How does clientelism foster electoral dominance? Evidence from Turkey

Arslantaş, Düzgün; Arslantaş, Şenol

doi:10.1177/2057891120920718

Cited by 12 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…What is notable is that social benefits are generally distributed on a clientelist basis which contradicts the logic of the social welfare state in Northern Europe (Özdemir, 2020). It is commonly emphasized among the party and the municipality officers that the maintenance of social benefits is contingent upon the support for the ruling AKP (Kılıçdaroğlu, 2020;Arslantaş & Arslantaş, 2020). This observation at the micro-level overlaps with the data from the Democratic Accountability Linkage Project (DALP) which finds that the AKP is by far the most clientelist party in Turkey.…”

Section: Inclusionary Populismmentioning

confidence: 72%

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Why Do Populist Governments Change Their Policies: Evidence from Turkey

Arslantaş

2022

Preprint

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This paper highlights the changing populist character of the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi or AKP) since it captured power in 2002. It posits that the AKP’s dominant form of populism has changed from being “inclusionary” to “exclusionary” over time. More specifically, the AKP leadership initially adopted inclusionary populism to overcome the threat of party closure and extend its voter base. As the economic downturn began to shrink clientelist resources from the second term onwards, however, the AKP has shifted towards exclusionary populism that was based on the extension of polarization along religious and ethnic lines. Such transition well overlaps with the authoritarian transition in recent years.

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Section: Inclusionary Populismmentioning

confidence: 72%

“…This is what happened in the aftermath of the economic setback in 2008. The shrinking public resources, which otherwise be used to buy the votes of the swing voters, prompted the loss of local elections in key metropolitan municipalities including Istanbul, Ankara, Adana, and Mersin in 2019 (Arslantaş & Arslantaş, 2020).…”

Section: Inclusionary Populismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why Do Populist Governments Change Their Policies: Evidence from Turkey

Arslantaş

2022

Preprint

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“…The first group consists of quantitative studies that test the use of such a mechanism by political parties such as the AKP, the CHP or the HDP (Kemahlıoğlu, 1012;Aytaç, 2014, Aytaç, Çarkoğlu andKemahlıoğlu, 2014;Gümüşçü et al, 2014;Çarkoğlu and Aytaç;2015;Marschall and Aydoğan and Bulut, 2016;Yıldırım, 2017;Kemahlıoğlu and Bayer, 2020). The second group of studies is rather micro level attempts that focuse on the nature of the clientelistic network the AKP forms in different shantytown neighborhoods, mostly concentrating on Istanbul (Arıkan Akdağ, 2014;Tafolar, 2014;Ark-Yıldırım, 2017;Yıldırım, 2020;Arslantaş and Arslantaş, 2020).…”

Section: Akp: the Turkish Casementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Similarly, ethnicity also acts as a constraint due to the peculiarity of the relations political parties develop with these groups. The use of clientelism by AKP has been highlighted by a large number of studies (Kemahlıoğlu, 2012(Kemahlıoğlu, : 1012Aytaç, 2014;Aytaç, Çarkoğlu and Kemahlıoğlu, 2014;Çarkoğlu and Aytaç;2015;Marschall, Aydoğan and Bulut, 2016;Yıldırım, 2017;Kemahlıoğlu and Bayer, 2020), which among them, especially micro level studies (Arıkan Akdağ, 2014;Ark-Yıldırım, 2017;Yıldırım, 2020;Arslantaş and Arslantaş, 2020) indicate the importance of the local party organization in establishing these linkages, especially for the mobilization of members of the Kurdish ethnic group (Arıkan Akdağ, 2014;Kemahlıoğlu, 2022;Yıldırım 2022).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Clientelism and Ethnicity as Constraints to Party Organization Change: The AKP in Turkey and Change in District Presidencies

Akdağ

YAZGAN

2023

Alternatif Politika

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Based on the existing literature, the study tests the relevance of electoral and intra-party alliance concerns on party organization change for the AKP in its 2017 District Congress. We believe that both the electoral and intra-party alliance concerns the party faced in 2017, make it a suitable case to test the basic hypothesis of the study. The dataset used in the analysis consists of secondary data on 971 districts present in Turkey. District presidency change is employed as the key independent variable to estimate organization change. The result of the logistic regression indicates that the effect of increasing percentage of swing voters and members of the former alliance, despite being valid, have moderate positive effects on the AKP’s decision to change its organization. The insignificancy of the electoral safety of the party in the district reveals that in 2017 the AKP changed its organization regardless of the nature of the electoral competition it faces. Interestingly, results indicate that socioeconomic development and ethnic presence in districts are also significant factors that constrain organization change in the AKP. Based on these results we suggest that change in party organization becomes a more difficult issue in parties with strong clientelistic networks where political parties built electoral support through the conditional distribution of resources to voters. Similarly, ethnicity also acts as a constraint due to the peculiarity of the relations political parties develop with these groups. As such clientelism and ethnicity seem to have constraining effects on the abilities of parties to change their organizations. The results highlight the necessity of further research to generalize the validity of the effectiveness of clientelism and ethnic groups on political parties’ organization change on different settings.

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“…Examples include "patronage links in public sector employment" (Kemahlioglu, 2012), "excessive use of public procurement law" (Gürakar, 2016), "conditional cash transfer" (Aytaç, 2014), "vote-buying" (Çarkoglu and Aytaç, 2015;Arslantas and Arslantas, 2020a;Kılıçdaroglu, 2020), "credit allocations by the state banks" (Bircan and Saka, 2018) and the "quality of power provision" (Pinar et al, 2020).…”

Section: Prior Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Political climate and regional well-being in Turkey

Karahasan

Pinar

Deniz

2021

Territory, Politics, Governance

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Politicians can use social and economic policies on clientelist grounds neglecting the efficiency and equity concerns of public policy. While incumbents might reward and punish voters based on partyspecific fundamentals, the role of political ideologies and fragmentation is mostly neglected. For societies like Turkey, where the ideological stance is mixed and the level of fragmentation is varying, the regional political climate has implications for regional well-being beyond the borders of political parties. Our findings for the post-2000s validate that regions that are ideologically closer to the right and the incumbent party (Justice and Development Party-AKP-) attain higher well-being, while the opposite is true for ideologically polarized regions and regions closer to left-wing ideologies. Results are robust to the endogeneity of political climate and various model specifications.

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How does clientelism foster electoral dominance? Evidence from Turkey

Cited by 12 publications

References 42 publications

Why Do Populist Governments Change Their Policies: Evidence from Turkey

Why Do Populist Governments Change Their Policies: Evidence from Turkey

Clientelism and Ethnicity as Constraints to Party Organization Change: The AKP in Turkey and Change in District Presidencies

Political climate and regional well-being in Turkey

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