Electoral competition dynamics and Syrian refugee discourses and policies in Germany and France

ABSTRACT

Among European countries, Germany has implemented the most generous policies toward Syrian refugees. Contrarily, its main partner within the EU, France, viewing the refugee crisis primarily as a matter of security, has avoided them. I argue that these divergent approaches are closely linked with electoral competition dynamics. Electoral competition dynamics have shaped the expected outcomes of adopting pro-Syrian refugee policies for ruling centrist parties in these countries. The risk posed by the centrist right-wing voters’ shift to the far-right due to the enactment of pro-refugee policies for CDU in Germany was eased to a great extent by a type of cordon sanitaire, other parties’ exclusion of Alternative for Germany (AfD) from coalitions. However, the electoral risk posed by the rise of a Populist Radical Right Party (PRRP), the National Rally (RN), against the Republic on the Move (LREM) has been higher in France. As a result, centrist French Presidents have been electorally more constrained or vulnerable in adopting generous refugee policies. By comparatively analyzing the Syrian refugee discourses and policies in Germany and France, this study permits us to better evaluate and understand the domestic sources of refugee politics in liberal democracies.

KEYWORDS:

• Syrian refugees
• electoral competition dynamics
• party politics
• Germany
• France

Introduction

In recent years, the Syrian refugee crisis has dominated political debates and contributed to a new transnational cleavage in European politics. Few topics today lead to as much heated and passionate debate as the issue of immigration. The refugee crisis has gradually altered the focus of party politics in Europe. Riding the populist wave, far-right parties which previously focused on the economy and economic sovereignty, shifted their focus to immigration and refugees. Center-right parties associated both with progressive and nativist tendencies struggled to adapt to the current context and revised their approaches to European integration, immigration, and welfare (Bale & Rovira Kaltwasser, 2021). Emphasizing the crisis of social democracy in Europe, some scholars argue that center-right parties have radicalized and moved toward the far-right (Abou-Chadi & Krause, 2020; Han, 2015; Van Spanje, 2010; Wagner & Meyer, 2017). Other scholars argue that these changes are not significant (Akkerman, 2015; Alonso & Fonseca, 2012; Mudde, 2013; Rooduijn et al., 2014). Some scholars maintain that they vary across cases and there is no uniform movement of the center-right toward the far-right (Bale, 2003; Odmalm & Bale, 2014; Schumacher & Van Kersbergen, 2016). Concerned with the contested nature of party politics, this study investigates the impact of electoral dynamics on Syrian refugee discourses and policies in two European countries: Germany and France. Among European countries, despite the resurgence of nativist tendencies, Germany adopted the most generous policies, while its main partner within the EU, France, largely shunned refugees. Moreover, France resisted and criticized German demands for a common European policy toward refugees despite the growing security interdependence that entailed collective policy responses (“French PM Walls,”, 2015). Why and how did these two divergent approaches toward Syrian refugees emerge? I argue that these approaches are directly related with electoral competition dynamics that made the mainstream political parties adopt different accommodative strategies in the face of the rise of the radical right.

Theory

For the purposes of this study, I identify five factors that constitute electoral competition dynamics: electoral system, issue salience, primary competitors’ positions on issues, electoral volatility, and coalition formation. The Electoral system refers to proportional representation (PR) and plurality voting (PV). Electoral systems impact party and voter behavior. In a PR system, each party wins a number of legislative seats proportional to the number of votes it received and the system allows smaller or fringe parties to be represented in the parliament and cabinet. Theoretically, a PR system would help a populist radical right party (PRRP)¹ amplify its power and influence whereas a PV system would encourage gravitation toward the dominant parties, known as Duverger’s Law, and cause the parties to align themselves with two large blocks. Therefore, it would be expected to deprive PRRPs of fair representation and an opportunity to amplify their influence.

The extant literature focuses on the impact of electoral systems on party systems (Duverger, 1954/57; Farrell, 1997; Sartori, 1996), representation of women and minorities (Lovenduski & Norris, 1993; Rule, 1987; Lijphart, 1986), voter participation (Powell, 1982), government performance and democracy (Downs, 1957; Gutman & Thompson, 1996; Lijphart, 1994; 1998). This study, however, examines its impact on refugee discourses and policies. Conditioned on an additional set of factors, which I elucidate in the following paragraphs, electoral systems and rules might render the center-right parties more or less strategically constrained in adopting generous refugee policies.

Another factor is issue salience. Issue salience is a function of whether and to what extent voters value a given issue. It is a key determinant of party competition and an integral part of democratic politics. When the public’s level of engagement with a particular issue changes, so do the political debates and party strategies. Issue salience is particularly important due to its considerable impact on voter behavior.² People concerned about an issue would evaluate the government’s performance on that issue more meticulously, and be more likely to reward and punish it based on its handling of the issue. Issue salience is also correlated with issue ownership in the sense that as the salience of an issue increases, people become more likely to vote for a party that has a reputation or promise of handling that issue (Budge & Farlie, 1983; Petrocik, 1996). To operationalize issue salience, I use public opinion data from the Eurobarometer and the Center for Political Research at Sciences Po

An additional factor is the positions of the primary parties on the key electoral issues. Primary competitors are the dominant parties or candidates that run in elections in a country. Although other parties and candidates might have a significant electoral impact, only a few parties and candidates would have a realistic probability of winning the elections and the differences between them would be most influential in shaping voter preferences. Specifically, this research considers whether primary competitors ideologically differ on the salient issue and therefore are clear alternatives to one another. Primary competitors’ positioning on issues could either augment or contain the impact of growing issue salience. There is a rich literature on when and why parties move their position on issues as a response to public opinion shifts and the risks and benefits that such moves might bring (Meguid, 2005 and 2008; Jones, 1994; Adams, 2012; Meyer & Wagner, 2019). However, this study only investigates primary competitors’ positions on the key electoral issue(s) based on party manifestos.

Another factor is electoral volatility. Electoral volatility is the degree of change in vote shares obtained by individual political parties across consecutive elections. It is a broad and soft measure of how likely voters are to switch their party preferences in a multiparty system. Yet it is a good proxy to understand how electorally vulnerable the politicians and parties might feel due to the voters’ historical and current propensity to shift their preferences in response to party policies. Electorally vulnerable politicians and parties are expected to be more worried about how citizens react to their actions (Wagner & Meyer, 2017). To operationalize electoral volatility, I updated the Pedersen Electoral Volatility Index. The index calculates the electoral volatility by comparing the new election results with the last election results. It assumes that percentage gains would be equal to percentage losses as for every gain there would be an equal loss. As a result, the net change or electoral volatility in a specific year would be equal to the sum of all gains and losses divided by two. The most recent version of the dataset covered the time period between 1950 and 2014 (Dassonneville, 2015)³ and I updated the dataset by adding the post-2014 election results for Germany and France.

The last component of electoral competition dynamics is coalition formation. Coalition formation is the process of parties joining together for a particular purpose. It is a precondition of democratic governance in a multiparty system. Coalition formation is not only shaped by parties’ seat shares, interests, and ideologies but also by informal rules. Existing explanations of coalition formation focus on office-seeking and minimum-wining considerations and policy-seeking and spatial ideological convergence (Alesina, 1987; Riker, 1962). As far as coalition formation is concerned, this research primarily examines whether there is a systemic exclusion of far-right political parties from coalitions in a country as an informal rule and to what extent this rule was maintained in the aftermath of the European refugee crisis.

Against this theoretical backdrop, I propose five hypotheses. First, I hypothesize that exclusionary coalition formation rules and ideological convergence between primary competitors on the salient electoral issue constrain a PR system’s enabling effect on the far-right’s consolidation of power and therefore disrupt its ability to impact the center-right’s refugee discourses and policies. Second, I hypothesize that the higher the salience of immigration the more likely the centrist parties will switch from inclusionary, generous refugee discourses and policies to exclusionary, stringent ones conditioned on the primary challenger being a clear alternative to them when it comes to immigration. Third, I hypothesize that the higher the electoral volatility, the more likely the centrist parties will switch from inclusionary, generous refugee discourses and policies to exclusionary, stringent ones. Fourth, I hypothesize that the more informal rules excluding the far-right parties from coalitions can be maintained, the less likely the centrist parties will switch from inclusionary, generous refugee discourses and policies to exclusionary, stringent ones. Fifth, I hypothesize that the electoral risk posed by the rise of National Rally (RN), against the Republic on the Move (LREM) has been higher than the risk posed by the rise of Alternative for Germany (AfD) against CDU in adopting generous refugee policies.

This study contributes to the literature on the sources of refugee policies. Some studies in this literature (Loescher & Scanlan, 1986) explain the policies toward refugees based on the relations between the sending and receiving countries. Some others (Gordenker, 1987) focus on the role of pressures from the international community and institutions working with and for refugees. Emphasizing economic pragmatism, some (Tsourapas, 2019) highlight the impact of ‘refugee rentierism,’ the phenomenon of using host status and refugee policy as primary mechanisms of international rent-seeking. Finally, several scholars (Abdelaaty, 2021; Bourbeau, 2011; Jacobsen, 1996; Secen, 2021) examine the effect of domestic factors such as local absorption capacity, ethnic identity, party ideology, and political elite relations on refugee policies. This study contributes to this last group of studies by investigating the impact of electoral competition dynamics on the sources of refugee policies and discourses in two liberal democracies, Germany and France.

Additionally, this research offers empirical evidence for the theory of the contagion effect (Schain, 2006; Van Spanje, 2010). The contagion effect means that the electoral success of fringe parties might influence other parties’ policy positions, even if these parties do not have significant political power or institutional means to influence policy (Williams & Whitten, 2015; Van Spanje, 2010). The shift in President Macron’s immigration rhetoric in recent years and his calls for stricter policies may be, in part, attributed to the contagion effect of Le Pen’s National Rally. Finally, the findings of this study help define a condition under which the impact of issue salience on party competition or government formation is negated (Budge & Farlie, 1983; Petrocik, 1996). This is when primary competitors’ positions on the emerging salient issue are aligned significantly.

Data and methodology

Social scientists investigating sensitive humanitarian issues such as states’ refugee policies and discourses often face a dual imperative: their research should be both academically sound and policy-relevant (Jacobsen & Landau, 2003). The main research question raised here as well as the methods proposed to answer it are guided by this dual imperative. In the broadest sense, this study is an exploratory empirical endeavor with specific normative foundations. It is designed to provide correlational inference narratives rather than proving causality. It combines qualitative and quantitative content analysis with in-depth case studies. For the in-depth case studies, it adopts the method of structured and focused comparison (George & McKeown, 1985), and systematically focuses on the same variables across units. In so doing, it produces a thick description of the cases and helps make sense of the information, meanings, and interactions that underpin Syrian refugee discourses and policies in Germany and France. In general, a multiple-case design allows a study to explore a phenomenon in appropriate depth within a case as well as facilitates a comparison of differences across cases (Gerring, 2007; and Bartlett & Vavrus, 2017). Similarly, comparison of these cases enabled this study to explore varying impacts of electoral competition dynamics on refugee discourses and policies.

Overall, I drew on six techniques to ensure rigor of this study’s findings: case selection with a clear rationale, data saturation, internal validation, external validation, triangulation, and methodological transparency. Case selection was based on the method of structured and focused comparison to control the independent variables that do not have much explanatory power (i.e. regime type, human development, identity, relations with the home country) and to focus on the ones (i.e. electoral competition dynamics) that explain the change on the dependent variable (i.e. refugee discourses and policies). Data saturation required the collection of data until a new and important pattern or theme was no longer emerging from it. I did not base the data saturation solely on the quantity of data collected without considering whether it allowed this study to answer the question it raised in a satisfactory manner. Internal validation was maintained through iterative use of the same coding schemes and categories. External validation was achieved through the coding of media data obtained from sources with diverse ideological leanings and dispositions. Triangulation was established through amalgamation of different types of theories, methods, and sources in the study. Finally, to achieve methodological transparency, I elucidated how data was collected and interpreted, and provided answers to three reflective questions: what I did, how I did it, and why I did it (Kapiszewski & Karcher, 2021).

Outcome variable: Syrian refugee discourses and policies

To document refugee discourses and policies in Germany and France, I created a qualitative dataset that included newspaper articles, political speeches, and party documents. I first searched the databases such as ProQuest and Nexis Uni^R, as well as national newspapers and parties’ online archives to locate the relevant qualitative data. I searched online databases and archives for a wide variety of formal and informal keywords used to define Syrian refugees such as Syrians, Syrian refugees, displaced Syrians, Syrian asylum seekers, Syrian immigrants, and Syrian guests between 2012 and 2018. I conducted these searches in English, German, and French. Second, I filtered the texts for relevance and duplication. In the end, I had 2,355 texts for Germany and 3,126 texts for France in my dataset.

To avoid sampling bias and enable the sample to reflect the full spectrum of ideological and political positioning on Syrian refugees in these countries, I gathered the media data from a wide range of newspapers. News articles for Germany were drawn from five widely circulated newspapers: Die Zeit, Der Spiegel, Die Welt, Bild, and the Local. These newspapers hold different positions on the political spectrum with their distinct ideologies. Der Spiegel is left and liberal, Die Welt and Bild are right and conservative, Die Zeit is centrist and liberal, and the Local is independent and multiregional. For France, articles were collected from Le Monde, Le Figaro, Les Echos, France24, and the Local. Likewise, these newspapers differ in terms of their political affiliations or predispositions. Le Monde is left, Le Figaro is right, Les Echos is liberal, the Local is independent and multiregional, and France24 is a state-owned agency. I used a media bias/fact check index to determine the political leanings of these media sources.⁴

The newspaper articles were very critical in tracing the changes and continuities in rhetoric and policy toward Syrian refugees and understanding the context in which they were occurring. Then, I systematically coded all of the media data with respect to date, source, type, subject, and object. The first two coding categories only required direct data input rather than actual coding. ‘Type’ referred to whether coded information concerned a policy or was merely a political speech. ‘Subject’ referred to the actor who uttered a speech or engaged in a policy concerning Syrian refugees. Political elites (i.e. party leaders, cabinet members, mayors) were taken as the primary subjects in this study. Finally, ‘object’ referred to the entity or sector that was posited to be impacted by Syrian refugees either positively or negatively. I used Atlas.ti and NVivo to create and assign these codes. The main unit of observation was the smallest semantic unit (i.e. word, sentence, paragraph) from a text that revealed an opinion or documented a policy concerning Syrian refugees. A semantic unit is a unit not of form but meaning (Halliday & Hasan, 2014). Table 1 below provides some samples of coded texts.

Table 1. Samples of coded texts.

Text	Date	Source	Type	Subject	Object
‘If Europe doesn’t assume its responsibility in the face of the massive refugee influx, the whole Schengen area will be called into question.’	01/01/2016	Le Monde	Speech	Prime Minister Manuel Walls	Border Security
‘We will only take in Christians in order to ensure that refugees are not terrorists in disguise.’	09/09/2015	The Local	Speech	Mayor of Roanne, Yves Nicolin	National Security
‘A total of 500 refugees are due to be resettled across France by 2018 under a deal signed between the French state and the Christian organizations.’	07/06/2017	The Local	Policy	State and Civil Society	Refugees Humanitarianism
‘Criticizing Chancellor Merkel’s policies, he demanded that the government reconsiders its entire immigration and security policy.’	12/23/2016	Der Spiegel	Speech	CSU leader Horst Seehofer	National Security
‘German lawmakers have agreed to lift the suspension on family reunifications.’	02/01/2018	Die Welt	Policy	Parliament	Refugees Humanitarianism
‘He said Germany has a moral duty to allow all refugees to settle in Germany with their families.’	02/01/2018	Die Welt	Speech	Dietmar Bartsch, Left Party, Group Leader	Refugees Humanitarianism

Then, I assigned numerical values to the objects of speech and policy to better illustrate the divide between German and French approaches toward Syrian refugees. To that end, every security speech and policy was coded as ‘1,’ and every humanitarian speech and policy move as ‘−1.’ Security/humanitarianism score for a country in a specific year was equal to the weighted average of all the observations (i.e. coded speeches and policies).⁵ Within this framework, the countries’ scores varied between −1 and 1, where 1 represented the highest frequency of security speech and policy and −1 represented the highest frequency of humanitarian speech and policy. Figure 1 presents these scores between 2012 and 2018.

Figure 1. Security vs. humanitarianism.

As shown in the figure, during the early years of the Syrian refugee crisis (2012 and 2013), the discourse and policy were predominantly humanitarian in Germany and France. Security/humanitarianism scores hovered around −0.6 and −0.7. However, French and German approaches to Syrian refugees began to take different turns from 2014 onward. Although restrictive policies and discourses have not been absent and anti-immigrant violence and right-wing terrorist attacks have increased in Germany, discourses and policies on Syrian refugees have become significantly more security-oriented in France after 2014.

Supplementing this quantitative evidence with some qualitative analysis, I found major differences between the attitudes adopted toward Syrian refugees in these countries. First, refugee voices were largely absent in the media accounts on their experiences, living conditions, and integration in France. However, refugee stories and opinions were represented extensively in the German media. Second, the legal terminology used to refer to Syrian refugees in these countries differed considerably. The terms ‘crise migratoire’ (migration crisis) and ‘crise des migrants’ (migrant crisis) were more widely used in France than ‘réfugiés,’ (refugees) who deserve special protection under the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees. In Germany, Syrians were mostly referred to as ‘Syrische flüchtlinge’ (refugees) by media outlets and state institutions. This had a positive impact over the set of rights and services they were entitled to. It is important to understand that these labels or legal categories function as mechanisms of inclusion or exclusion and are essential to the analysis of refugee discourses and policies. Table 2 presents all different forms of asylum and refugee protection that exist in Germany and France. In-depth case studies expand on when and how the German and French states switched between these legal categories in response to the changing political dynamics, and what this meant for Syrian refugees’ access to rights and services.

Table 2. Forms of asylum and refugee protection in Germany and France.

Germany^11		France^12
Status	Definition	Status	Definition
Conventional Refugee	The person that meets the conventional refugee criteria and has been granted asylum under the convention.	Conventional Refugee	The person that meets the conventional refugee criteria and has been granted asylum under the convention.
Constitutional Asylum	The German constitution grants asylum to those who are victims of political persecution. However, this applies only if someone did not arrive in Germany from a designated safe third country.	Subsidiary Protection	A person receives subsidiary protection if they are not individually threatened by political persecution, but nevertheless are at the risk of serious harm due to human rights violations in their home country.
Subsidiary Protection	A person receives subsidiary protection if they are not individually threatened by political persecution, but nevertheless are at the risk of serious harm due to human rights violations in their home country.	Humanitarian Visa	It is a form of private refugee sponsorship where the state signs a memorandum of understanding with NGOs and involves them in the humanitarian protection. NGOs provide housing and support those who seek a form of humanitarian protection.
National Ban on Forced Return	If someone does not fall into any of the categories listed above, the federal office evaluates if the forced return could cause undue harm to an individual for any other reasons (i.e. suffering from a serious illness and failing to receive treatment in the country of origin.)

Third, the relationship between refugee flows and terrorism was framed differently in Germany and France. For example, although several incidents (i.e. Christmas Market Attack, New Year’s Eve Sexual Assaults) contributed to public anxieties in Germany, political elites did not link terrorism with refugees generally and fears of violence did not gain much traction. Contrarily, the Paris attacks completely changed the discourse on the refugee crisis in France and reinforced the idea that the refugee crisis was not manageable, and that refugees would constitute an important national security threat if admitted. Amid the growing public anxieties, a group of mayors even went so far as declaring that they would only accept Christian refugees (“France blasts,”, 2015). The attacks created a social and political atmosphere in France in which national security concerns were effortlessly invoked to create a system that denied refugees the opportunity to enter the country.

Fourth, the discourse on refugees in Germany centered on the question of whether the number of refugees that could be resettled every year should be capped (Connolly, 2017). In contrast, in France, it focused on how refugee flows could be stopped. French politicians often proposed measures to step up the security of the EU’s external borders in the Mediterranean (Hamann, 2016). Their infrequent promises to take in refugees or meet the refugee quotas set up by the EU went unfulfilled. For example, despite François Hollande promising in the summer of 2015 that his country would receive 30,000 refugees (Maurice, 2015), France has only admitted around 22,000 over the last nine years (UNHCR, 2021).

Explanatory variables: electoral competition dynamics

Germany and France differ considerably in terms of their experiences with the far-right. Due to the country’s experiences of World War II and the Holocaust, AfD, is ostracized and systematically excluded from coalitions. Although Chancellor Merkel’s pro-refugee policies have resulted in a decrease in CDU’s popular support in the 2017 and 2021 elections, and an overall increase in AfD’s vote share, no coalition has been formed with AfD and the probability of one being formed with it in the future still seems very low. In France, however, the massive shift of the French political space to the right and the two-round system helped Le Pen lessen the impact of the cordon sanitaire that the mainstream political establishment had built to contain the far-right for decades. There are currently two strong populist radical right parties in France (Le Pen’s National Rally and Eric Zemmour’s Reconquest). Figure 2, produced based on the Center for Political Research at Sciences Po’s survey data, illustrates the shift of the French political space to the right. Horizontal lines represent the ideological self-positioning and vertical lines represent the percentage of respondents. For instance, 50% of respondents who self-positioned at 4 (mainstream-left) and 40% of respondents who self-positioned at 6 (mainstream-right) were likely to vote for Emmanuel Macron’s LREM in 2017. Whereas in 2022, 50% percent of respondents who self-positioned at 6 and 35% of respondents who self-positioned at 4 were likely to vote for LREM.

Figure 2. Shift to the right in French politics. Source: The Center for Political Research at Sciences Po.

Due to the far-right becoming the main opposition in the country, French Presidents, both Socialist Francois Hollande and Liberal Emmanuel Macron, have been constrained by a higher electoral risk in adopting any generous policy toward Syrian refugees. In other words, to resettle refugees in large numbers or make bold moves could lead to the loss of significant political support to their primary opponents for these politicians. This is not to say that they had genuine humanitarian agendas in the first place that later became impossible to implement, but to highlight that electoral politics provided an additional set of incentives for stringent policies. Unlike Germany, a majority of both right- and left-wing political parties were either ambivalent or opposed to admitting a large number of refugees in France. Historically, France has been more susceptible to the rise of the far-right. The country has seen the rise of an electorally relevant radical right party in the 1980s as well.

Additionally, French historical experiences in the post-World War II era have been somewhat different from those of Germany. The Algerian Independence War during the 1950s and 60s still influences French politics, society, and public opinion (McCormack, 2011). Algerians and the French have built their own memories of the war, often radically in conflict with one another. By the end of 1962, France was home to 2 million French war veterans (Morin, 2020).

Considering the impact of political institutions and rules, Germany is a parliamentary and federal democracy with a proportional representation system (PR) and France is a semi-presidential and centralized democracy with a two-round plurality system. Normally, PR systems make it easy for PRRPs to win seats in the parliaments with lower vote shares and thereby provide them with legitimacy and ability to amplify their influence. However, the systemic exclusion of the far-right from coalitions in Germany interferes with this process and reduces AfD’s power and influence. In other words, more parliamentary seats or legislative power do not effectively translate into more executive power and capacity for the party.

Although increased vote share does not automatically warrant increased governing power for any parties in PR systems, it would provide strategic incentives to other parties for their inclusion in coalitions. For instance, Norway’s Conservative Party dropped its ban on partnering with the far right and joined the far-right Progress Party in a coalition in 2008 (Bennhold et al., 2019). In other words, if you cannot beat them, join them might present itself as a viable policy option under certain conditions. Contrarily, a first-past-the-post or plurality electoral system rewards the centrist parties and candidates getting the most votes, and marginalizes both far-right and far-left parties. However, the French electoral system runs counter to the expectations of Duverger’s Law in the sense that it has not transformed the multi-party system into a two-party system (Farrell, 1997; Sartori, 1996). I argue that this is primarily because of the high level of electoral volatility and party dealignment in the country. Nevertheless, under the French plurality system, cohabitation, where the president is from a different political party than the majority of the members of the legislature, is possible. Put another way, it allows for a far-right presidential candidate to gain control of the executive branch without gaining a majority in the legislature or forming electoral alliances or coalitions with other political parties. Therefore, the French political system is less effective at hindering the electoral success of the far-right and makes the center-right more susceptible to the contagion effect of the far-right political agenda. If France had a PR system, the impact of the far-right could perhaps be more diffused and the center-right could be less incentivized to adapt to the far-right’s stringent refugee and immigration rhetoric for electoral gains.

With regard to the positions of primary competitors on the salient electoral issues, elections primarily feature competition between two large parties, Christian and Social Democrats in Germany. As shown in Table 3, all coalition that have been formed in the country since 1949 included at least one of these parties. Although historically these parties’ immigration policies have been considerably different, their approaches on immigration and many other issues have converged in recent years through coalition partnerships. Thus, the main opposition party, SPD, was never a suitable alternative to Merkel’s CDU as far as Syrian refugee policies were concerned. The new majority-left coalition government led by SPD came to power even with a promise of more liberal asylum policies (Alkousaa, 2021). However, in France presidential elections have historically been competed not only between right-wing and left-wing but also between center-right and far-right as shown in Table 3. Similarly, the recent presidential elections featured close competition between Emmanuel Macron’s centrist Republic on the Move (LREM) and Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (RN). Immigration was an issue on which these parties differed at least in principle and constituted the basis of Le Pen’s electoral campaigning as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3. Most important issues in France. Source: Center for Political Research at Sciences Po.

Table 3. Coalitions in Germany and presidential candidates in France.

Germany		France
Year	Coalition Partners	Year	Presidential Candidates
1949–1957	CDU/CSU – FDP – DP	1965	Charles de Gaulle (UNR) – Center-right François Mitterrand (FGDS) – Center-left
1961–1966	CDU/CSU – FDP	1969	Georges Pompidou (UDR) – Center-right Alain Poher (CD) – Centrist
1966–1969	CDU/CSU – SPD	1974	Valéry Giscard d’Estaing (RI) – Center-right François Mitterrand (PS) – Center-left
1969–1982	SPD-FDP	1981	François Mitterrand (PS) – Center-left Valéry Giscard d’Estaing (UDF) – Center-right
1982–1998	CDU/CSU-SPD	1988	François Mitterrand (PS) – Center-left Jacques Chirac (RPR) – Center-right
1998–2005	SPD-Greens	1995	Jacques Chirac (RPR) – Center-right Lionel Jospin (PS) – Center-left
2005–2009	CDU/CSU-SPD	2002	Jacques Chirac (RPR) – Center-right Jean-Marie Le Pen (FN) – Far-right
2009–2013	CDU/CSU-FDP	2007	Nicolas Sarkozy (UMP) – Center-right Ségolène Royal (PS) – Center-left
2013–2017	CDU/CSU-SPD	2012	François Hollande (PS) – Center-left Nicolas Sarkozy (UMP) – Center-right
2017–2021	CDU/CSU-SPD	2017	Emmanuel Macron (EM) – Centrist Marine Le Pen – (FN) – Far-right
2021–2025	SPD-FDP-Greens	2922	Emmanuel Macron (LREM) – Centrist Marine Le Pen – (RN) – Far-right

The figure shows the relative importance of a set of issues to voters based on the public opinion surveys conducted by the Center for Political Research at Sciences Po. In the survey, Le Pen and Macron supporters were asked to rank the most important two issues for them. On average, purchasing power was the top issue for both Le Pen and Macron supporters but immigration was only a top issue for Le Pen supporters. This incentivized President Macron to strategically adopt a more restrictive rhetoric on immigration to prevent the move of center-right voters to the far-right as well as appeal to some far-right voters. Immigration became the top issue for the German voters after 2014 as shown in Figure 4 based on Eurobarometer data. Although this has increased AfD’s level of political support significantly. However, the upholding of cordon sanitaire and issue convergence of primary competitors restrained the impact of the far-right on the center-right’s refugee discourses and policies.

Figure 4. Most important issues in Germany. Source: Eurobarometer

Furthermore, electoral volatility has historically been higher in France compared to Germany as shown in Figure 5. This meant that, all other things being equal, French voters were more likely than German voters to shift their party preferences in response to their parties’ perceived competence in resolving the issues to which they attached great importance. For instance, in 2017 presidential elections in France, the net ratio of voters who shifted their voting preferences compared to 2012 elections was 40 percent whereas this was only around 16 percent in Germany. Electoral volatility is important because it shows voters’ tendency for dealignment: whether they continue to strongly identify with the parties they always supported or change their voting preferences based on the issues of the day. High electoral volatility is caused by, and contributes to, economic and political instability (Mainwaring & Zoco, 2007; Powell & Tucker, 2014). Expectedly, high electoral volatility would increase the risks involved in adopting any policy that might upset a targeted group of voters.

Figure 5. Electoral volatility in France and Germany. Source: Dataset of electoral volatility and its internal components in Western Europe (1945–2015).

Multiple case study: German and French responses to Syrian refugees

The election of the first SPD–Green federal government under Gerhard Schröder in 1998 led to the fall of the illusion that Germany was not a ‘country of immigration.’ As a major development, a new Citizenship Law was passed in 1999, which redefined the basis on which citizenship could be obtained in Germany. With the new law, birth-right citizenship (jus soli) replaced the ethnocultural citizenship model (jus sanguinis) and ‘auslanderproblem’ (the foreigner problem) took an inclusive turn. For the first time, children of immigrants who were born in Germany were automatically granted German citizenship. Under Angela Merkel’s leadership, the CDU preserved the policies initiated by the SPD and Greens, and defined integration as the primary immigration policy and challenge. However, different wings of the CDU developed different attitudes toward migration over time. Its economic wing argued in favor of liberalization, its social conservative wing emphasized the cultural challenges of integration, and its Christian wing highlighted the party’s humanitarian obligations (Hess & Green, 2016). Germany’s acknowledgement of its identity as a country of immigration marked a sea change and motivated a paradigm shift in the domestic political debate on immigration. Both the federal government’s National Integration Plan, as well as private sector integration initiatives such as ‘the Charta for Diversity,’ characterized integration as a necessary task for Germany’s future and diversity as a resource (Zambonini, 2009, p. 4).

When the UNHCR announced its Syria Regional Response Plan, which sought 10,000 places for humanitarian admission and 2,000 places for resettlement of Syrians in acute need, Germany immediately committed places for humanitarian assistance. Under its humanitarian program, the first group of 107 Syrian refugees were admitted into the country in September 2013 (“First Group of Syrian,”, 2013). In contrast, French politicians were reluctant to commit places for humanitarian assistance. Also, the country’s geographical advantage, not bordering any of Eastern European countries and therefore not being on a primary migration route, alleviated the need and pressures for an immediate French response to the refugee crisis.

French politicians mostly focused their efforts on humanitarian aid and viewed this as a strategic alternative to hosting refugees. For example, President Hollande contended that France could not channel the monetary aid dedicated to Syrian refugees to something else because if refugees decided to come to France, this would likely have greater financial implications for the country (“France’s Macron wants,”, 2019). Humanitarianism can sometimes act as a facade that projects a compassionate approach while obscuring how, in practice, state authorities are dehumanizing and excluding asylum-seekers (Gabiam, 2021).

Moreover, President Hollande demanded the formation of control centers in EU border countries like Greece, Italy, and Hungary while Germany was admitting thousands of refugees in September 2015 (Mevel, 2015). Likewise, President Macron maintained that France needed to adopt a stricter approach to migration in an attempt to appeal to far-right voters (“France’s Macron wants,”, 2019). The November 2015 Paris Attacks emboldened nativist sentiments and political voices within the French society. Some politicians claimed that the Schengen agreement, which allows for the free movement of people within Europe, was a cause of the terrorist attack. ‘Schengen is dead,’ said Nicolas Sarkozy, leader of the Republicans; Marine Le Pen of the Front National said, ‘the absence of national borders is criminal folly.’ Although these attacks were not carried out by refugees, they caused the French public to view asylum increasingly through the lens of national security. For instance, polls conducted by the Social Science Initiative in 2017 showed that 53% of French people agreed with the proposition that ‘it is too dangerous to let refugees in because they are a major source of terrorism’ (SCI, 2017).

Popular views on refugees were intertwined with the views on Islam as France has historically had a difficult time reconciling Islam with its culture and strict form of secularism. The same poll showed that a sizeable minority, 38% of respondents, thought that Islam was incompatible with French identity. The heightened sense of insecurity in the aftermath of the Paris attacks brought France from ambivalence to inaction and avoidance toward Syrian refugees. Furthermore, the attitudes toward refugees in France increasingly correlated with class identity rather than political ideology. It was not the bourgeoisie but the working class who felt dislocated in an economic sense and opposed the reception of refugees and immigrants. This often made centrist left-wing parties unsuitable alternatives to the right-wing parties with respect to immigration.

Furthermore, local reactions toward the idea of admitting refugees were different in France than in Germany from the very beginning. When a group of two-hundred refugees arrived from Germany in September 2015, two French mayors openly announced that they only wanted to take in Christian refugees, fearing that refugees of other faiths could be terrorists in disguise (“First 200 refugees”, 2015). Overall, the European refugee crisis caught these two countries at completely different historical junctures. On the one hand, it coincided with Germany coming to terms with its immigration history and identifying integration as the primary immigration policy under the Merkel administration. On the other hand, it coincided with the emergence of a political consensus that privileged a restrictive approach toward immigration in France.

With hundreds of thousands of people trying to cross the Mediterranean into Europe to escape the civil war in 2014, the refugee crisis increasingly required a more sophisticated European response. European countries that initially permitted the migrants to board trains without registering them or checking their paperwork now chose to limit refugee arrivals by closing train stations and building razor-wire fences. In the face of increasing humanitarian pressures and the disgruntlement of some member states, the European Commission adopted two emergency schemes in May 2015 to relocate 160,000 people in clear need of international protection from the member states most affected by the flow to other EU member states.⁶ The European Commission’s emergency schemes were short-term and unenforceable and, therefore, failed.

In August 2015, 71 refugees were found dead in a truck on an Austrian highway.⁷ Hundreds of people drowned in the Mediterranean. The photos of Aylan Kurdi in particular, a Syrian toddler who washed up on a Turkish beach after their boat capsized at sea, evoked an affective sympathetic response. Public opinion began to favor generous refugee policies in Germany (Slovic et al., 2017). A politbarometer poll conducted in September 2015 found that 66% of Germans felt allowing large refugee flows was the right thing to do (Keita & Dempster, 2020). In the backdrop of this changing public opinion, the country kept its borders open to the stranded refugees on September 4, 2015. Between September and November 2015, 500,000 refugees entered Germany, around 300,000 of which were Syrian.

This changing public opinion was also reflected in activism and volunteerism for refugees. People from all different walks of life-students, workers, and the retired-were asking what they could do to help, from donating clothes to providing rides and guiding immigrants through German bureaucracy (“How many refugees,”, 2015). They were moved by the images of floating coffins in the Mediterranean, as well as by their ability to do good and provide hope to people who experienced a civil war and a plethora of ensuing social and emotional traumas (“How many refugees,”, 2015). The most active pro-refugee grassroots movement was Willkommensbündnis für Flüchtlinge (the Welcoming Alliance for Refugees), which was established in the upper-middle-class Berlin quarter of Steglitz-Zehlendorf. The alliance had thousands of supporters and more than 300 volunteers (“Which side will prevail,” 2015). Karakayali and Kleist (2016) conducted surveys with the volunteers, who were predominantly females in their twenties or over sixty, often had a migrant background, and were more non-religious than the societal average. Karakayali and Kleist (2016) argued that the volunteers were not only interested in improving the living conditions of refugees but were also willing to take on state responsibilities and become a force for integration.

Some attributed the September 4 decision and pro-refugee activism to the historical guilt that Germans developed due to the memory of the Holocaust and World War II. As German political scientist Petra Bendel contends, German citizens know that the Refugee Convention came out of the historical experience of Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust. They felt ready to atone for the country’s collective sins and reform and restore the country’s image. These historical experiences also motivated a type of cordon sanitaire, other parties’ exclusion of AfD from coalitions. The center-right parties have only attempted to cooperate with the far-right at the subnational level. For instance, the short-lived election of Free Democratic Party (FDP) candidate, Thomas Kemmerich as the Minister President of Thuringia materialized with the support of the AfD. However, there was no cooperation between the center-right and the AfD at the national level.

Although Germany’s asylum policies were predominantly generous during the early years of the European refugee crisis, they began to manifest both progressive and restrictive tendencies in the following years (Ilgit & Klotz, 2018, p. 615). Border controls and Dublin rules were reinstituted in November 2015. BAMF (Federal Office for Migration and Refugees) began to grant subsidiary protection status to Syrian refugees instead of conventional refugee status. With conventional refugee status, they received full protection for three years as well as travel documents. They were also eligible to apply for family reunification. However, with subsidiary protection, they were allowed to obtain residency only for one year and required to wait 2 years to apply for family reunification. Family reunification was suspended altogether between mid-2016 and 2018. Suffering the consequences, Syrians appealed to the administrative courts and courts often ruled in their favor, granting them full protection under the Refugee Convention (Law Library of Congress). Despite this, those with a subsidiary protection status still make up the majority of the Syrian refugee population in Germany (Al-Jablawi, 2019).

In France, a form of subsidiary protection called ‘the humanitarian visa’ was introduced in 2017 in the absence of an extensive asylum policy. The humanitarian visa was designed with the objective of helping Syrians travel to France and apply for asylum. The asylum visa falls within the parameters of humanitarian protection and takes ‘vulnerability’ as its main criterion (Gabiam, 2021). Beneficiaries of humanitarian protection receive diminished rights in comparison to refugees under the Refugee Convention (Demetriou, 2019). The humanitarian visa approach was not in line with the obligations of France under the Refugee Convention, and was perceived as an effort to sideline the Convention and confer refugee status to a small and selective group of people. Based on the convention, all member countries have an obligation not to actively take non-entry measures. Requiring de facto refugees to obtain a visa to apply for asylum is a legal non-entry measure. Overall, the humanitarian visa policy only contributed to the project of ‘Fortress Europe,’ making its physical borders inaccessible to migrants (Gabiam, 2021). This shift from a convention-based approach to a visa-based approach to asylum was also reflected in leaders’ rhetoric. For example, President Macron, in reference to France’s refugee-convention-based asylum laws, claimed that refugee laws were too liberal and being manipulated by smugglers and other people (“Macron presses a harder line,”, 2021).

With regard to refugee policy and foreign policy, a negative relationship between political parties’ approaches toward Syrian refugees and their approaches toward the regime of President Bashar al-Assad existed in both countries. Merkel’s CDU and Macron’s France on the Move have been critical of the rule of Bashar Al-Assad in Syria. However, their foreign policy positions have transformed from a Syria without Assad into a Syria with Assad in the long term. In contrast, AfD (“Far-right German AfD,”, 2019) and National Rally (“European far-right leader,”, 2017) have met and supported the Assad government, as well as the Kremlin, to facilitate the return of refugees to Syria. Contrary to the widely held perception that far-right parties are parochial and domestically focused, AfD and RN have been quite active and successful in finding partners and spreading their anti-refugee agenda across international borders.

Critical decision-making

With hundreds of thousands of Syrians fleeing and crossing the Mediterranean in August 2015, Chancellor Angela Merkel found herself in a crisis situation characterized by tremendous uncertainty, confusion, and complexity. She was pressured to make a quick decision and had few policy choices before her. The first choice was to do nothing, as few refugees were able to travel to Germany legally under the Dublin system. The second choice was a preemptive restrained approach: erecting a fence, closing borders, and suspending the Schengen rules. However, this approach could run counter to humanitarian norms and emerging public support for refugees in Germany.

The third choice was to have refugees redistributed among European countries. However, the failure of the 2014 refugee quota system revealed that such attempts were unlikely to make a difference. The fourth and last choice was to keep the borders open, which could have a lasting impact on the country and Chancellor Merkel’s political career. Considering the domestic political dynamics of the country, this decision could be endorsed by the left and Merkel’s major coalition partner, the SPD, but opposed by its sister-party, Christian Social Union (CSU), and other right-wing parties. Also, it could heighten the growing populist, anti-immigration, and anti-EU political agenda of the new far-right party, AfD.

Merkel, known for her pragmatism, respect for constraints, and skills in compromise and building bridges across different political camps, decided to keep the country’s borders open to the stranded refugees on September 4, 2015. The decision was controversial because it not only suspended the Dublin agreement, which required refugees to request asylum in the country they first entered the EU, but it also made the decision-making process very insulated as Chancellor Merkel did not consult with CDU’s coalition partner, CSU leader Horst Seehofer. She perhaps operated on the assumption that her coalition partner would not turn against her for keeping the borders open. The planned phone calls with Seehofer on the day of the decision were canceled. Angela Merkel exercised her authority and told Austria’s Chancellor Kurz that Germany would keep its borders open. She declared that Germany was ready to admit the refugees: ‘wir schaffen das’ (we can do this).

The crucial moment came on the weekend of September 12-13, 2015, when thousands of refugees stranded in Austria began to head for Germany. Following the orders by the Ministry of Interior, the police prepared for border closures, putting officers and equipment within range of the border. But the go-ahead never came from Berlin despite the security preparations, and the September 4 decisions eventually became effective. It was quite evident that strict border protection measures and the resulting photos of rejected refugees could do more harm than good to the country’s image and contradict Merkel’s historical legacy at this stage of the crisis. Between September and November 2015, 500,000 refugees entered Germany, around 300,000 of which were Syrian. The decision engendered a fracture between the CDU and its allies. Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière, Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, and the leader of its sister party CSU, Horst Seehofer, called for a more effective limit on the number of refugees and other migrants. Horst Seehofer offered establishing zones on the margins of Europe and threatened Merkel that if the country continued to refuse setting an upper limit, his party would file a complaint with the German constitutional court (‘Bavaria threatens,’ 2015).

The reactions to Merkel’s decision among her EU partners were mixed. She was abandoned by Eastern European countries and the UK for turning Syrian refugees into a ‘European problem.’ However, her decision was applauded by some other European countries for saving the EU’s commitment to human rights and humanitarianism. Despite criticisms, Merkel maintained her bold approach and responded to those demanding an apology in the aftermath of her September 4 decision by declaring, ‘If we need to start excusing ourselves for showing a friendly face in emergency situations, then this is no longer my country’ (Gibbs, 2015). Although it was only for a very short time, Chancellor Merkel’s decision to keep the borders open in the face of rising populism and nativism in Europe was exceptional.

Between 2011 and 2015, in agreement with other European countries and her usual leadership style, Chancellor avoided bold policies, and chose to provide humanitarian aid and engage with host countries in the region to protect Germany’s borders as well as the borders of Europe. She viewed the admission of refugees in massive numbers as an undesirable policy option. However, some incidents put a human face on the refugee crisis and helped shift Chancellor Merkel’s approach toward refugees. The first incident was a public event, ‘Good life in Germany,’ in the northern city of Rostock where Reem Sahwil, a Palestinian high school girl, told Merkel that she and her family, who had arrived in Rostock from a Lebanese refugee in 2011, faced the threat of deportation, that she wanted to study like everyone else, and that she found it very unpleasant to see how others enjoyed life while she could not (Connolly, 2015). Although the Chancellor claimed that Germany might not accept everybody, she was unable to provide an explanation for why Reem and her family were facing the threat of deportation. This was, perhaps, a rare opportunity for the Chancellor to observe the real consequences of German asylum policies over people’s lives. The second incident was the discovery of a lorry on an Austrian motorway containing the decomposing bodies of 71 people, including a baby girl, on August 28, 2015. The last incident was the drowning of three-year-old Alan Kurdi in the Mediterranean Sea on September 2, 2015, whose image made global headlines and powerfully exposed the deafening silence of the international community in the face of humanitarian tragedies. These incidents were critical in the process leading up to Chancellor Merkel’s September 4 decision. Through her generous policies, the number of Syrian refugees who entered Germany reached 800,000.

However, refugee issues became a source of political contestation in the following years and strengthened the position of anti-refugee parties. AfD increased its seat share in the German Parliament and took third place after it won 13% of the votes in 2017 (Al-Jablawi, 2019). Also, public support for the government’s asylum policies waned. For instance, a survey conducted in 2016 showed that 60% of Germans backed a fixed limit on refugees, while 35% opposed it. In the survey, 81% of people who identified themselves as supporters of the populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) were particularly enthusiastic about the idea of a cap. Support for a cap was also high, 64%, among the followers of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), followed by the Free Democratic Party (57%), the Left Party (54%), and the Social Democrats (52%) (“Opinion poll shows,”, 2016).

Additionally, there was increasing opposition to Chancellor Merkel’s refugee policies from some of the social organizations on the fringes of German society. Far-right social movements such as Pegida (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West) and neo-Nazi organization NPD protested and engaged in a disinformation campaign against refugees. Amidst these reactions and pressures, Chancellor Merkel brokered a refugee deal with Turkey in November 2015 which sought to control the crossing of refugees from Turkey to the Greek islands and prevent the massive refugee flows into Europe. Under the deal, irregular refugees who arrived in Greece would be returned to Turkey and for every irregular refugee returned, one refugee would be resettled in Europe. The agreement blocked an important travel route for refugees. Despite the introduction of some restrictive policies, Chancellor Merkel’s policies have largely remained liberal and generous. She has successfully resisted the securitization of Syrian refugees by the far-right AfD and her coalition partner, CSU. She achieved this through adopting a humanitarian discourse and shifting her policies when needed within the constraints of humanitarianism to manage intra- and inter-party tensions, as well as the public disgruntlement with refugees. Merkel’s principled realism and high sense of humanitarian conscience motivated generous policies toward Syrian refugees.

In contrast, French politicians were largely pragmatic and opportunist (“Emmanuel Macron, Pragmatist?”, 2018). They have strategically altered their refugee rhetoric in response to rising international and domestic pressures. They periodically pledged to admit refugees, but rarely fulfilled these pledges. For example, President Hollande pledged to admit only 24,000 refugees in 2015 and 2016 as part of a plan proposed by the European Commission, but the total number of refugees admitted by France barely reached 22,000 by the end of 2021. French politicians mostly focused their efforts on humanitarian aid and viewed this aid as a strategic alternative to hosting refugees.

Conclusion

The Syrian refugee crisis has restructured the priorities of the electorate as well as political parties across Europe. Some political leaders motivated by reelection have tried to adjust their political campaigning strategies to respond to emerging public sensitivities about refugees, which often emboldened and normalized xenophobic and anti-refugee sentiments. Prioritizing humanitarian responsibility, others have adopted rather liberal and generous policies toward refugees. Concerned by this great divergence behind meaning and policymaking toward refugees, this study comparatively analyzed the domestic sources of Syrian refugee discourses and policies in Germany and France.

Despite the enactment of some restrictive measures (i.e. granting subsidiary protection as opposed to conventional refugee status and suspending family reunification) in the aftermath of Merkel’s September 4 decision, Syrian refugee issues were largely viewed as matters of policymaking in Germany. This constituted a stark contradiction with the French approach, which primarily rested on a view of Syrian refugees as a threat to European borders and France’s national security. Taking a broad historical perspective, the refugee crisis caught these two countries at different junctures. On the one hand, it coincided with a Germany coming to terms with its immigration history and identifying integration as the primary immigration policy under the Merkel administration.⁸ On the other hand, it coincided with a France where most of the parties privileged a restrictive approach toward immigration.⁹

Based on quantitative and qualitative analysis of textual data and a multiple case study, this research found that electoral competition dynamics shaped the discourses and policies toward Syrian refugees in Germany and France. The electoral competition, which primarily took place between President Macron’s centrist LREM and Le Pen’s far-right RN, incentivized political actors to favor more stringent approaches to immigration in France. Although French Presidents employed humanitarian rhetoric and periodically pledged to admit refugees in large numbers during the early stages of the Syrian refugee crisis (2011-2015), their reluctant humanitarianism was replaced by inaction and avoidance in the aftermath of the Paris attacks.

Additionally, providing massive aid packages to neighboring countries hosting Syrian refugees was viewed as an alternative to admitting refugees. Alternatives to providing asylum were amplified when a new legal category, the humanitarian visa, was introduced in 2017 to sideline France’s obligations toward asylum seekers under the 1951 Refugee Convention and to grant asylum only to a select group of people. Overall, the French political space has shifted to the right, where all front-runners (Macron, Le Pen, and Zemmour) took a restrictive approach to immigration.¹⁰ Also, left-wing parties have gradually become unsuitable alternatives to the right-wing parties as far as immigration was concerned.

Furthermore, this study found that the systemic exclusion of the far-right party resulting from Germany’s World War II and Holocaust experiences, and the convergence of CDU and SPD’s positions on immigration over years have limited the expected positive effect of the PR system and the electoral salience of immigration on AfD’s power. Its ability to influence the center-right’s refugee discourses and policies was not amplified despite the growing support it received. Whereas in France issue salience and primary competitor’s ownership of immigration incentivized the center-right to adopt more stringent discourses and policies to prevent the centrist right-wing voters’ shift to the far-right. Relatedly, this research observed that when primary competitors are not clear alternatives to one another when it comes to immigration, the far-right’s impact on the center-right’s immigration policies diminishes despite the growing salience of immigration as an issue. Finally, this study found that electoral volatility is positively correlated with the center-right’s susceptibility to the far-right’s refugee discourses and policies.

Future studies might examine the implications of the far-right’s rise for the center-right’s refugee policies and discourses, and the role of electoral dynamics in other contexts, especially in non-European contexts. One potential case could be Turkey. The country hosts around 4 million Syrian refugees and has recently transitioned from a parliamentary democracy to a presidential one. Also, intra-party controversies and conflicts within the mainstream nationalist party (MHP) have resulted in the emergence of a PRRP, Victory Party which bases its political campaigning on the promise of returning refugees to Syria and blames not only the government but also the refugees for causing a wide range of societal, political, and economic ills.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 PRRP refers to a family of parties that share a core ideology that includes at least a combination of nativism, authoritarianism, and populism (Mudde, 2013, p. 218).

2 For foundational insights, see Bernard R. Berelson, Paul F. Lazarsfeld, and William N. McPhee, Voting: A Study of Opinion Formation in a Presidential Campaign (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954); and Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper, 1957).

3 The dataset is available at the following repository: https://dataverse.harvard.edu/file.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/AOVSGV/WZAEBC&version=1.0

4 https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/

5 I computed a weighted average to equalize the frequency of the coded speeches and policies in the dataset.

6 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_15_6134

7 https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/europes-border-crisis/71-dead-refugees-found-truck-austria-highway-officials-n417536

8 This process started with the new Citizenship Law passed in 1999 by which the birth-right citizenship (jus soli) replaced the ethnocultural citizenship model (jus sanguinis) and ‘the foreigner problem’ (Auslanderproblem) took an inclusive turn.

9 After implementing a series of worker recruitment programs in the 1970s, France has focused on stemming and deterring immigration. One-quarter of the foreigners who have entered France since 1990 have since left the country (220,000 out of 850,000 entries since 1990).

10 https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/09/meet-eric-zemmour-frances-far-right-presidential-contender.html

11 Terminologies for Germany were derived from the UNHCR report on the forms of asylum and humanitarian protection in Germany which is available at https://help.unhcr.org/germany/asylum-in-germany/forms-of-asylum-and-refugee-protection/. This basic classification might be further supported with the information on what types of rights each status provides to the people seeking humanitarian protection.

12 Terminologies for France were derived from the UNHCR’s resettlement handbook for France which is available at https://www.unhcr.org/en-us/protection/resettlement/5322ca479/unhcr-resettlement-handbook-country-chapter-france.html. Again, this basic classification might be further supported with the information on what types of rights each status provides to the people seeking humanitarian protection.