With the grant provided by the Cosmos Club Foundation, I was able to purchase a Jordanian legal database subscription that was vital for strengthening my dissertation. My dissertation examined the puzzle of why states would adopt ambiguous policies toward refugees that say one thing in law but do another in implementation. It then assessed this puzzle by carefully analyzing the rights in law and implementation that Jordan has adopted over time concerning different Palestinian refugee groups, focusing on these groups’ rights to nationality, passports, electoral participation, and work. This attention to laws and bylaws versus implementing regulations and practices required that I access as much Jordanian legislation as possible regarding these rights. Although some Jordanian legislation is available through free, public databases, most is not. Thus, the Cosmos Club Foundation grant was critical for me to code my dependent variable (policies in law and implementation) thoroughly and accurately. These legal data, combined with my extensive interview and archival data, allowed me to identify differences in law and implementation at the time of policy adoption. I then traced the source of this divergence to opposing political pressures on top policymakers. These opposing pressures from influential actors incentivized policymakers to satisfy both sets of pressures by adopting ambiguous policies that were both inclusive and exclusionary, depending on whether one looked at the policy’s law or its implementation. This finding opposes arguments that developing host states tend to adopt ambiguous refugee policies primarily because of limited capacity or resources. I will continue to use the data I collected with funds from the Cosmos Club Foundation as I transform this project into a book manuscript.
