Abstract
This research examines the linkage between immigration and legitimacy by using comparative data and methods. Two approaches will be used to test the assumption that there is a connection between immigration and state legitimacy. First, the cross sectional approach compares the attitudes of groups of citizens on immigration and compares them with their attitude towards the democratic functioning and performance of the state. Second, the longitudinal approach investigates whether the rise of immigration coincides simultaneously with a decline of state legitimacy. It will be shown that immigration matters for state legitimacy, but that there is no general increase as a result of the economic recession. The main exception to this is Southern Europe where the structural state support dropped dramatically. In addition, a large policy gap lowers the trust of citizens in the state and its capacity to control the borders. The number of immigrants hardly matters for anti-immigration attitudes. Although the crisis-effect is weak, the satisfaction with the economy plays an important role. A multi-level analysis shows that it is an important determinant of the support of citizens of the state. The same goes for the indicator of anti-immigration attitudes which is among the strongest determinants of state legitimacy.
MIPEX in use
The column in Table 1 labelled MIPEX-index2 indicates how many countries in the region have implemented restrictive immigration policies. The correlation between the net immigration and the immigration index is rather weak which indicates that the restrictiveness of states is not strongly related to the number of immigrants. This outcome underlines that state policies are the result of path dependencies, long term developments and international treaties. The policy gap is derived from a comparison between the attitudes on immigration with the migrant integration policy (the MIPEX index). The gap is measured as the difference between the dichotomised scores of MIPEX and the attitudes on immigration (imm_index). This measure is relevant because it signals the distance between state policies and the perception of the citizens. Such a gap indicates whether there is a potential legitimacy problem. A gap does exist if citizens are against immigration and the policy is non-restrictive or in case citizens are pro immigrants and the policy is restrictive. On average such a gap does exist in case of 44 per cent of the respondents. This gap is considerable and would be worrisome if most of these respondents would be negative about the state performance. Additional analysis (not shown here, but part of Table 3) indicates that this is not the case. On average about half of the respondents that experiences a gap is negative about performance indicators like satisfaction with democracy and government. This is about the same in case of respondents that do not experience a gap. The scores are similar in all five regions (they vary between 53.1 per cent in the East and 36.5 per cent in the Nordic countries) which indicates that all regions are confronted with this gap to a similar degree. The gap seems to be more or less independent from the conditions and circumstances in the regions.
