Right-Wing Populist Parties and Development Cooperation: How Does Their Rise Affect Gender Equality Promotion in Official Development Assistance (ODA) Allocation?

Right-wing populist parties have increased their electoral support across Europe during the past decade. These parties are now among the major political forces in several countries, holding a relevant share of parliamentary seats, or taking part in governing coalitions. Scholarly literature has shown that these parties can affect policy-making. But whereas most research has investigated their impact on domestic migration policy, a research gap remains when it comes to the foreign policy. We aim to address this gap by investigating the impact of right-wing populist parties at the intersection of development cooperation and support for gender equality. As women and girls are often structurally disadvantaged in developing countries and the number of physical violence, early marriage or genital mutilation remains high, the promotion of gender equality was included in SDG 5 and has become consensual in development cooperation. This is being challenged by the rise of right-wing populist parties. Many of these parties have ultra-conservative worldviews and defend traditional family models, being hostile to gender equality and LGBT+ rights. We investigate whether and to what extent the rise of right-wing populist parties affects development aid and hypothesize a policy shift away from aid for gender equality promotion. Furthermore, we examine whether a shift in ODA allocation away from climate change mitigation and adaptation towards programmes which aim at migration containment is observable. The paper develops a quantitative comparative analysis to assess the impact of right-wing populist parties on ODA allocation in 28 EU Member States countries between 2000 and 2017. Methodologically, the paper uses fractional logit models to identify a potential link between vote shares of right-wing populist parties in national elections in European donor countries and the share of aid allocated to projects in support of gender equality and women’s empowerment.