Rethinking Development Space in Emerging Countries: Turkey's Conservative Countermovement

Abstract

Despite an increasingly flexible global policy context, most emerging countries refuse to venture beyond their pre-existing development strategies. This article contends that domestic political constraints under liberalized markets might preclude policy dynamism in some cases. In particular, it draws attention to the tension between market expansion and social cohesion as a formative influence over policy patterns. This tension is sometimes addressed through a conservative countermovement whereby liberally-oriented governments entice sections of the poor into broad electoral coalitions by employing palliative interventions alongside market-expanding policies. Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) is one example. Central to the Turkish case has been the redeployment of the country's historic foreign capital-dependent pattern of growth in the service of selective redistribution and credit-fuelled consumerism. The ensuing deficit-led neoliberal populism assured stable and equitable growth in the extraordinary international and domestic context of the mid-2000s, but proved unfeasible since the global crisis. Even then, this coupling of market and social preferences has become politically so firmly entrenched in time that it now constrains the policy options to address Turkey's developmental impasse.

Building a Competitive Authoritarian Regime: State–Business Relations in the AKP’s Turkey

“…Due to its historically low savings rate, Turkey relies on a deficit-led growth trajectory that requires regular flow of foreign capital to sustain its economy. 153 During its early years, the AKP expanded its political base by sustaining a consumption-oriented economy with stable macroeconomic indicators and a strong financial system. The welfare gains during the AKP's first two terms that benefited both businessmen and voters alike cannot be maintained under current growth rates.…”

The rural roots of the rise of the Justice and Development Party in Turkey

“…Across the globe, the lower classes have rejected neoliberal policies through street protests, armed insurgencies, revolutions, and the ballot box. By providing a variety of material concessions to lowincome groups, a strategy often branded as 'controlled populism' (Güven 2016(Güven , 1007, social neoliberalism offers (at least) a temporary political fix to contain the radicalization potential of peasants and workers and to win elections (Dorlach 2015, 521;Öniş 2012, 137). 7 We argue that the AKP has competently followed a line of social neoliberal policy since 2002.…”

Neoliberal Dönemde Mülksüzleştirme ve Kalkınma

“…Finally, although the neoliberal core of the PWC does not tolerate the return to the welfare state of the post-WWII period, neoliberal institutions, especially the World Bank, have increasingly stressed the need for expanding (in-cash and in-kind) social assistance in order to contain political unrest and mobilize the political support of the poor (van Gils and Yörük, 2017: 114). In this sense, the shift from the WC to the PWC largely corresponds to the shift from orthodox neoliberalism to "social neoliberalism" (Dorlach 2015;Güven, 2016;Öniş, 2012).…”