Paper short abstract:

Populist radical right parties challenge foreign aid - what about their supporters? Based on panel data, we analyse differences between respondents' attitudes controlled by their party preferences. With a qualitative approach, we analyse congruence between voters' preferences and parties' position.

Paper long abstract:

Foreign aid faces challenges with the rise of populist leaders. Populist radical right parties (PRRPs) tend to question the relevance of development cooperation and many want to cut foreign aid spending. However, we lack understanding about aid attitudes of public opinion according to individuals' support to different parties, as well as the congruence between voters' preferences and parties' positions on this topic. This paper is interested in the links between partisan support and attitudes towards foreign aid. In particular, we want to assess if supporters of populist radical right parties are indeed different from supporters of other parties regarding their attitudes to foreign aid over time, and in which aspects this can be observed. In a first step, we use longitudinal panel data from the Aid Attitudes Tracker (AAT) in France, Germany, the UK and the USA as main source to conduct statistical hypothesis testing and factor analysis. We expect that supporters of PRRPs hold perceptions that are more negative on some aspects of foreign aid, notably its effectiveness and underlying motivations. However, they are not especially different from other party supporters in all assessment categories of foreign aid, a topic that seems to experience a generalized sense of misunderstanding. In a second step, we apply a qualitative approach to discuss the extent to which attitudes of PRRPs supporters meet their party's position on foreign aid.