A Nationalist Backlash to International Refugee Law: Evidence from a Survey Experiment in Turkey
| Author | Kevin L. Cope,Charles Crabtree |
| Published date | 01 December 2020 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/jels.12269 |
| Date | 01 December 2020 |
Journal of Empirical Legal Studies
Volume 17, Issue 4, 752–788, December 2020
A Nationalist Backlash to International
Refugee Law: Evidence from a Survey
Experiment in Turkey
Kevin L. Cope*and Charles Crabtree
How do international laws affect citizens’ willingness to accept refugees? In full and partial
democracies, citizens’ attitudes can influence national policy. A growing literature suggests
that international institutions can influence citizens’ attitudes on foreign policy issues, and
therefore lead to policy change, but those studies are almost entirely confined to domestic
human rights and U.S.-based respondents; none consider refugee policy. Using data from a
survey experiment administered in September 2017 via face-to-face interviews with 1,335 cit-
izens of Turkey, we investigate how international norms affect citizens’ willingness to accept
refugees. Our findings are surprising: reminding people about the government’s responsi-
bility under the Refugee Convention to accept refugees triggers a backfire effect, decreas-
ing support for accepting them. This effect appears driven by respondents who support the
incumbent AKP Party and by lower-educated respondents. We therefore provide evidence
that international refugee law—and perhaps international institutions generally—can trig-
ger a political backlash, undermining the very policies that they promote.
I. Introduction
The volume of refugee flows has exploded in recent years. New conflicts in Syria and
South Sudan have caused millions to migrate to neighboring countries and across the
globe. Ongoing conflicts in Iraq, Libya, the Central African Republic, Sudan, Myanmar,
and other places have driven out millions more. The global stock of refugees is now esti-
mated at almost 20 million, up from about 10 million just a decade ago.
1
If some of the
*Address correspondence to Kevin L. Cope, Associate Professor of Law & Department of Politics Faculty Affiliate,
University of Virginia, Rm. 345, 580 Massie Dr., Charlottesville, VA 22903; email: kcope@law.virginia.edu. Crabtree
is Assistant Professor, Dartmouth College Department of Government.
Funding for the survey experiment was provided by the University of Virginia. We thank Adam Chilton and
Mila Versteeg for their cooperation in designing and fielding our respective surveys. We thank Scott Clifford, Rich-
ard Hynes, Yonatan Lupu, Sibel Safi, Rebecca Savelsberg, Shana Tabak, and Mila Versteeg for helpful comments.
We thank Cagatay Akkoyun for translation assistance. This study was preregistered with the AEA RCT Registry
(AEARCTR-0002439); the pre-analysis plan is available at http://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/2439.
1
U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, Population Statistics Database, available at http://popstats.unhcr.org/en/
overview (last accessed Apr. 6, 2019).
752
predictions about the effects of climate change materialize, the stock of refugees could
increase even more. Massive refugee migrations obviously have enormous humanitarian
implications, both for the migrants and the people who stay behind. They also affect the
economies, culture, domestic politics, and general welfare of receiving states. For those
reasons, the global refugee crisis is increasingly seen as among the biggest challenges for
global politics and international cooperation.
The main international set of rules relevant to this crisis is the 1951 Refugee Con-
vention and its 1967 Optional Protocol (the Refugee Convention). The Convention
requires states to extend certain legal protections to those who, “owing to a well-founded
fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a partic-
ular social group or political opinion,” find themselves outside their country of national-
ity. This instrument was drafted with the atrocities of World War II in mind. Critics have
since noted its shortcomings in addressing current challenges such as climate change,
natural disasters, civil wars, and episodes of gang violence. Most notably, only a small por-
tion of those seeking refuge fall within the Convention’s narrow definition of refugee,
and the Convention does not require states to provide permanent solutions for refugees,
who can reside in camps for decades (Goodwin-Gill & McAdam 2007; Martin 2007;
Fitzpatrick 1996). Moreover, since protections extend only to those who reach a country’s
borders, the burden of accepting refugees under the Convention has recently fallen most
heavily on nearby states, many of which are ill-equipped to handle it. Countries in the
Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Southeast Asia have taken the lion’s share of refu-
gees, even though many are themselves experiencing conflict or economic distress.
Despite these issues, the Refugee Convention is the only major international institution
2
that imposes meaningful obligations on states to aid refugees who reach their shores.
3
The Refugee Convention is legally binding on states, but its actual power to change
state behavior is limited by two aspects of international refugee law: the Convention is ill-
suited to reciprocity-based enforcement, and no international legal body exists to enforce
its terms.
4
The force of many treaties stems largely from one or both of these two features
(Guzman 2008). In their absence, international refugee law’s power to affect state behav-
ior depends largely on domestic legal and political mechanisms, such as judicial sanctions
and political mobilization (Simmons 2009).
A review of recent headlines shows that many countries’ political climates are
increasingly hostile toward international legal obligations regarding refugees. States have
developed new ways around those obligations, such as intercepting and turning back
2
We use the definition of “institution” prevalent in the political science, economics, and international relations lit-
eratures, which define institutions as “human constraints” comprising “both informal constraints … and formal
rules (constitutions, laws, property rights)” (North 1991:97; see also Morrow 2014).
3
A series of regional instruments within Latin America, Europe, and Africa impose additional rules on participat-
ing states, but their scope is limited.
4
The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees has some monitoring responsibilities but no legal authority to sanc-
tion noncompliance.
A Nationalist Backlash to International Refugee Law 753
refugees at sea or processing them outside the national territory (Goldenziel 2015). In
2015, Hungary began building a razor-wire fence across its border.
5
Other policies simply
flout international law. In 2017, Hungary adopted an accelerated asylum procedure
whereby asylum claims could be rejected within a day,
6
a policy that some commentators
argue violates the Convention.
7
In 2018, the U.S. Department of Justice implemented a
policy of criminally prosecuting all would-be immigrants—including asylum-seekers—who
cross the U.S.-Mexico border outside designated ports of entry and some asylum-seekers
at ports of entry.
8
A primary goal of the policy is ostensibly to discourage refugees (and
other migrants without visas) from entering the country, which may violate the Conven-
tion. Even Denmark, which was the first state to ratify the Convention, has called for it to
be renegotiated entirely if the crises persist.
9
Meanwhile, right-wing parties riding anti-
internationalist and anti-immigrant platforms have gained strength in the United States
and Europe. Their growing power has important implications for immigrants, as many
candidates and elected officials have called for state action to stem the flows of refugees
across their borders.
In this article, we explore popular attitudes toward the Refugee Convention and
the extent to which it sways public support for admitting refugees. Specifically, we investi-
gate whether support for policies to reduce refugee flows is affected by respondents’
being told that these policies violate international law. The motivating assumption is that
popular support for international law is a key mechanism through which international
legal obligations are upheld or violated. If citizens oppose their countries’ violations of
international legal law, they might successfully pressure democratic governments to avoid
those violations or punish those governments that commit them (e.g., Kaempfer &
Lowenberg 1992; Rodman 1998). If, however, the public is skeptical of or even hostile to
international legal constraints, the opposite might happen.
To explore the Refugee Convention’s potential impact on support for domestic ref-
ugee policy, we fielded a survey experiment in Turkey. Working with a Turkish public
polling firm, we conducted 1,335 face-to-face interviews throughout Turkey in September
2017. Ours is among the first survey experiments conducted in the Middle East or Africa
on attitudes toward refugees, a region in which nearly half the world’s refugees reside.
We are also among the first to examine citizens’ willingness to accept refugees using an
5
Migrant Crisis: Hungary’s Closed Border Leaves Many Stranded, BBC News (Sept. 15, 2015), available at http://
www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34260071.
6
The End of the Right to Asylum in Hungary? European Database of Asylum Law (May 3, 2017), available at
http://www.asylumlawdatabase.eu/en/journal/end-right-asylum-hungary.
7
See Steven Simmons, Hungary Refugee Policy and the Refugee Convention, Mich. St. Int’l L. Rev. Legal Forum
(May 23, 2017), available at https://www.msuilr.org/msuilr-legalforum-blogs/2017/5/23/hungary-refugee-policy-
and-the-refugee-Convention.
8
American Civil Liberties Union, MS. L v. ICE, available at https://www.aclu.org/cases/ms-l-v-ice.
9
Danish PM Questions Refugee Convention, Politico E.U. Ed. (Dec. 28, 2015), available at https://www.politico.
eu/article/danish-pm-questions-refugee-Convention.
754 Cope and Crabtree
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