Description
European governments are expanding defence commitments, but greater national defence effort need not strengthen public support for a common defence and security policy. Existing research shows how threat, costs, and elite cues shape cooperation attitudes, but leaves unclear why similar pressures yield different degrees of ideological divergence. I develop the mechanism of security-sacrifice politicization. When political actors frame defence commitments as requiring domestic sacrifice and connect them to welfare provision, fiscal burdens, sovereignty, or institutional distrust, security policy can align with left–right conflict and widen gaps in support for European defence cooperation. Credible threat, protection framing, and convergence among political actors should instead limit divergence.
The analysis combines official defence-expenditure data and repeated Standard Eurobarometer cross-sections across the EU, comparing average support and left–right gaps. A focused comparison of post-2022 parliamentary debate and party framing in Italy and Poland examines how shared rearmament pressures are interpreted under contrasting conditions: fiscal constraint in Italy and greater threat proximity and the political salience of territorial defence in Poland. Distinguishing defence effort, average support, and ideological divergence clarifies when rearmament widens political divisions over European defence cooperation rather than generating broadly shared support.