Policy diffusion across political ideologies: explaining Denmark’s desire to externalise asylum

Abstract

In 2021, the Danish Social Democratic government tabled a bill allowing asylum seekers to be transferred to another country to process claims and provide protection. Witnessing a Social Democratic government embracing this highly controversial idea, even though less than a handful of right-wing governments outside Europe had previously outsourced asylum, is puzzling. Policy diffusion theory is used to explain the underlying mechanism and analyse the justification strategies. In the face of public attention focused on the refugee protection crisis between 2014 and 2016, the Social Democrats embraced the idea of externalising asylum in order to be recognised as responsive problem solvers. Essentially, they employed three strategies to justify the policy and to mask its origin and its inconsistency with the party’s ideology: (1) referring to policy advisors as the original source of the idea; (2) reframing externalisation as a humanitarian project; and (3) shifting the narrative about Social Democratic identity.