(Page 6 of 16) - "Burden-Sharing": The International Politics of Refugee Protection authored by Thielemann, Eiko.

burden’ (1966: 269). This has become to be known as the so-called exploitation
hypothesis. As a larger/richer nation has potentially more to loose (in absolute terms)
from the non-provision of the particular good in question, it will have smaller free-riding
incentives than smaller nations. Free riding may result if there is little need for
smaller/poorer allies to provide contributions in excess of ‘spill-ins’ (Sandler and Hartley
1995: 24). The model presented above suggests that we will observe strong evidence of
free-riding in the provision in international public goods and seems to lay the basis for
frequently accusation of free-riding that the US has made about its NATO allies or that
states such as Germany made during the Kosovo refugee crisis. For the NATO collective
defense case, Olsen and Zeckhauser (1966) therefore expected unequal burden-sharing
based on national income levels, predicting a positive relationship between GNP and
defense burdens (measured as military expenditure in relation to GDP).

For the forced

migration case, this would mean that larger states would be expected to be the ones
contributing disproportionately to global/international refugee protection, not just in
absolute but also in relative terms. I.e., one would expect a positive relationship between
population size/GNP and refugee protection burdens (measured say as number of
protection seekers per thousand of population).

Second, as countries have an incentive to hope for positive spill-ins and try to conceal
their true preferences for the particular good in question in the hope of being able to free-
ride on the efforts of others, contributions to public goods are expected to be provided at
inefficient or suboptimal levels. Due to their particular characteristics, public goods lead
to behavior that is rational from an individual’s perspective, but that can be suboptimal
(or even disastrous) from a collective viewpoint (i.e. the point of view of a local, national
or international community).

There are powerful incentives for individuals to avoid

contributing personal resources to the provision of public goods. As they fear that the
expression of their interest in a particular public good will mean that they will also be the
ones who end up footing the bill, public goods are undersupplied and resource allocation

They showed that their hypothesis was empirically supported for NATO in 1964 and other studies found a

similar (albeit) declining relationship for NATO in later years (Russett 1970; Sandler and Forbes 1980;
Oneal 1990). [Sandler and Hartley 1995: 24].

The prisoner dilemma points to a constellation where actors who act solely with the aim of maximizing

their own individual utility will produce a result which is contrary to their collective interest (Luce and
Raiffa 1957; Rapoport and Chammah 1965). In the original prisoner's dilemma (Rapoport and Chammah
1965), two prisoners who are accused of a crime are interviewed separately and offered a deal. If only one
confesses, that prisoner alone will be released, whereas the other one will receive a harsh sentence. If both
confess, each will receive an intermediate sentence. If both refuse to confess, they will get a milder
sentence for some different crime which can be proven independently of either confessing. If each prisoner
is concerned solely with their own interest, it is rational for them to confess. But if each is unwilling to
receive a benefit when this will harm the other, then each will refuse to confess, and both will be better off.
As they lack the ability to communicate, and therefore the opportunity to collaborate for mutual gain, they
both lose out due their inability to create a cooperative outcome for themselves. The prisoner’s dilemma
applies to many real-life situations where actors are faced with similar incentives to defect from co-
operation unless institutions are created that enable provide for effective communication and build trust
between the actors. For another real life example, Kaul et al. (1999: 8) refer to the case of labour standards.
‘In the absence of industry-wide negotiating forums, individual firms wishing to improve labour conditions
would have to act in isolation. They would most likely be reluctant to improve work conditions, arguing
that it would increase costs and jeopardize their competitiveness. The effect could be that no firm would
improve work conditions. Indeed, under competitive pressures a perverse incentive emerges to lower
labour standards even if many—or most—firms would prefer to raise their standards. Thus we see in a
practical case how a lack of communication and ability to agree on a common strategy can lead to a
suboptimal strategy—even though each firm acted rationally from its own point of view.’