The State and the Refugee. A Decision-Theoretic Approach to Asylum Policy in the European Union

Asylum decisions are often treated as legal-administrative outcomes, guided by established criteria and implemented by civil servants. Yet in politicised contexts, these decisions are also shaped by governments’ political preferences and the electoral constraints they face. This article investigates how the tension between administrative merit assessment and political discretion influences the recognition of different international protection statuses across European Union member states. Moving beyond the standard binary of protection versus rejection, the article examines how governments choose among three types of protection: full refugee status (under the 1951 Geneva Convention), subsidiary protection (under EU law), and nationally defined humanitarian statuses. These statuses differ in the rights they grant, offering governments a way to comply with international obligations while pursuing political goals. A decision-theoretic model is developed to account for how governments’ preferences interact with two key constraints: the well-foundedness of asylum claims (reflecting administrative assessment) and the salience of migration in public opinion (reflecting electoral accountability). The model predicts that, under low public scrutiny, governments can steer decisions more directly. Under high scrutiny, their room for manoeuvre narrows. Using Eurostat data on first-instance asylum decisions from 2008–2019, the article shows that government preferences significantly affect which protection status is granted—especially when public attention is low. When public scrutiny is high, restrictive governments are constrained to grant refugee status where claims are strong but may limit overall protection by reducing subsidiary recognition. National protection statuses respond almost exclusively to political preferences. This article contributes to scholarship on asylum, executive politics, and public administration by showing how bureaucratic and political logics interact in shaping asylum outcomes. It reveals that asylum recognition is not merely about legal compliance, but about how governments navigate competing imperatives within the state.