Liberalizing Refugee Hosting Policies without Losing the Vote

Inclusive refugee policies -- granting refugees the right to work, use public services, and move freely -- benefit both refugees and host countries' economies. Yet many governments hesitate to liberalize such policies, fearing electoral backlash. Can governments avoid backlash by pairing refugee rights expansions with policies that reduce burdens on host communities? We examine this question in Uganda, Africa's largest refugee-hosting country. Alongside refugee policy liberalization, Uganda mandated reallocating a share of refugee aid to communities near refugee centers. Combining refugee settlement data with election returns (2001-2021), we show that the incumbent government faced no backlash, but only after implementing these compensation schemes. Using public goods data, public opinion surveys, newspapers data, and parliamentary speech records, we find that investments in hosting communities and the reluctance of opposition parties to rally against popular policies account for our 'no backlash' findings.