Donald Trump has made very public threats to persecute his political opponents should he be re-elected and statements by him and by other leading Republicans suggests that he might persecute others on the grounds of their religion or their membership of certain social groups. If this were happen (rather than simply being bluster) then it could turn out, very soon, that some US citizens will find themselves outside of their country, with a well-founded fear of persecution on grounds outlined in the 1951 Refugee Convention, and on the territory of a state signatory of the Convention. Some of those states will also be allies of the US through NATO and other treaties and will have extradition treaties with the US. In which case what might happen?
- Currently most of the relevant states try to prevent people likely to claim asylum from arriving on their territory (and their leaders denounce those who do arrive as “illegal immigrants”). Most of the states concerned currently have visa waiver programmes for US citizens and would probably be reluctant on economic and geopolitical grounds to shut those down, although it is possible they might in response to a similar tightening by a Trump administation. So one question is whether such states will try to make it more difficult for Americans to visit. If they don’t then US citizens will find it relatively easy to escape to those countries.
- It is forseeable that US citizens who do seek to escape to liberal democracies will be facing criminal charges in the US. Currently, I believe Americans cannot be tried in absentia, but this might change. Countries that refuse to extradite may experience retaliation from the US in various forms, including economic pressure and attempts to undermine them in other ways. Countries where the asylum process is genuinely independent of government may find themselve unable, legally, to comply with US demands. They then might find they face a choice between upholding the Refugee Convention and denouncing it to comply with what the US wants. Depending on the visibility of persecution in the US to foreign media there may also be domestic public opinion to contend with. Whether outraged democratic public opinion would hold out in the face of economic and geopoltical interests remains to be seen.
- Persecutory regimes tend to take other countries providing shelter for their citizens as an affront to their sovereignty and an implied criticism of their political order. They often react accordingly if they can. Given that the US is the most powerful country on earth and can react, it will.
- A persecutory US regime led by Trump or Vance might be willing to tolerate some of its dissidents being given shelter in allied countries, or it might not. If not, then one possibility would be that it takes extra-territorial action against them, taking the form of intimidation, kidnapping, violence or assassination. This, after all, seems to be the way in which Russia, Saudi Arabia, India and Israel have behaved towards their overseas dissidents at times. If it happens, other states will then face a choice about how to react and whether to pay the price that doing something serious about such behaviour will entail. Canada is currently engaged in such a dispute with India, countries have imposed sanctions against Russia for such actions, but the importance of long-term relations with Saudi Arabia and Israel has meant that they’ve largely managed to get away with it.
The basic pattern is clear: liberal democratic states allied to the US would face a choice between their state interests as allies of the US on the one hand and upholding the right to asylum and defending liberal democratic values on the other. Nobody can be confident about what would happen in practice. If I were a US dissident, I would choose my place of asylum carefully.
{ 53 comments… read them below or add one }
oldster 10.31.24 at 3:00 pm
“They then might find they face a choice between complying with what the US wants and denouncing the Refugee Convention.”
Should “denouncing” be “upholding”?
“If I were a US dissident, I would choose my place of asylum carefully.”
Got any advice? Rouen? Aberdeen? Marrakesh? Or you don’t want your favorite holiday spots ruined by the influx of American asylum-tourists?
[CB: yes, I’ve edited to make my meaning clear.]
otto 10.31.24 at 4:07 pm
This interesting post makes me wonder if anyone has in fact recently claimed asylum in a more or less liberal state, e.g. in Canada or Switzerland, based on claims of well founded fear of persecution by the United States. Someone somewhere must have tried it, surely.
Skeptic 10.31.24 at 4:23 pm
When did CT become an alternate history fiction blog? Let’s not indulge the fantasies of the Resistance Liberals. The more airtime they get, the more likely Harris will lose.
RobinM 10.31.24 at 4:40 pm
Maybe Julian Assange should be consulted as an expert witness on this sort of stuff? It certainly seems to me no one fleeing prosecution by a Trump administration should choose Britain as a place of refuge.
MisterMr 10.31.24 at 4:47 pm
When Berlusconi took power, in some cases he basically broke the careers of a few journalists / media figures who were vocally anti-B before the elections (wikipedia).
I think that in the modern day this sort of “deplatforming” is the most likely form of persecution, unless things really become much worse than what I expect.
This sort of deplatforming, if done massively and, e.g., also blocking stuff like social media or internet publications, would already hit democracy very hard, something like maccartism but instead of being against a political minority it would be against roughly 50% of political opinion.
G 10.31.24 at 4:54 pm
There’s a reason why Snowden chose Hong Kong and then Russia rather than any US allies.
Justin 10.31.24 at 5:18 pm
“This, after all, seems to be the way in which Russia, Saudi Arabia, India and Israel have behaved towards their overseas dissidents at times.”
Ah, yes, Eichmann and Haniyeh, famous “Israeli dissidents.”
Chris Bertram 10.31.24 at 5:22 pm
Ah, yes, Eichmann and Haniyeh, famous “Israeli dissidents.”
I was thinking of Mordechai Vanunu, maybe you’ve not heard of him?
nobody 10.31.24 at 5:25 pm
Canadian stats on refugee claims by country since 2013 are available here: https://irb.gc.ca/en/statistics/protection/pages/index.aspx
More than 100 Americans claim asylum in Canada every year (there were 869 claims in 2017). Some of them are trans people fleeing persecution and discriminatory laws. Judging from the statistics, none of these claims have ever been accepted.
Charlie W 10.31.24 at 5:50 pm
All for rehearsing the worst, but extra-territorial assassinations? This is a big step and requires a level of bloodthirstiness and disregard for consequences that not many states possess. Vanunu was abducted (and is still alive) but only after being lured out of UK jurisdiction.
bekabot 10.31.24 at 6:50 pm
@ Skeptic
Oh, yeah. “Let’s not make plans about how to survive. It might offend the people who say they want to kill us.”
Gareth Richard Samuel Wilson 10.31.24 at 8:47 pm
“Currently most of the relevant states try to prevent people likely to claim asylum from arriving on their territory (and their leaders denounce those who do arrive as “illegal immigrants”).”
Of the 84,000 people who applied for asylum in the United Kingdom in 2023, how many do you think were not entitled to be granted it?
Chris Bertram 10.31.24 at 9:03 pm
@Gareth Richard Samuel Wilson well, given the obstacles to a successful asylum claim I think it reasonable to believe that anyone who succeeds either with the initial decision or on appeal is so entitled. The proportions vary from year to year, but the consequence would be that only a minority of your £84k figure are not entitled. But of that minority, many may have reasonable claims to some other form of protection even though they are not technically Convention refugees. (This all seems a bit orthogonal to the OP though.)
Gareth Richard Samuel Wilson 10.31.24 at 9:23 pm
OK, include every possible legal justification for them being allowed to stay in the UK. Now, how many of the 84,000 do you think should have been removed from the UK?
Matt 10.31.24 at 9:46 pm
his interesting post makes me wonder if anyone has in fact recently claimed asylum in a more or less liberal state, e.g. in Canada or Switzerland, based on claims of well founded fear of persecution by the United States.
I don’t know of any (successful – as noted above, there are several unsuccessful) cases coming from the US, though there may be some. A somewhat similar case, though, invovled a German family who wanted to home school their children there. That’s illegal in Germany, and they faced increasingly harsh penalties. They fled tot he US and applied for asylum there. They were eventually denied it, though on my reading of the materials (not just what was in the news, but some of the court filings) they seemed to have at least a colorable case. I’m on a list-serve of (mostly US) immigration law professors, and most were opposed to the application, not least because they (undestandably) disliked the political and religious views of the applicant. This seemed like the wrong approach to me, and I probably would have supported the case. (I would have liked more detail to be sure.)
More generally, the case I mention, and the situation noted in the post, seem like one reason to not favour the “political rebuke” approach to refugee protection favored by people like Matthew Price, Felix Bender, and, in a somewhat more limited way, David Owen. If granting refugee protection is not meant to give a “poltical rebuke” to the government of the country the applicants are fleeing, it has more of a chance of being evenly applied. Or so I might hope.
Chris Bertram 10.31.24 at 10:15 pm
@Gareth no, not playing. Go away.
Alex SL 10.31.24 at 11:30 pm
What happened in the last few years, with certain whistleblowers? The main change would likely be that a Trump regime would care less about any long-term damage to the reputation of the USA, assuming that they can do what they want because largest military in the world. But trying to seek asylum from the USA can’t be fun under Democratic presidents either.
Alex SL 11.01.24 at 12:34 am
Matt,
Aside from me wanting to make it overall easier to migrate, in the context of asylum laws, each country has to consider what kinds of persecution sensu lato it considers reasonable grounds for asylum.
On the extreme end, I find it very obvious that being persecuted for belonging to a specific ethnic group or gender identity or sexuality or having certain political values or religious beliefs should be grounds for asylum, because it is not reasonable to expect people to change their identities, and especially if the penalties are disproportionate, like being barred from employment.
At the other end, it would be difficult to argue that somebody should get asylum in the USA for being charged with corruption in Sweden.
Between those two ends, an argument can at least be made that laws that are easy to comply with and are not eliminatory are not necessarily sufficient grounds for an asylum claim even if the relevant activity is legal in the country where asylum is being claimed: “Why don’t you just wear a head scarf if they let you otherwise get on with your life once you do it? After all, the country where you seek refuge also penalises running around topless, so it is the same, broad type of rule everybody considers reasonable in some form or other.” Or, in the case you refer to, “why don’t you just send your children to school given that this country’s schools are tolerant of your beliefs? Do you have to be this difficult and self-sabotaging?”
engels 11.01.24 at 2:35 am
I’ve often wondered if disabled Britons would be able to claim asylum in European countries or elsewhere.
https://www.inclusionlondon.org.uk/campaigns-and-policy/uncrdp/uncrdp-2023-24/report/
Not Trampis 11.01.24 at 2:42 am
This is silly.
Yes Trump might think he is a wouldbe mafia don but he tried to get both Clinton and biden prosecuted and his A/Gs said there was NO case.
Even with a Justice department filled with Trump lackeys they would find it hard to firstly convince a grand jury that there is a case to answer and just remember these lackeys have no corporate knowledge to call on..
As for asking for asylum they would need to show their life is in danger or they were being persecuted.
No to both
wacko 11.01.24 at 7:44 am
This seems to be about extradition, rather than asylum.
Chris Bertram 11.01.24 at 8:00 am
This seems to be about extradition, rather than asylum.
No, because you can’t separate the two: the non-refoulement element of refugeehood is a block to extradition.
Matt 11.01.24 at 10:06 am
Alex SL,
I know all that. I might even say that I’m close to an expert on the subject, given that I have both taught refugee law (and other immigration law) in both the US and Australia, and have worked as a lawyer on refugee cases, and that it’s one of my areas of philosophical and legal specialization, and have published several papers on the topic. But the particular case I was referencing was a bit more interesting and complicated than that. It wasn’t a clear-cut case, I’d agree, but the line you’re pushing here easily blurs into “why can’t you just keep your same-sex attraction private?” Thankfully, many countries have decided that’s not the right line to take. My broader point, though, is that it shouldn’t be necessary to think that the views of the people offered asylum are good ones. It’s clear that nothing in the refugee convention requires that. And, the people in the case I mention were going to be sent to prison and have their children taken away. That seemed pretty extreme to me!
Not Trampis said: As for asking for asylum they would need to show their life is in danger or they were being
It’s not necessary to have one’s life be in danger to show that one has been persecuted. For example, under the Migration Act in Australia, “persecution” is defined as “serious harm to the person” and/or “systematic and discriminatory conduct” where these include (but are not limited to) “threat[s] to the person’s life or liberty; significant physical harassment; significant physical ill-treatment;” and other actions which “threaten the person’s capacity to subsist.” Case law in the US leads to a pretty similar understand. That does require the threat of significant harm, but the harm can be much less than a threat to life.
Moz of Yarramulla 11.01.24 at 10:11 am
Osama Bin Laden springs to mind as a well known case of US judicial treatment of people they regard as criminals now that they’ve denounced the ICC. That is to say that Trump would be following clear precedents.
There’s a big difference between individuals like Snowden, Assange or Dotcom and large flows of refugees. As we’ve seen, there’s political pressure within the USA to be seen to be reasonable to famous white men. Whether that would apply if thousands or tens of thousands of female or non-white US citizens flooded into Mexico or Canada is another question (not to mention the passage to Alaska provisions in Canada). It would also be challenging for Israel if Trump managed to target Jews in the USA given their openness to immigration (and the problems they would face if the USA cut off aid).
I suspect we’re more likely to see problems with the USA criminalising medical tourism by US incubators (what we currently call ‘pregnant women’) and pressuring Mexico and Canada to prevent women accessing post-conception contraception in those countries.
Thomas P 11.01.24 at 3:53 pm
There’s also Noriega. From being on CIA:s payroll to the US invading Panama to arrrest him in one year got to be some kind of record. He was a crook, but he was just as much of a crook when USA paid him.
In Sweden there was the case of Ahmed Agiza and Muhammad al-Zery, extradited to Egypt on instructions from the US:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repatriation_of_Ahmed_Agiza_and_Muhammad_al-Zery
Stephen 11.01.24 at 5:39 pm
RobinM @ 4: you say “Maybe Julian Assange should be consulted as an expert witness on this sort of stuff? It certainly seems to me no one fleeing prosecution by a Trump administration should choose Britain as a place of refuge.”
As I recall it, Assange took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London not because the rather Democratic Obama government was after him, but because the Swedish authorities wanted to extradite him on a charge of rape; subsequently dropped on account of the Swedish equivalent of the statute of limitations. He was later, after the Ecuadorians tired of him, imprisoned in London for breaching his bail conditions, which he had done. The US government, under Trump and then the not-terribly-Fascist Biden, sought extradition; there followed a long legal battle, at the end of which Assange was released.
I’m not sure what point Robin M is trying to make. If it is that legal processes can be remarkably prolonged, of course he’s right. See Shakespeare on the subject.
engels 11.01.24 at 8:53 pm
Assange took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London not because the rather Democratic Obama government was after him, but because the Swedish authorities wanted to extradite him on a charge of rape
Would you like to buy a bridge?
Alex SL 11.01.24 at 9:43 pm
Matt,
Sorry, but the idea that the desire to home school is a legitimate reason for asylum is completely absurd to me. With some exceptions for people who have no alternative because they are living in an extremely remote location, I consider it to be a form of child abuse: overly controlling, the desire to keep them stunted and ignorant.
steven t johnson 11.01.24 at 10:33 pm
Totally unacademic anecdata here….
My limited experience of children who were homeschooled is that some are children who are constantly in disciplinary trouble and their parents withdraw them from school under that legal cover, regardless of the educational level of the parents. (The kinds of difficulties were tended toward suspicion of dealing drugs in school; repeated fights; suspicion of bullying; sexual harassment such as exposing oneself; habitual truancy.) And some seemed to be withdrawal of the student to from integrated schools. A few seemed to have been religiously motivated, wanting to avoid their child exposed to evolution and such. A few were homeschooled due to chronic illness.
The few parents who may have been motivated by concerns about low quality education seem in memory to have opted for private school, rather than home schooling.
Reaching way back into memory to days of my youth, “homeschooling” wasn’t formalized with testing requirements…and so-called slow students were more or less simply kept home.
Occasionally homeschooled student essays were published in newspapers to demonstrate the superiority of home schooling. My memory is these essays were frequently fairly conservative both politically and socially.
Sophie Jane 11.01.24 at 11:08 pm
Would a federal ban on gender-affirming care be enough to qualify American trans people for Asylum, I wonder? Or would it take the Russian-style total ban on trans and non-binary identities that states like Texas and Florida keep trying to establish?
John Q 11.02.24 at 1:33 am
One of the things we’ve learned about Trumpist attacks on democracy is that there is always a precedent. For example, the attempt to overturn the 2020 election in the House of Representatives was justified by the fact that individal Democrats had occasionally cast votes against the certification of state results as a protest against voter suppression.
In the case of assassinations, there’s the Obama Administration’s assassination of Anwar Al-Awlaki who was classed as an enemy combatant, primarily on the basis of his advocacy of terrorism, and alleged encouragement of individual terrorists. Given that the Repubs routinely accuse their opponents of terrorism, it’s not hard to see this precedent being stretched to cover political opponents who have fled overseas. A related precedent is the assassination, in Canada, of opponents of the Modi regime, with the acquiescence of the Biden Administration.
Matt 11.02.24 at 2:53 am
Alex SL,
It’s a funny thing – many, maybe most, successful grounds for claiming asylum can be re-described in ways that make them seems absurd, and like something reasonable people should just go without. For example, men wanting to wear dresses, or people wanting to engage in certain sorts of moring excercises. Why don’t people just not do those things and get along? And yet, it’s both well established and right that people are granted asylum because of their gender identity, or because they are Falun Gong practitioners. A similar thing applies here. The family didn’t have some idiosyncratic desire for home schooling, but rather had a desire to include certain religious teachings, and to opt out of certain other teachings, that wasn’t possible in German state schools. Gemany’s response was classically persecutorial – threats of long prison sentences for the parents and taking their children away. If, instead, they had insisted the children receive certain minimum instruction in basic subjects, perhaps subject to testing at the parent’s expense, that would be fine. But, instead, the German state decided to engage in persecution on the basis of religion and/or political opinion, just as much as the Chinese state does when it persecutes Fau Long Gong members, or the Russian state does when it persecutes trans women.
There is, of course, a tendency for both states, and individuals, to want to qualify refugee protection on liking or approving of the substantive views of the people seeking protection. But, nothing in the refugee convention, nor in the positive state law I know of, nor (I would, and have, argued) political morality, authorizes that.
William S. Berry 11.02.24 at 3:55 am
This sounds canted; in JQ’s formulation, “acquiescence” sounds like “approval”.
I remember it more as virtually any story of the affair had it at the time; The Biden Administration was presented a fait accompli in fraught international circumstances. The response wasn’t the one that I (and, presumably, JQ) would have preferred. It was tepid, but hardly approving.
Modi sucks, but we’ve sorta’ got a full plate set before us here, for crying out loud.
Sophie Jane 11.02.24 at 7:41 am
@Matt For example, men wanting to wear dresses
Women and non-binary people wanting to wear dresses. I know you’re just illustrating hateful rhetoric here but quoted hate speech is still hate speech, and I want to make it clear that the issue is who we are, not how we behave
John Q 11.02.24 at 8:00 am
WSB @40 I’m struggling to see the difference between “acquiescent” and “tepid but hardly approving”.
As you say, Biden has a full plate, and wants Modi on board re China, so he has to suck it up when Modi assassinates people in Canada. In my dialect of English, that’s acquiescence.
wacko 11.02.24 at 9:35 am
Matt @32,
It seems that Alex SL feels that the West, the liberal civilization, needs to offer asylum to liberal-style screwballs, and refuse the conservative kind. Let them move to Russia (and some do, apparently).
It’s a different kind of consistency.
Matt 11.02.24 at 11:04 am
Sophie Jane said: and I want to make it clear that the issue is who we are, not how we behave
I’m happy with that. The point here, though, is that even someone who doesn’t agree with it can, and should, agree that, if that’s how it seems to the person in question, and they are persecuted for that belief, then the person should be granted asylum. The agreement with the view in question by the state (or the official) granting asylum isn’t and shouldn’t be required. Nor should a desire to not offend the persecuting state.
SusanC 11.02.24 at 12:47 pm
This all sounds a bit hypothetical and alarmist.
(Though UK post-operative transgender people currently have a credible claim that the UK government is trying to murder them, given that (I am told) once your body is no longer producing its own hormones you need to take exogenous ones or you will eventually be in some considerable medical trouble, and a bunch of trans people have suddenly found that their GP’s have become unwilling to continue renewing their prescription for sad hormones. There are, of course, black markets).
SusanC 11.02.24 at 1:11 pm
UK anti-immigration sentiment seems to be mostly racist, especially anti-Muslim racist. If a bunch of white, cisgender Americans showed up claiming asylum, we probably wouldn’t have a mob trying to burn them to death.
Doctor Memory 11.02.24 at 5:52 pm
SusanC– while deadly violence has generally been reserved for non-white immigrants to the UK, the fact that a large part of the impetus for Brexit was discontent about too many Polish immigrants suggests to me that a sufficiently large influx of even white Americans would almost certainly generate some negative reactions.
somebody who remembers that mass deportation of literally millions of citizens definitely will occur if trump wins 11.02.24 at 6:20 pm
An interesting hypothetical but it is likely to be swamped by the mass deportations of millions of american citizens and legal immigrants if trump wins. remember, they have openly stated they fully intend to deport citizens along with their families if anyone in their family has something wrong with their immigration paperwork. they have indicated they will deport citizens if their citizens disagree with trump or the republican party and they certainly will do so. mexico and other nations will be swamped with literal millions of deportees who have never previously set foot outside the united states. last time around they didnt have an interest in staffing the federal government to accomplish this, this time around theyre fully prepared and will remorselessly do so. its less likely that a nation will face asylum seekers from the united states than a million or two americans who didn’t actually want to leave their country shoved over the border at gunpoint or dumped out of a government bus in the middle of the desert.
Alex SL 11.02.24 at 10:02 pm
wacko, Matt,
Alex SL feels that there needs to be a stronger moral case for asylum than simply, “I fancy breaking the laws of my country”. If you are persecuted for being Christian, I would (if given that authority) obviously grant asylum despite being an atheist myself and personally believing that being a sincere religious believer equates to being a fraud victim. But if you are persecuted for wanting to keep your children stunted, ignorant, and indoctrinated, sorry, no. Again, there needs to be more to asylum than committing a crime against others, although, also again, unrelated to asylum I would make it much easier for people to migrate for job or family reasons (if given that authority).
We are here perhaps dealing with the usual misunderstanding of what religious freedom is. The idea is that you should be free to practice your religion, but not free to force it on others. And that includes your children. They aren’t your possessions. They are human beings with their own freedoms and need for protections and the right to make informed decisions.
PatinIowa 11.02.24 at 11:27 pm
Affluent, white members of the “resistance” won’t have to claim asylum, having the resources to emigrate other ways, I suspect.
Even so, I don’t see the UK shipping them off to Rwanda if they do.
My guess? A Trump administration’s members will focus on lining their pockets and direct their cruelty toward the usual vulnerable people close at hand. There may be some informal score settling here and there. I don’t think any Trumper wants to work as hard as, say, Pinochet did in killing Orlando Letelier.
Meanwhile, the violence unleashed on “illegal immigrants” will tick up and the populace as a whole will continue to be immiserated.
Even so, I make sure I know exactly where my Canadian birth certificate is, at all times. (And take solace in the fact I’m utterly inconsequential.)
Chris Bertram 11.03.24 at 9:18 am
My post was not intended to suggest that its subject concerns the worst thing that a Trump adminstration would plausibly do. Commenters are correct about the persecution of migrants to the US and their families. It was concerned with a dilemma that liberal democratic states allied to the US will plausibly face concerning asylum. As for sarcastic comments about affluent members of the “resistance” not needing to avail themselves of asylum, well, I would imagine that among those seeking protection could be women, not necessarily affluent, facing imprisonment for exercising their reproductive rights in a Trumpian US (or assisting others in doing so).
MisterMr 11.03.24 at 2:08 pm
As a semi-relevant factoid, Italy accepted only 12% of asylum requests.
Also some italians seeked asylum abroad and most were refused (the most accepting states in this case were Canada, Russia and Costa Rica).
https://www.worlddata.info/europe/italy/asylum.php#:~:text=135%2C659%20asylum%20applications%20by%20refugees,of%20them%20were%20answered%20positively.
Based on this I think Italy (and presumably other countries) are quite stingy with the requirements for asylum.
MisterMr 11.03.24 at 2:32 pm
Also, a case of “extraordinay rendition” by the CIA in Italy in 2003, showing that Italy (and presumably other Nato countries) are not safe places for people who are hated by the USA:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Omar_case
SusanC 11.03.24 at 2:59 pm
In first past the post electoral systems, you see a lot of the Lesser Evil Argument, which goes along the lines of “Yeah, ok, I know you think I’m rubbish but the other guy on the ballot is even worse”.
This naturally devolves into a candidate accusing their opponent of being Literally Hitler, regardless of whether this is actually true. So, some skepticism might be warranted towards these kind of claims.
On the other hand, there is at least some evidence that Trump might actually be a worse candidate than usual. (Gestures vaguely at sexual assault of E Jean Carroll, unauthorized retention of classified documents, inciting a riot on Jan 6th …)
J-D 11.04.24 at 1:51 am
It interests me how often people muddle what voters say about their choice of candidate with what candidates say about themselves, as in this instance.
People don’t campaign for election saying things along the lines of ‘You should vote for me because I’m the lesser evil’, as they are described as doing in this comment. That’s not a thing that happens! What does happen is that other people, outside the campaigns, say ‘I’m voting for the lesser evil’ or even ‘You [another voter] should vote for the lesser evil’. This doesn’t have to be a bad reason for voting for somebody! Often it can make good sense to vote for the lesser evil! But it’s not an appeal used by the candidates themselves, or by their campaign organisations on their behalf.
MisterMr 11.04.24 at 9:43 am
@J-D 48
Actually people often campaign by saying that the other is horrible, a fascist, a communist, a whatever.
This is implicitly a lesser evil argument: vote for me or the other guy/gal will go up.
In both a fptp and a proportional system, there is a point where it is one candidate or the other, and each candidate needs to form a broad coalition.
In this situation this kind of negative campaigning works because e.g. there are many different opinions between republicans, so if Trump had to campaign on his proposals at least SOME republicans would be cold about them; otoh if he just speaks bad of Harris all republicans will agree (because of partisanship) and anyway one vote less for Harris counts as one vote more for Trump. So in my opinion there is a natural tendence towards negative campaigning, made stronger by fptp systems, and this is equivalent to lesser evilism.
Alex SL 11.04.24 at 8:13 pm
J-D,
The party leader will not literally say, we are rubbish, but you got to vote for us regardless, right. But what all the party supporters will say on social media is:
Yes, Biden is too old, but the alternative is Trump! Yes, Gaza is bad, but the alternative is Trump! Yes, Trump is corrupt, but the Dems want to destroy our country! Yes, Labour isn’t going to reverse Brexit, so our economy is going to be in the doldrums for a generation, but the alternative are the Tories!
MisterMr,
That’s not how proportional representation works; there is never necessarily a point where it is one candidate or the other. There may be coalitions of five parties.
RobinM 11.05.24 at 12:07 am
Somewhat prompted by Alex SL’s remarks, my prediction/guess is that the actual number of votes Trump gets this time around will be several million short of the number he got in 2020. But Harris will also get several million fewer votes than Biden got in 2020. (It’ll be rather like the British Labour vote in 2019 and 2024. I haven’t bothered to compare the Tory vote in 2019 with the Tory + Reform vote in 2024, but it may also show a decline.) If such a pattern emerges in a handful of states, victory will go to the one who bleeds the least.
The test of my hypothesis will be set tomorrow. But it may be several weeks before the evidence one way or another will become public. Still, that’s quite quick for the falsification, or not, of a social science hypothesis.
MisterMr 11.05.24 at 12:26 am
@Alex SL
There is a point in proportional representation where the parties will have to form an alliance to put up a premier, so generally they will create two groups, the ones who are in the government or the ones who are out.
But this happens only for the premiership, so the push towards negative politics is less strong in proportional systems IMO.
J-D 11.05.24 at 2:33 am
To you it may seem that there is no significance to the difference between a campaign which is entirely negative and one which combines attacks on opponents with positive claims about a candidate, but to me it seems significant. If my whole campaign were about how bad my opponents are and says nothing positive about me, I’m still not sure that would be an implicit concession that I am bad too, just not as bad as they are; but that’s beside the point, because real campaigns aren’t entirely negative. Even Donald Trump’s campaign, which has a lot of negative things to say about Democrats, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and their supporters, still also has positive things to about Donald Trump. ‘Make America Great Again!’–whatever it’s supposed to mean, and I think the unclarity is, as they say ‘a feature, not a bug’–is still a positive rather than a negative slogan. If I’m saying ‘I’m good and will do good things if elected’–which is what candidates and their campaigns do–then I’m not (explicitly or implicitly) presenting myself as a lesser evil.
But that’s exactly my original point! People outside the campaign will say (and perhaps rightly, at least sometimes) ‘Vote for the lesser evil!’ but that’s not what the official campaign says. To you there may seem to be no significance in the distinction between the official campaign and the candidate’s supporters outside it, but it seems significant to me.