The impact of EU cohesion policy on populism

Abstract

Does redistribution lower populism? The main causes of increasing populism in Europe are related to increasing economic insecurity. European cohesion policy is a large redistribution program that aims to improve the economic conditions of lagging regions, so this thesis wants to investigate if this redistributive program is able to lower support for populist parties and increase the opinion towards the EU. Using data on national parliamentary elections and parties' scores for populism, position towards the EU and position towards EU regional policy for every Member State from 2011 to 2020 and using an RDD apporach to exploit the 75% of European per capita GDP allocation rule, this thesis shows that EU cohesion policy is able to lower support for populist parties and increase support towards the EU and EU regional policy.