The Experimental State: Asylum Policy-Making in Israel, Lebanon, and Turkey

How do states respond to, adapt, and maneuver various interests and normative pressures to create asylum laws and policies? Existing literature has pointed to several factors that shape state asylum policy: structural conditions (Czaika 2009), international norms and organizations (Neumayer 2005; Hatton 2009), and domestic courts and activist groups (Guiraudon 2000; Lahav and Guiraudon 2006; Joppke 1998; 2001). Less is known about the ways states navigate through these diverse pressures. Rather than conceiving of state behavior as an outcome of either normative commitments or strategic calculations, we draw from American Pragmatism to argue that states’ asylum policies are shaped by trial and error, experimentation, and struggle. We examine the development of asylum laws and policies in three states—Israel, Lebanon, and Turkey— different in their political capacity and degree of democracy. Via in-person interviews, government and legislative documents, and secondary literature, we outline an intensive process of experimentation, by which host governments propose a law or engage in a new practice, triggering a response from public opinion, various organizations such as the UNHCR or the courts, and the government maneuvers according to its strategic interests. Overall, the argument advances a dynamic understanding of asylum policy-making and restores the creative agency of the state in times of refugee crisis.