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Abstracts
What drives refugee movements? Focusing on host countries' domestic political institutions, we argue that refugee entry is determined by the political regimes that shape the incentives of both host governments and displaced persons. Specifically, we theorize that there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between political regimes and the volume of refugee entries. When the host country is autocratic, refugee volume becomes smaller due to displaced persons' unwillingness to risk the high uncertainty of life under such regimes, and when the host country is democratic, refugee volume is similarly curbed due to democratic constraints on the host government. Consequently, a majority of refugees are clustered into anocratic regimes. Using a global dataset, a series of statistical analyses found strong evidence in support of our theoretical expectations regarding not only the hypothesized correlation between regime type and refugee movements but also the preferences of host governments and displaced persons that we theorize underlie this relationship.

AbstractWhy do people's preferences towards trade liberalization fluctuate? And why do we observe the eventual return of public support towards free trade? The traditional literature in international political economy has typically calculated individuals' preferences based on their comparative advantage as income-earners, which arises from their specific or general skill level or employment status. What needs to be taken into account, however, is that their economic preferences are constructed based upon their intertwined identities as both income-earners and consumers. We designed and conducted an experiment in Japan (2015) that would impartially elicit answers regarding respondents' daily consumption patterns or (and) employment concerns rather than deliberately or artificially informing them of the potential benefits or harms of trade liberalization. The results display that consumer priming offsets negative impacts arising from employment priming. The consumer effect reduces individuals' concerns on income level or employment when they are exposed to consumer and employment primings simultaneously. Furthermore, our subgroup analyses reveal that the consumer effect remains even among those experiencing economic fragility such as low income or job insecurity. This suggests that potential losers have incentives to support free trade by appreciating consumer benefits.

ABSTRACTHow can scholars conduct field research when there is limited access to the field? This article first identifies how limited and uncertain field access can affect field research and then provides recommendations to address these challenges. We focus on conducting field research in Japan because of our substantive expertise, but we believe that the problems and solutions outlined in this article are applicable to a broad range of countries. Our hope is that this article contributes to the developing literature on conducting research during times of emergency and to the larger literature on best practices for field research.