Regulating refugees: The relationship between regime type and political asylum in China and Malaysia

This study analyzes the impact that political regime type has on immigration and asylum policies. The following two hypotheses are tested: greater degrees of political centralization will determine the extent to which asylum policy can be successfully formed and implemented and that greater degree of political openness in a regime will lead to greater difficulty in successfully forming and implementing a coherent policy of asylum. In order to account for the sheer number of refugees within East Asia and to further the existing research on the impact of non-democratic regime on policy, I conduct a comparative case study between Burmese asylum seekers in the Federation of Malaysia, a hybrid regime, and North Korean asylum seekers the People's Republic of China, an authoritarian regime. My findings indicate that greater degrees of political decentralization and political openness do limit the creation and implementation of coherent immigration and political asylum policy measures.