Norms or interests? Explaining EU aid allocation to ASEAN through strategic, normative, and economic lenses

Our paper examines the determinants of European Union (EU) aid allocation to ASEAN countries by testing competing theoretical explanations: strategic interest versus normative commitment. Drawing from selectorate theory, we hypothesize that EU aid is shaped by geopolitical alignment, regime type, and strategic considerations. Conversely, the Normative Power Europe thesis suggests that aid is conditioned on recipients’ human rights performance and quality of governance. Using a panel dataset of bilateral EU Official Development Assistance (ODA) to ten ASEAN countries between 2005 and 2023, we estimate fixed-effects regression models incorporating political regime scores, UN voting alignment, human rights indices, and economic interdependence measures. Our findings indicate that democratic governance exhibits a positive but statistically weak association with aid levels, while trade volume emerges as the strongest predictor of EU aid allocation. By contrast, political alignment with the EU does not display a statistically significant relationship with aid flows. These results qualify strong claims regarding a consistently values-based EU foreign policy and suggest that economic considerations continue to play a central role in shaping development cooperation even in multilateral frameworks. Our paper contributes to the political economy of foreign aid by highlighting the complex motivations behind interregional aid flows in the ASEAN region.