and the German AfD saw their level of assertiveness towards Russia increase after the invasion. Altogether, the standard deviation has also fallen considerably (from 0.371 to 0.235), reflecting higher consensus. Figure 1 demonstrates that the Russian invasion has reduced pre-existing differences among the EU far-right parties on relations with Moscow. Certainly, these differences were vast before and still remain considerable after the aggression.
Hence, we find support for H1, as Fidesz MEPs vote in a rather non-assertive way. In contrast, PiS MEPs vote more assertively. We also find support for H3, in which there is a significant divergence in the levels of assertiveness towards Russia in the votes of MEPs of PRRs. However, while H3a finds empirical proof (PRRs converged after the invasion on the issue of Russia), we need to reject H1a, as the division between PiS and Fidesz seems smaller rather than larger after the invasion.
We have run two robustness checks, recoding the index of assertiveness alternatively, i.e. leaving abstentions and non-voting aside (see Table A2 in the Online Appendix), and replicating the analysis only for final votes in the EP (see Table A4 in the Online Appendix). Regarding the former, if only votes 'for' vis-à-vis votes 'against' are considered, the picture is quite similar for most parties, with Vox, PiS, and in this case, also Fratelli d'Italia reducing their most hawkish positions after the invasion, and RN, AfD, FPÖ, Vlaams Belang, JA21, and in this case, also Lega (the most assertive party after the invasion) increasing their assertiveness towards Russia. Altogether, the mean assertiveness is significantly higher than when accounting for non-votes and abstentions (0.674 versus 0.540), and it has increased significantly after the invasion to 0.726.
Concerning the latter, if only final votes are accounted for, the overall level of assertiveness is lower compared to also including less important votes, and it slightly decreases after the invasion. While the direction of changes in assertiveness due to the impact of the invasion remains the same for most parties considered, the statistically significant are restricted to only three: PiS's decrease and RN's and Lega's increases in assertiveness.
What is striking is the discrepancy in the results gathered in Tables A1, A2, and A4 regarding Fidesz. Looking only at voting 'yes' or 'no' , Fidesz seems to hold very hawkish positions both before and after the invasion (0.886 and 0.808, respectively). However, as we have seen, if abstention and non-voting are considered as non-assertiveness, these scores are substantially different (0.331 before the invasion and 0.675 after). Considering only final votes blurs the picture even further, as there is a significant decrease in the assertiveness of Fidesz (0.600 before the invasion and 0.292 after). How can this be explained?
A closer look at the behaviour of Fidesz MEPs points to the different use of absenteeism, abstention and non-voting before and after the invasion. Before the invasion, non-voting was used to a great degree by Fidesz MEPs to hide their non-assertiveness towards Russia (up to 100%

Mean
Std.

Mean
Std.

Std.
Fratelli of Fidesz MEPs fall into the category of 'non-voting' at nearly half the votes considered before the invasion). This was the case until March 2021, when this party was part of the EPP group with more assertive stances towards Russia. After the invasion, Fidesz MEPs seem to have switched their strategy to either voting assertively in less important votes or being absent (up to 50% of Fidesz MEPs did not show up at some plenaries) and to voting non-assertively in key final votes. Notably, this is particular to Fidesz and is a delicate subject for this party. This adds some caveats to our rejection of H1a. In the case of final votes, the distance in assertiveness between Fidesz and PiS certainly increased after the invasion, as we have previously hypothesised. Table 1 gathers the mean scores of PRRs on the defence of the Rule of Law index. These parties were far from defending the RoL before invasion (mean of 0.096 on a scale from 0 to 1 where 1 = defence of RoL). Fratelli d'Italia and FPÖ in Austria stand out as attacking the RoL slightly less frequently, in that they defended it 19.6% and 14.1% of the time, respectively. In comparison, Fidesz attacked the RoL the most (defending it in only 5.6% of the cases). It seems that the invasion brought these numbers down even further (the mean after the invasion for all parties considered is 0.002). These results should be viewed with caution, given the small number of votes on RoL after the invasion. However, the tendency is clear: PRRs (PiS and Fidesz among them) have each other's backs regarding breaking the RoL, and the invasion did not substantially influence this issue. If anything, it brought these parties closer. These results are robust to the alternative specification of only votes 'for' vis-à-vis votes 'against' ( Table  A3 in the Online Appendix). If only final votes are considered (see Table  A5 in the Online Appendix), the impact of the invasion is null. As said, PRRs voted against the resolutions that defended the RoL.

Conclusions
Russia's invasion of Ukraine is part of an augmented and ever-increasing movement towards weakening democracy and the liberal international order. Democracy in the EU is attacked from the outside, with non-democracy promoters such as Russia trying to weaken it through different mechanisms, such as authoritarian links with PRRs. Democracy is also under assault from within by backsliding governments and PRRs, which often collaborate in their attacks on the RoL. How these external and internal mechanisms interplay and influence backsliding dynamics in the EU has been widely under-researched until now.
The full-fledged Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which we interpret as an exogenous shock, has created an entirely new situation. By analysing the voting behaviour in the EP regarding assertiveness towards Russia and defence of the RoL, we can deduce that the Russian invasion did not produce more division among the backsliding parties, Fidesz and PiS. It even actually -and contrary to the rhetoric -brought these parties closer together. Also, the democratic backsliding coalition between these two parties remains stable.
While mostly united in RoL voting, the far-right camp remains divided on assertiveness towards Russia. Whilst French RN, the German AfD, and the Austrian FPÖ occupy the pro-Russian camp, the closest hawkish allies of PiS seem to be Spain's Vox, Italy's Fratelli d'Italia and (somewhat surprisingly) Lega. However, we demonstrated signs of convergence among the PRR group concerning the Putin regime. The invasion has bridged at least part of the Russian gap between the members of ECR and ID party groups in the EP. It made them more assertive towards Russia, marking the Putin regime as a 'toxic friend' .
These findings have important theoretical and methodological implications. Exogenous events and strategic interactions between domestic and external actors in the European multi-level polity are relevant to the condition of democracy in the EU. First, the military aggression by Russia changed the voting patterns of PRRs in the EP but was insufficient to break up backsliding cooperation. The Hungarian-Polish alliance is more robust than expected, e.g. in the discourse of Orbán and Kaczyński or commentators' premature claims of its end. The bigger salience of the RoL conflict is enough to tap discrepancies towards the Putin regime in bilateral backsliding relations between Fidesz and PiS. Second, the different levels of assertiveness towards Russia remain a divisive issue in the PRR family, though, the different positions towards Russia do not affect the support of PRRs for the backsliders. Third, the military intervention of anti-democracy promoters in the EU's neighbourhood weakens existing authoritarian diffusion processes. While the Putin regime cultivated 'Trojan horses' in the EU and fostered some support among PRRs in the past, the war starting in 2022 has weakened its influence. While Orbán is presented as Russia's ally in the EU, his party's voting in the EP shows that the position of Fidesz is not so clear.
The fourth contribution is methodological. When examining voting in the EP, we confirm the findings of Hix et al. (2007: 92) that including abstention and non-voting is necessary, and not only the 'yes' votes, as opposed to the 'no' votes, should be considered. Also, the relevance of the vote should be accounted for. As we have shown, before and after the invasion, Fidesz MEPs were usually more assertive towards Russia than one might expect from listening to the discourse of party leaders. However, what changed after the invasion is that significantly fewer Fidesz MEPs refrained from voting on subjects related to Russian interests. While before the invasion Fidesz MEPs used to hide their non-assertiveness by not voting, afterwards, they seem to have switched their strategy to voting assertively in less important votes or simply being absent and voting non-assertively only in the key final votes. Hence, on delicate subjects with opposing interests, MEPs might resort to absenteeism or non-voting and vote differently depending on vote salience.
This analysis opens multiple avenues for future research. First, we have only examined the first votes after the Russian invasion. Future voting should be monitored, also in the case of possible tiredness with the war. Second, the surprising changes in the voting patterns in some parties after the invasion could be looked at more closely by examining the speeches of MEPs or interviewing the MEPs involved. Third, if the Russian invasion brought PRRs closer together, it remains to be examined whether this will translate into increased collaboration among these actors in other policy areas relevant across the PRR spectrum.

Notes
1. The PRR party label (Mudde 2007) usually includes the political groups in the EP right of the mainstream, such as the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), the Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF) and their affiliated national parties until 2019 (Falkner and Plattner 2020) or the ECR and Identity and Democracy (ID) Party Group after 2019. See also Rooduijn et al. (2019). 2. To date, backsliding regimes in the EU have been based on one-party rule (Hungary) or a coalition with a majoritarian party having the final say (Poland -Law and Justice/PiS within the United Right). Therefore, this article uses the terms "backsliding parties" and "backsliding governments" as synonyms. 3. Episodes of democratic backsliding have also been identified in EU member states such as Romania (Iusmen 2015), the Czech Republic (Hanley and Vachudova 2018) and Bulgaria (Rone 2023). 4. The first links can be found in 1993, when the National Front leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, sought to establish ties with the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR), led by far-right politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky (Mudde 2007). 5. Even though the use of roll-call voting data in the EP has been criticised due to a possible selection bias, as they constitute only about one-third of all votes cast in the EP (Carrubba et al. 2006), scholars see this caveat as exaggerated. For example, Hix (2002: 693) argues that there is no "empirical evidence to prove that roll-call voting is systematically biased towards a particular EP party or set of issues." Following this argumentation, we assume these votes produce a reasonably accurate picture of voting behaviour in the EP.
6. The votes in favour are mainly related to the human rights situation in Russia (particularly the case of Aleksei Navalny), the situation in Belarus (after the elections and during the migration crisis on the Polish border), the EU Association Agreement with Ukraine, the direction of EU-Russia political relations, the foreign interference in democratic processes in the EU, and to Russian aggression in Ukraine. The votes against are primarily amendments proposed by the Left, particularly by the Irish MEPs Clare Daly and Mick Wallace, in which sanctions against Russia and the EU's interference in third countries (Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine) are criticised. 7. Most of these votes were related to the ongoing hearings regarding article 7(1), the risk of a severe breach of the Rule of Law in Poland and Hungary (but also Bulgaria), the EU mechanism on Democracy, Rule of Law and Fundamental Rights and the Rule of Law conditionality. 8. We do not have a conclusive explanation for this decrease in assertiveness in PiS and Vox. These parties certainly parted from the most assertive party positions among those analysed here. Thus, they remain strongly assertive after the invasion. One explanation for the case of PiS is that the response of the EU to the Russian invasion might be insufficient in the eyes of PiS MEPs.