Refugees as a catalyzer of support for democracy: Evidence from a natural experiment

Official URL: https://risc01.sabanciuniv.edu/record=b2482910 _(Table of Contents)

I developed a theory to understand the impact of refugee resettlement on the political attitudes of citizens living in host countries with authoritarian governments. While refugees may engender social discontent against existing institutions, their political implications need not necessarily be the rise of authoritarian and anti-democratic attitudes, as often occurs in Western countries. In authoritarian countries, antiestablishment feelings may generate social discontent against authoritarian institutions, leading to an increase in favorable sentiments toward democracy. Adopting difference-in-difference and instrumental variable approaches for causal inference, I test my theory in Jordan and show that the presence of Syrian refugees increases anti-establishment feelings in society and the likelihood of supporting democracy. This study contributes to the literature by demonstrating that even though academics and Western media pose migration as a serious threat to democracy, any analysis about the impact of migration on public opinion should be conditional on institutional contexts