Democracy, Autocracy, and Cross-Border Flows of International Students

• In Event: Migration: Causes and Consequences

Abstract

Growing rapidly in the past two decades, international student flows produce significant economic and political ramifications. Yet our understanding of their political drivers is extremely limited even though anecdotal evidence suggests that politics affects international students. The small emerging literature on the determinants of student flows typically ignores politics. The literature on the political determinants of trade in international relations focuses exclusively on trade in goods. In this article, we provide an in-depth exploration of the role of political regime type on international student flows. We argue that regime type affects student flows by influencing home outflow and host inflow restrictions. These policy restrictions respond systematically to political tension between home and host countries, democratization effects of international student flows, and the extent to which citizens hold leaders accountable. Consequently, democratic dyads should have the highest student flows, followed by autocratic dyads, and then mixed dyads. Using the largest sample in the literature to date, which covers 198 host and 155 home countries across 19 years, we find supporting evidence for our argument, but with nuanced twists. Our research has several important scholarly and policy implications.

Authors

• Mingsi Song, Texas A&M University

• Quan Li, Texas A&M University