Representative democracy relies on those willing and able to put themselves forward for political office. Equally, elections involve a drastic transfer of democratic power from the many to the few, deciding ‘who’ has that power, but not necessarily ‘what’ is done with it. The latter may well depend on the personal predispositions and desires of those who seek a political career. Existing research suggests that political aspirants are not only a tiny minority of the population, but also distinct in their personality characteristics by comparison to those they govern or seek to govern. Reviewing and building upon this literature, this chapter draws on original data from political elites and members of the UK public to understand how the unique psychologies of politicians might also precipitate and explain differences and similarities between their political opinions and those of citizens. This chapter finds (a) personality predispositions represented as basic values share meaningful relationships with political attitudes, (b) politicians and candidates differ from the public in their basic values, (c) basic values have a stronger effect upon political attitudes among elites than masses, but (d) the explanatory potential of a predisposition model is improved by accounting for partisan conflict and socio-demographic factors.

Chapter 7 shows that the struggles concerning the claimant’s potential ‘discretion’ have remained the same since Grahl-Madsen’s groundbreaking 1966 book. On the one hand, it may be the persecutor who defines what and who is persecuted. In this case, it is relevant whether harm is differentially inflicted due to the fact that the persecutor imputes or assumes a political opinion, irrespective of the claimant’s ‘actual’ convictions. On the other hand, it may be the claimant who defines group membership. Here, it is relevant whether the claimant has a deeply held political opinion. The task for the decision-maker is then to establish the deep conviction. The approaches do not necessarily map onto each other. When what is defined as the protected group does not equal the persecuted group as defined by the persecutor, ‘discretion’ logics emerge: Ultimately, in all these approaches, the protected group is made up of those who have been or are deemed at risk of being discovered by the persecutor – that risk being deduced either from their identity or their conduct, but always linked to their past or presumed future visibility. Those deemed ‘unrecognisable’ fall outside the protected group and are returned to (continued) ‘discretion’.

Chapter 9 argues that a new layer of complication was added with the so-called human rights–based approach to refugee law. The challenge is that refugee protection is lesser in scope than human rights protection. That ‘lesser’ protection is usually located in the persecution element: while reference to human rights has opened up refugee law to a wider range of harms, not every human rights violation reaches the threshold of persecution. The chapter shows that one consequence of the human rights–based approach is the risk of conceptually merging Convention ground and persecution. According to the human rights approach, a violation of the freedom of religion or the freedom of thought can amount to persecution. In other words, prohibitions on the expression of the Convention grounds in themselves can be considered persecutory. The chapter reveals that this has led to the invention of an alternative or additional kind of harm that stands next to the harm that is inflicted in case the claimant does express the Convention ground – or is discovered in another way. This approach builds on and reinforces ‘discretion’ reasoning, because it distinguishes on the basis of the claimant’s future behaviour and requires ‘discretion’ under certain circumstances.

When the deprivation of liberty constitutes a violation of the international law for reasons of discrimination based on birth, national, ethnic or social origin, language, religion, economic condition, political or other opinion, gender, sexual orientation, disability or other status, that aims towards or can result in ignoring the equality of human rights.1