Populist radical right parties and European development policy: politicising the migration-development nexus?

Bergmann, Julian / Christine Hackenesch / Daniel Stockemer
External Publications (2021)

published on JCMS Blog "Ideas on Europe", 12.01.2021, Online

Populist radical right parties (PRRPs) have become a permanent feature of many party systems in European countries. Their electoral success has increased since 2015, when many migrants and refugees came to the EU. Research on PRRPs suggests that they contribute to the politicization of some domestic public policy domains, such as asylum and immigration policy. However, we know relatively little about PRRP’s influence on foreign policy, particularly on development policy and foreign aid.
Building on a new dataset that analyses government positions and coalition agreements across European countries since the early 1990s, our recent article explores how PRRPs influence the salience and framing of the nexus between development aid and migration by European governments. More specifically, we look at whether government programmes mention the relationship between migration policy and development aid, and how these documents frame this relationship in terms of whether and how development aid should contribute to the achievement of migration policy objectives and vice versa.