Contagious Exclusion? How Safe Country Policies Diffuse Across the Western World
P2-03
Presented by: Lea Portmann
Safe Country Policies have become an increasing popular instrument of asylum governance. In this paper, we ask if the proliferation of Safe Country Policies has resulted from diffusion processes in which countries have influenced each other in designing these policies. If so, through which mechanisms have these policies diffused? We address this question by drawing on a novel typological theory of policy diffusion. The theory systematically elaborates four mutually exclusive diffusion mechanism that are embedded in a coherent overarching theoretical framework. Our theory allows us to elaborate more specific measures of policy diffusion than have so far been used in empirical studies that rely on established mechanism of diffusion. To test the prevalence of our four diffusion mechanisms, we rely on an extensive dataset of Safe Country Policies in OECD countries and fine-grained indicators that we incorporate in spatial econometric models. Findings from our study will be relevant for both policy diffusion scholars and literature on migration policy making.