POPÜLİZM VE DIŞ YARDIM ARASINDAKİ STRATEJİK BAĞ
STRATEGIC NEXUS BETWEEN POPULISM AND FOREIGN AID

Summary/Abstract: While the literature has discussed both the causes and the policy impact of populist governments in the domestic arena, few studies examine the role populist leaders/governments play in the sphere of foreign relations of their countries. Extant studies suggest that populist leaders tend to engage in bilateral relations, deal directly with other leaders, and circumvent both national and supra-national institutions and organizations. In this paper, we investigate to what extent populist leaders use foreign aid giving as a foreign policy strategy. To this end, we empirically test the behavioural consequences of populism on foreign aid giving and receiving patterns. By utilizing Global Populism Dataset and AidData we examine the nexus between foreign aid allocation and populism. The results reveal that countries with populist leaders in charge are to offer higher amount of foreign aid; yet being a populist regime does not help receiving more aid. In fact, not only non-populist regimes but even populist donors refrain from giving high amounts of aid to populist recipients. Our findings imply a strategic use of foreign aid by the populist leaders; yet this strategy does not involve coming to fellow populist regimes’ assistance.

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