Asylum policies in the German states compared: A fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis

Due to the rising number of asylum seekers in particular in 2015, asylum policies have gained importance during the last few years. Even though the political debate has focused on the federal level in the first place, the states have quite some leeway for pursuing policies of their own. As it is shown in this article, the asylum policies of the German states (Länder) vary significantly from each other. The causes of this variation in asylum policies of the states shall be analysed in this paper for one financial and one substantial outcome by using fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis. The determinants of the expenditure per asylum-seeker as well as the question whether a state also is prepared to deport to Afghanistan will also be analysed. The results show inter-alia that there are huge differences in the asylum policies between Eastern and Western German states. For example, all five Eastern German States deported to Afghanistan while this paper was written. In contrast, the results for the socio-economic determinants like GDP or unemployment rate are mixed. Furthermore, the results reveal clear partisan differences. Center-Right-wing parties in government form a sufficient condition for the willingness to deport to Afghanistan. The contribution of this article to existing literature on the subject is two-fold. Firstly, it shows that there is significant variance in the asylum policies at the state level in Germany, which is analysed and explained for two outcomes. The second contribution of the article is of methodological nature by showing that the application of fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis can be fruitful for analysing variance in comparable policies of the German federal states. There are clear advantages of this method, namely, the appropriateness for medium-N-case studies, the differentiation between necessary and sufficient conditions as well as the principle of Equifinality which allows for different explanation paths for eastern and western German states in this case. © 2018, Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, ein Teil von Springer Nature.