| Unprecedented numbers of refugees have left their homes to seek asylum. The vast majority are hosted in poor, undemocratic nations, despite the fact that Western democracies are the largest recipients of asylum applications and are usually seen as heralds of human rights, humanitarian principles, and liberal freedoms. In this thesis, I explore whether the host's regime type matters for the acceptance of asylum-seekers. Following research in related fields such as immigration, I argue that there is a systematic difference between democracies and autocracies in the causation mechanisms of refugee policy due to differences in welfare systems, the degree of rights granted to foreigners, and the influence of anti-immigrant attitudes on policy-making. I hypothesize that democracies have lower asylum recognition rates than autocracies. By estimating both structural equation models and multilevel mixed-effects models, I analyze comprehensive refugee data from the UNHCR. I find evidence that democracies have lower overall recognition rates, yet this result is contingent on the type of asylum-seekers democracies typically receive. Each regime type applies distinct standards of 'asylum deservedness,' while also receiving distinct proportions of asylum-seekers from 'deserving' origins. The results do not support a direct regime effect on recognition rates, but point towards an indirect effect through the intervening impact of a host's evaluation of refugee origin factors. |
