ABSTRACT
The efforts made by countries to provide international collective goods often appear to be highly inequitable. Burden-sharing debates have long been prevalent in matters related to international security, defence and peacekeeping, and are becoming increasingly important in areas such as climate change and refugee protection (Olson and Zeckhauser 1966; Oneal 1990a, 1990b; Suhrke 1998; Sandler 1992, 2004). What is surprising is not so much that some countries appear to carry disproportionate burdens in providing for collective goods but that these inequitable distributions appear stable over time, with states accepting or being unable to change them. The question of why some states put up with bearing larger burdens in the
provision of collective goods has sparked strong academic interest.1 The dominant view in the theoretical literature of alliances is that of Olson and Zeckhauser (1966), who argue that larger countries are exploited by smaller
ones in the provision of collective public goods – the latter ‘free-ride’ on the commitments of the former. Boyer (1989) presents an alternative view based on the idea that countries have a comparative advantage in providing certain types of collective goods over others. One implication of Boyer’s argument is that, whilst we may see evidence of the ‘exploitation hypothesis’ in some dimensions of collective goods provision, the overall picture may be less inequitable. This essay outlines these different theoretical frameworks for assessing
burden-sharing and analyses their applicability in the case of forced migration, an area which has received little attention in the burden-sharing literature.2 Developing Boyer’s argument, we consider that there are a number of ways in which countries can and do contribute to the provision of refugee protection.3 These include what we call pro-active measures, which attempt to halt the escalation of potential refugee problems by, for instance, sending peacekeeping troops to a region in order to prevent or contain forced migration, and those which are reactive. The latter deal, in various ways, with the consequences of refugee problems once they have occurred, above all by admitting protection seekers to a territory. Thinking about the problem in this way allows us to reassess some recent
empirical findings offered by the burden-sharing literature (in particular Shimizu and Sandler 2002). In their analysis of peacekeeping commitments they find evidence that larger countries contribute a disproportionate number of troops, thus indicating support for the ‘exploitation’ hypothesis. We balance this view by looking at the acceptance of asylum seekers within a state’s borders. Using UNHCR data on 15 OECD countries for the period 1994-2002, we find that a disproportionate asylum and refugee burden is borne by smaller states.
