Why Adopt International Norms? Legislators Between Contestation and Submission to International Organisations

Abstract

This chapter explains the import of international asylum norms into Ukrainian legislation, analysing domestic legislators’ discourse on asylum and international organisations’ transfer practices. Lawmakers did not construct asylum as a public policy problem. Instead, in adopting asylum norms, politicians showed that they were democratising and Europeanising Ukraine. The EU position strengthened after the Maidan protests in 2014, the war with Russia, and the introduction of EU conditionality related to the abolishment of visas for Ukrainian tourists (2010–2016). EU monitoring shaped the transfer process across scales. To transfer its norms to Ukraine, UNHCR directly lobbied Ukrainian decision makers, influenced the knowledge and positions of the EU, and benefited from EU conditionality.