African Autocrats and Progressive Refugee Governance: Motivating the Illiberal Paradox in African Asylum Policy Through a Case Study of Uganda

The refugee and asylum policies of developing world countries have long been overlooked in academic and policy circles. This represents a critical gap in the literature, as developing countries host 84% of the world’s refugees. Sub-Saharan Africa, in particular, hosts 26% of the global refugee population. Some African countries welcome refugees and facilitate their safety and prosperity by offering them liberal freedoms. Others seek to prevent the entry of refugees or limit their freedom with draconian policies. How do African countries formulate asylum policies and how do they respond when borders are threatened or crossed by refugees? Uganda is an empirical outlier which can offer insight into this understudied area. Uganda hosts over 1 million refugees, which the country supports with policies that are perceived to be the most progressive in the world.

The limited literature on the determinants of asylum policy in the developing world fail to explain Uganda’s policy response. This thesis argues that this failure stems from an inadequate engagement with the nature and political priorities of the host state’s governing regime. Host governments formulate asylum policies with a view towards both domestic and international political considerations. How much or how little governing regimes provide for refugees is influenced by the possibilities afforded by the state’s domestic political environment. For Museveni, progressive refugee governance fits into a broader foreign policy strategy of image management with the West, reinforcing his reputation as a guarantor of regional stability and deflecting scrutiny of his authoritarian domestic policies.

Evaluating the relationship between regime type and asylum policy is one way to examine how policy outcomes vary across different domestic political environments. Analysis of this relationship reveals that autocrats comprise some 93% of asylum policy liberalizers in Sub-Saharan Africa since the Cold War. In particular, personalist autocrats – those autocrats who have “personalized” power and most closely resemble the stereotype of unconstrained dictatorial rule – account for 60% of liberalizers. This trend supports the idea that progressive refugee governance has strategic value for African autocrats, deflecting international scrutiny into repressive domestic policies, indicating a commitment to international norms, and highlighting a state’s stability relative to regional neighbors. This thesis posits that liberalization of national asylum policy came to serve as a signaling device of these desirable characteristics in the Cold War’s aftermath as liberalizing pressure was applied to African dictators.