Migration Diplomacy & Greek-Turkish Relations: A Three-Level Game Approach

MiReKoc-BROAD-ER Wednesday Seminar Series for Spring 2023 continues with Gerasimos Tsourapas’s presentation on "Migration Diplomacy & Greek-Turkish Relations: A Three-Level Game Approach", on Wednesday, May 3rd, 2023, at 12:00 at CASE-127 and also available online via Zoom. Registration is required for all participants joining online via our MiReKoc website (mirekoc.ku.edu.tr) or here at https://kocun.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_2E5nrL40RTqbV0yzTH-Bew Abstract: The emerging literature on states’ migration diplomacy traditionally centres on how cross-border mobility effects, and is affected by, governmental foreign policy strategies. Yet, little attention has been paid to strategic interactions between domestic political priorities, bilateral foreign policy negotiations, and supranational organisations. This paper draws inspiration from Robert Putnam’s work on the entanglement of domestic and international politics and puts forth a theorisation of migration diplomacy as a three-level game. Beyond the importance of intergovernmental negotiations, we propose that migration diplomacy actors absorb domestic-level concerns as well as supranational pressures. We test this framework on the recent border crisis between Greece and Turkey in February/March 2020, and we identify how both Greek and Turkish use of migration diplomacy was shaped by three sets of policy goals: domestic, international, and supranational. We conclude with a discussion of how such a framework can shed valuable light on border crises and the interplay between migration and foreign policymaking.