New Publication: The Gap between Public Preferences and Policies on Immigration

Just days after announcing the “SOM book” (Politicization of Immigration), I have the pleasure to announce another product from the SOM project: The Gap between Public Preferences and Policies on Immigration: A Comparative Examination of the Effect of Politicisation on Policy Congruence in JEMS. In this paper Laura Morales, Jean-Benoit Pilet and I examine the purported gap between (restrictive) public opinion on immigration and (expansive) policies by the elite.
Using data from the SOM project and a range of public opinion polls, we consider the situation across seven countries and 15 years (1995 to 2010). This provides a better insight in what is one of the most salient policy domains in contemporary Europe than was done previously. There is no evidence that strong anti-immigrant parties have anything to do with differences between public opinion and elite policies. Just like what I found in my monograph on political representation, it turns out that salience plays a key role. When negative attitudes in the population are combined with extensive media coverage, we observe high levels of policy congruence.