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The political debate about regularisation programmes for undocumented migrants is a very controversial issue. The main goal of this article is to explain why governments decide to grant amnesties to illegal immigrants as a part of their immigration policy. We propose a simple political competition model in which we first derive the voters' preferences over a menu of regularisation programmes. Labour market conditions make skilled workers more pro‐regularisation than unskilled workers. We find that, in general, the policy implemented at the political equilibrium is a partial amnesty programme, which is what happens in the majority of the countries in this study.

AbstractWhy do some decision makers prefer big multilateral agreements while others prefer cooperation in small clubs? Does enforcement encourage or deter institutional cooperation? We use experiments drawn from behavioral economics and cognitive psychology—along with a substantive survey focused on international trade—to illustrate how two behavioral traits (patience and strategic reasoning) of individuals who play key roles in negotiating and ratifying an international treaty shape their preferences for how treaties are designed and whether they are ratified. Patient subjects were more likely to prefer treaties with larger numbers of countries (and larger long-term benefits), as were subjects with the skill to anticipate how others will respond over multiple iterations of strategic games. The presence of an enforcement mechanism increased subjects' willingness to ratify treaties; however, strategic reasoning had double the effect of adding enforcement to a trade agreement: more strategic subjects were particularly likely to favor ratifying the agreement. We report these results for a sample of 509 university students and also show how similar patterns are revealed in a unique sample of ninety-two actual US policy elites. Under some conditions certain types of university student convenience samples can be useful for revealing elite-dominated policy preferences—different types of people in the same situation may prefer to approach decision-making tasks and reason through trade-offs in materially different ways.

Outlining a theory of motivated cognition in legal decision making -- A motivated reasoning approach to the commerce clause interpretation of the Rehnquist court -- Seeing what they want? : analogical perceptions in discrimination disputes (with Thomas E. Nelson) -- Reasoning on the threshold : testing the separability of preferences in legal decision making -- Justifying outcomes? : how legal decision makers explain threshold decisions -- Motivated reasoning as an empirical framework : finding our way back to context

Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- List of Figures and Tables -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Part 1: The Case for Investigating Motivated Reasoning in Legal Decision Making -- Chapter One: Outlining a Theory of Motivated Cognition in Legal Decision Making -- Chapter Two: A Motivated Reasoning Approach to the Commerce Clause Interpretation of the Rehnquist Court -- Part 2: Testing the Mechanisms -- Chapter Three: Seeing What They Want? Analogical Perception in Discrimination Disputes (with Thomas E. Nelson) -- Chapter Four: Reasoning on the Threshold: Testing the Separability of Preferences in Legal Decision Making -- Chapter Five: Justifying Outcomes? How Legal Decision Makers Explain Threshold Decisions -- Chapter Six: Motivated Reasoning as an Empirical Framework: Finding Our Way Back to Context -- Appenddixes -- A-1: Materials Related to Experiments on Analogical Perception -- A-2: Supplemental Regression Analyses for Experiments on Analogical Perception -- B: Materials Relating to Experiment Testing the Separability of Preferences -- Notes -- References -- Index.