Perpetuating crisis as a supply strategy: the role of (nativist) populist governments in EU policymaking on refugee distribution

Abstract

We still know very little of how populist governments behave as compared to mainstream governments in Council decision-making. Studying the ‘crucial case’ of negotiations around refugee distribution in the EU, an issue which allows populists to mobilize both anti-EU and anti-immigrant sentiment, we demonstrate that populist governments differ from mainstream ones in three important ways: First, they reject formal and informal rules of Council decision-making if these are not conducive to their preferred outcome; second, they reject traditional means of ensuring compromise such as package-deals and side-payments; third, they reject the final solution and exploit the ensuing deadlock to prove that the EU is weak and dysfunctional. We show that populist governments adopt such a behaviour even when they would benefit from the adoption of a policy solution. However, we expect populists to engage in such political games only when the negative effects of non-decisions are not immediate.