(Page 5 of 16) - "Burden-Sharing": The International Politics of Refugee Protection authored by Thielemann, Eiko.

Extending these ideas to the area of forced migration, Suhrke (1998) argues that by
granting refuge to displaced persons, host countries provide a public good from which all
states benefit [add references]. She underlines the positive externalities resulting from
one country’s refugee protection effort to another and writes: ‘If one state admits
refugees, others will benefit from the greater international order that ensues regardless of
their own admissions’ (1998:400). From this perspective, enhanced security and stability
can be regarded as the principal benefits, as an accommodation of displaced persons (in
particular in the case of mass influx) can be expected to reduce the risk of them fuelling
and spreading the conflict refugees are fleeing from. In this characterization, the product
(security/stability) fulfils the necessary conditions for a public good of having (at least
some) non-excludable and non-rival characteristics. It is non-excludable, as not just
contributors (host states) but also non-contributors benefit from the enhanced security
and stability achieved. In other words, states that accept refugees cannot prevent
neighboring states, which do not open their borders for refugees, to benefit from the
enhancement in regional stability achieved. It is also non-rival, as one country’s
consumption of the increased security and stability provided does not detract from the
resulting security/stability benefits that accrue to other states. Two immediate caveats,
however, should be added here. First, the security/stability benefits provided by refugee
protection are usually more limited in reach than parts of the global public goods
literature suggests. The security and stability implications of unregulated refugee flows
are predominantly regional (rather than global). We can expect relatively more benefits
from refugee protection measures accruing to countries closer to a refugee generating
conflict. Countries bordering states from which refugees emanate are faced with the
highest risk of conflict spreading across their own border. This is why refugee protection
measures are not providing global public goods but rather regional ones. Second, it will
be shown in the following that refugee protection, while portraying some public good
characteristics, should not be viewed as providing pure public goods.

Public Goods, Under-provision and the Distribution of Burdens

From a distributional perspective, the problem with public goods is with its non-
excludability characteristics. In their seminal article on the economic theory of alliances,
Olson and Zeckhauser argued that if a collective good is purely public among allies, the
following hypothesis can be derived (Olson and Zeckhauser 1966).

First, burdens are expected to be shared unevenly among allies with large, wealthy
countries shouldering a disproportionate share of the alliance effort relative to smaller,
poorer allies. Non-excludability leads some nations using positive externalities/spill-ins,
relying on the provision of their allies to satisfy their demand for public goods through
free-riding. For the defense case, Olson and Zeckhauser state: ‘In an alliance, the amount
a nation spends on defense will be affected by the amount its allies provide’ (1966: 268).
This implies perfect substitutability of the public good provided among allies, as a unit
more (less) of the good provided by any of the allies, enhances (decreases) the
consumption opportunities for everybody in the alliance. Contribution decisions made by
alliance nations ‘are such that the ‘larger’ nation-the one that places the higher absolute
value on the alliance good-will bear a disproportionately large share of the common