States or parties? Emigrant outreach and transnational engagement

Abstract

Home-country institutions are increasingly engaged in reaching out to their emigrants to further their domestic agendas. Using a most-different systems design, I compare two cases in which emigrant outreach is dominated by the state (Philippines and Mexico) and two cases in which it is dominated by parties (Lebanon and the Dominican Republic). My main argument is that each type of outreach results in a different trade-off between electoral mobilization and partisan autonomy. State-led outreach encourages emigrants to transcend partisan divisions but does not mobilize overseas voters. By contrast, party-led outreach generates higher electoral turnout while reproducing and reinforcing sectarian and/or clientelist patterns of interest representation. I conclude with the implications for whether emigrants are likely to play a democratizing role in fragile democracies with serious deficits in participation, representation, and accountability.

Why do parties support emigrant voting rights?

“…It contributes to ongoing debates across several research fields. First, studies of state-diaspora relations have only recently begun to compare the role of political parties (Burgess, 2018;Koinova and Tsourapas, 2018;Østergaard-Nielsen and Ciornei, 2019a;Paarlberg, 2019), but we have still little knowledge of the broader trends in party position and framing of sending country outreach policies. Second, a comparative analysis of party support of emigrant political rights complements the rapidly growing literature on how ideology and party competition influence the position of political parties on immigrant rights (Alonso and Fonseca, 2012;Helbling, 2014).…”

Migrant transnationalism in violent democracies

“…There exist few, if any, institutional pathways for migrants to become involved. To the contrary, political actors and state authorities in sending-democracies tend to encourage migrant political participation in the formal and legal activities that comprise their democratic politics (Burgess 2018;Gamlen 2014;Lafleur 2013;Paarlberg 2019), leaving open the question of under what conditions, how, and to what effect transnational migrants influence the informal and more hidden practices that characterise these governing systems.…”

“…states extending voting rights even as they make expatriate voting extremely cumbersome) suggests that it is the result of negotiations between a myriad of transnational actors 'whose interests are strongly affected by the inclusion or exclusion of these new voters' (Lafleur 2015, 840). Conversely, parties appear to reach out to migrants living abroad because it helps mobilise voters' relatives in the home country (Paarlberg 2019), and because it enables parties to channel particularistic benefits to sectarian constituencies and extend clientelist networks (Burgess 2018). Given the evidence presented in this issue that migrant transnationalism can affect the incentives and costs of engaging in the type of violence practised in violent democracies, the question remains as to whether and how states or parties are modifying the ways in which they seek to engage their migrants.…”

How do countries of origin engage migrants and diasporas? Multiple actors and comparative perspectives

“…Burgess’s ‘States or parties? Emigrant outreach and transnational engagement’ (2018) explores the transnational implications of emigrant outreach dominated by states or parties, by comparing two cases in which outreach is dominated by the state (Philippines and Mexico) and two by parties (Lebanon and Dominican Republic). Her main argument is that the types of outreach result in different trade-offs between electoral mobilization and partisan autonomy.…”