Working Paper

Co-authored with Lea Portmann, Frowin Rausis, Joachim Blatter, and Philipp Lutz, this paper compares the drivers of the diffusion of two key liberal and illiberal asylum policies worldwide.

Abstract
Research on asylum policy diffusion has focused on illiberal policies and emphasized a single dynamic: an externality-induced competitive race to the bottom among wealthy destination states. We reassess this view by comparing the worldwide spread of two key liberal and illiberal policies – national asylum frameworks, which codify protection obligations, and safe third country policies, which shift these obligations elsewhere. Using a sample from the Safe Country Policies (SACOP) dataset, we employ event history models to explain variation in adoptions across as many as 170 countries in the Global North and South from 1970 to 2020. Whereas existing quantitative research on migration policy operationalizes diffusion with nearby policy adoptions only, we separately test four mechanisms, only one of which directly incorporates geographical proximity: strategic responses to policy externalities, the rights and duties of membership in supranational unions, shared partisan ideology, and recognition by transnational epistemic communities. The results show that liberal policies are driven by all four mechanisms with varying strengths, while illiberal policies strongly diffuse through negative externalities and epistemic recognition. Thus, externality-induced competition is not the only mechanism driving illiberal diffusion, and liberal policies diffuse through an even wider set of mechanisms, including diffusion through positive externalities and European integration. These mechanisms also outperform the standard spatial lag. We conclude that asylum policy diffusion cannot be reduced to a single race-to-the-bottom dynamic and simple neighborhood effects. Instead, it operates through multiple mechanisms that vary by policy type and whose reach can extend far beyond neighboring states.