Crisis-induced party adaptation in the Baltic sea Region’s far right: Policy shifts in election manifestos before and after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine

Abstract

The February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine disrupted Northern and Eastern European security politics. This study examines how five major far-right parties in the Baltic Sea region revised their 2022–24 election manifestos—relative to their 2018–20 platforms—to incorporate explicit defence provisions and alliance commitments. The paper employs paired document analysis using comparative text analysis. Results indicate that, while these parties-maintained core nationalist and sovereign positions, they introduced substantive deterrence measures and formalized international partnerships. The extent of programmatic change correlated with each party’s national threat exposure and coalition prospects: parties in more vulnerable states or with stronger coalition opportunities exhibited greater manifesto convergence toward alliance-based security frameworks. These findings demonstrate genuine crisis-induced policy adaptation rather than mere rhetorical shifts. By integrating quantitative text-analysis with codified policy indices, the study offers a transparent, reproducible framework for tracking political party program change under acute external threats. This framework advances crisis-induced party adaptation theory and provides a methodological template for future research on party responses to disruptive geopolitical events.