Right-Wing Populist Parties in Europe: Does Welfare Chauvinism Endanger Social Protection Budget?

Right wing populist parties in Europe are gaining significant number of votes. This paper is looking at welfare chauvinism, as part of their ideology, which aims at excluding non-natives from welfare rights or decreasing their ability to fulfil the eligibility criteria. However, it does not show a relationship between the welfare state budget and right wing populists. The paper aims at showing which policy areas are most prone to budget reductions. Data used in the paper show decrease of the social protection budget when populists are part of the government, but it is not a universal trend. Populists transcend welfare regimes as their presence is being increased in all of the regimes, but the paper shows that it is the policy areas of unemployment and family that have seen the greatest reductions of expenditure. The question is whether this trend represents a threat for immigrants’ wellbeing in the future.