Political Economy Workshop (Gov 3007)

Kara Ross Camarena will present her job market paper “Refugee Policy as Foreign Policy: Third Party Intervention in Civil War”. Abstract for “Refugee Policy as Foreign Policy: Third Party Intervention in Civil War” Attacks on border refugee camps are not uncommon. Many of these attacks are by external governments claiming to pursue rebels across borders. Asylum countries are often viewed as passive victims of these cross border incursions. Instead, international relations scholars have focused on the rebels groups and their material supporters as agents in spreading civil war, with little attention to the agency of the refugee recipient country. Meanwhile studies of United States refugee policy argue that the US uses refugee policy to assist in meeting foreign policy objectives in other countries. I investigate the agency of the asylum countries more generally. I argue asylum countries can and do strategically use refugee policy to intervene in neighboring countries’ disputes. Drawing on case evidence from East Africa, I develop a strategic model of refugee policy selection that takes into account the foreign policy objectives of a refugee receiving state. In the model, the refugee recipient country can choose from allowing refugees to disperse, placing them in a border camp, or placing them in an inland camp. The model predicts that holding all else equal, changes in (1) the regional policy preferences of the parties in the civil war and (2) the usefulness of a refugee border camp to the rebels can explain the refugee policy selection of an asylum country. Furthermore, when refugee recipient countries choose border camps, the model predicts conditions under which this exacerbates the civil war. Border camps do not always make civil wars worse. Rather only when the rebels and government are well matched, or the border camp is particularly useful to the rebels, do border camps prompt greater strategic investment in the civil war, and thus, the civil war lasts longer or is more brutal.