Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/196306 
Year of Publication: 
2008
Series/Report no.: 
GEG Working Paper No. 2008/44
Publisher: 
University of Oxford, Global Economic Governance Programme (GEG), Oxford
Abstract: 
This article takes a broadly liberal institutionalist approach to explore the substantively important and neglected issue of international cooperation in the global refugee regime. It seeks to explain the nature of the cooperation problem in the global refugee regime and the conditions under which that cooperation has historically been overcome. The article argues that the dominant conception of the refugee regime as characterised by a Prisoner's Dilemma game is misrepresentative because it fails to capture the asymmetric power relations in the regime. Given that the majority of the world's refugee are in the South and the regime sets out few norms obligating Northern states to contribute to the protection of refugees who are not on their territory, the regime is more appropriately characterised by the game theoretical analogy of a Suasion Game. In order to examine the conditions under which the Suasion Game logic has historically been overcome, the article explores the four main examples of ad hoc bargaining processes convened by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) between 1980 and 2005 to facilitate international cooperation to address longstanding refugee situations. It argues that international cooperation has taken place under two conditions. Firstly, Northern states have needed to have linked interests in other issue-areas - such as security, immigration, and trade - that result from interdependence between refugee protection in the South and consequences in other issue-areas in the North. Secondly, though, UNHCR has been an important actor in facilitating issue-linkage within bargaining because, where interdependence has been complex, it has played a role in recognising and effectively communicating these interdependencies to Northern states. The article suggests that the analysis has wider theoretical implications by highlighting the role that the recognition and effective communication of complex interdependencies across issue-areas can play in enabling weaker actors (such as IOs and Southern states) to influence stronger actors' strategies while working within the constraints of their existing preference structures.
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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