The far right and international organizations: How the far right in government affects foreign aid funding

Abstract

The far right is on the rise, winning elections, entering governments globally, and politicizing international cooperation. Existing research finds only very limited effects of far-right governments on international organizations (IOs), however.. We argue that the far right in government undermines IOs by systematically reducing their earmarked funding, as it cannot fully align its anti-migration agenda with the liberal mandates and purposes of most IOs. Using new data on earmarked funding to IOs from 37 OECD donor states between 1990 and 2020, we examine how far-right participation in government affects IO funding. Expanding the data on far-right parties beyond Western Europe, we employ three-way fixed effects and dynamic balancing weights to address both static and dynamic confounding with marginal structural models. Our results show that governments with far-right parties reduce earmarked funding contributions to IOs by almost 30%, without affecting bilateral aid commitments. This suggests that the far right not only politicizes IOs but also attempts to directly undermine their operation when IOs cannot be aligned with their anti-migration agenda.