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The study examines whether immigration from culturally distant origin countries weakens the native population's support for state redistribution — an assumption known in the literature as the "Progressive's Dilemma." Using the European refugee crisis of 2015–2016 as a natural experiment, the authors apply a difference-in-differences approach to exploit the regionally varying inflows of asylum seekers.
Under the Progressive's Dilemma hypothesis, one would expect a marked erosion of redistributive preferences in strongly affected regions. The findings, however, do not support this: the estimated effects are either statistically indistinguishable from zero or marginally positive, and this result proves robust across a wide range of alternative specifications. Ethnic homogeneity, the authors conclude, is not a necessary precondition for the sustainability of European-style welfare state arrangements.
The article is available open access by the following URL
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2026.102882
