Electoral Polarization, Class Politics and a New Welfare State in Brazil and Turkey

Yörük, Erdem; Comin, Alvaro Augusto

doi:10.1017/s1062798719000620

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…Erdoğan managed to survive the Gezi Protests, the 17-25 December corruption operations, and the coup attempt. Although the party's national power seems to be eroding since 2016, the AKP has still managed to win all elections with wide support from the poor, except for the defeat in the June 2015 election and the 2019 municipal elections (Yörük and Comin 2020). In this political setting, the party increased the level of pro-poor social assistance programs and used an anti-elite populist discourse (Yörük and Yüksel 2014).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Politics of the Welfare State in Turkey

Yörük¹

2022

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In The Politics of the Welfare State in Turkey, author Erdem Yörük provides a politics-based explanation for the post-1980 transformation of the Turkish welfare system, in which poor relief policies have replaced employment-based social security. This book is one of the results of Yörük’s European Research Council-funded project, which compares the political dynamics in several emerging markets in order to develop a new political theory of welfare in the global south. As such, this book is an ambitious analytical and empirical contribution to understanding the causes of a sweeping shift in the nature of state welfare provision in Turkey during the recent decades—part of a global trend that extends far beyond Turkey. Most scholarship about Turkey and similar countries has explained this shift toward poor relief as a response to demographic and structural changes including aging populations, the decline in the economic weight of industry, and the informalization of labor, while ignoring the effect of grassroots politics. In order to overcome these theoretical shortages in the literature, the book revisits concepts of political containment and political mobilization from the earlier literature on the mid-twentieth-century welfare state development and incorporates the effects of grassroots politics in order to understand the recent welfare system shift as it materialized in Turkey, where a new matrix of political dynamics has produced new large-scale social assistance programs.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Politics of the Welfare State in Turkey

Yörük¹

2022

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“…Their core constituencies have differed as Fidesz’s electoral support was initially rooted in the middle class, whereas AKP relied on the poor. But both leaders managed to build cross-class coalitions with the help of social policy reforms (Scheiring, 2020; Yörük and Comin, 2020). Our exploratory research thus contributed to understanding the social roots of populist and illiberal regimes.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An illiberal welfare state emerging? Welfare efforts and trajectories under democratic backsliding in Hungary and Turkey

Szikra

Öktem

2022

Journal of European Social Policy

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Mainstream western-centric welfare state research has mostly confined itself to studying social policy in consolidated democracies and tends to assume a synergy between democracy and the welfare state. This article shifts the focus to welfare states in countries with declining democratic institutions and rising right-wing populist rule to explore a complex relationship between (de)democratization and welfare state reforms. We conduct a comparative case study of two extreme cases of democratic decline, Turkey and Hungary. We employ a sequential mixed method approach. First, we assess welfare efforts in the two countries to understand which policy areas were prioritized and whether autocratizing governments retrenched or expanded their welfare states. In the second stage, we explore the trajectory of welfare reforms in Hungary and Turkey, focusing on three analytically distinguishable dimensions of social policy change: policy content, policy procedures (including timing, parliamentary procedures, veto players); and the discourses accompanying reforms. We find that democratic decline facilitates rapid welfare state change but it does not necessarily mean retrenchment. Instead we observe ambivalent processes of welfare state restructuring. Common themes emerging in both countries are the rise of flagship programmes that ensure electoral support, a transition towards top-down decision-making and the salient role of discourse in welfare governance. Overall, similarities are stronger in procedures and discourse than in the direction of reforms. Differences in spending levels and policy content do not suggest that the two cases constitute a coherent illiberal welfare state regime. Instead, we see the emergence of authoritarian features that modify their original welfare models.

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“…This phenomenon of “party sorting” entails a shift between progressive and conservative profiles, sometimes intertwined with elements of populism, whether on the left or right side of the ideological spectrum. While the alternation between these positions can be beneficial for democracy, it is important that the contrasts are not excessively extreme, so as to maintain a peaceful rivalry in the pursuit of power rather than a contentious political war (Bonansinga, 2022; de la Torre, 2017; Fernandez, 2021; Yörük and Comin, 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Agrarian Conflicts and Food Crises Nexus in Contemporary Latin America

Zimerman

2024

Journal of Politics in Latin America

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This paper explores the violence stemming from food riots in Latin American countries that have been triggered by recurring food crises in the twenty-first century, particularly impacting impoverished rural populations. The marginalized sectors of emerging countries, whose demands for basic rights such as the right to food go unaddressed by the State, may resort to protests that can escalate into confrontations. The recurrent food crises exacerbate the struggle to meet the basic needs of those who are unable to subsist regularly. This research focuses on a region that has received less scholarly attention compared to Africa and Asia, and examines indicators such as land grabbing, climate change, demographic pressures, political polarization, as independent variables to elucidate the association with food riot occurrences. The collected data and statistical analysis confirm the hypotheses, although further studies are required to enhance the performance of certain indicators.

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Electoral Polarization, Class Politics and a New Welfare State in Brazil and Turkey

Cited by 4 publications

References 35 publications

The Politics of the Welfare State in Turkey

The Politics of the Welfare State in Turkey

An illiberal welfare state emerging? Welfare efforts and trajectories under democratic backsliding in Hungary and Turkey

The Agrarian Conflicts and Food Crises Nexus in Contemporary Latin America

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