The ‘competitive authoritarian’ turn in Turkey: bandwagoning versus reality

Abstract

Turkey’s fast-paced democratic backsliding has attracted unprecedented scholarly interest from observers both inside and outside the country. Among various labels proposed to define Turkey’s new regime type, ‘competitive authoritarianism’ (CA) has by far outdistanced its rivals. As plenty of time has passed since its coinage, it is timely to commence a scholarly discussion on the appropriateness of the term. Our analysis reveals that the CA argument comes with three major shortcomings when applied to the case of Turkey. First, although its proponents discuss the concept adequately and seem to find abundant evidence to convince most of their audience, they undertake little, if any, theoretical discussion to show why CA is more plausible than its alternatives. Second, although the party system is generally regarded as the main indicator of a certain regime type, the link between the two remains un(der)-explored. Third, the mechanism leading to the transition to CA is not fully identified. We conclude that experts have jumped on the CA bandwagon, dubbing Turkey’s authoritarian regime competitive authoritarian without sufficient conceptual sophistication; this has proved deleterious rather than beneficial to the relevant literature.

Keywords:

• AKP
• authoritarianism
• competitive authoritarianism
• democratic backsliding
• electoral authoritarianism
• regime change

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Other monitoring institutions highlight the same tendency. For instance, the Economist ranks Turkey 88th out of 167 countries in its 2020 Democracy Index, while Bertelsmann’s 2020 Transformation Index ranks Turkey 77th out of 157 countries.

2 Weak authoritarian regimes refer to ‘regimes that are unconsolidated as democratic or authoritarian, and whose fundamental characteristics are being intensely, sometimes violently, contested through hegemonic struggles to wrest control of institutions and reshape them’ (Akkoyunlu and Öktem 2016, 506). In delegative democracies, despite holding free and fair elections, the balance of power between the legislature, judiciary and executive is highly skewed in favour of the executive: ie the president (O’Donnell 1994). Illiberal democracies, on the other hand, fulfil the criterion of procedural democracy only.

3 Carothers (2002) lists five main features of the transition paradigm. First, all dictatorial regimes are on the path to democratisation once authoritarianism breaks down. Second, democratisation does not occur swiftly but consists of interlinked sequences. Third, elections build closer links between voters and politicians and provide legitimacy to the regime. Fourth, the desire of elites outweighs structural factors in pushing the regime into a democratic direction. Fifth, institutions need to be rebuilt in order to accelerate democratisation.

4 Changing regime dynamics rendered once-dominant typologies obsolete, especially those of Linz (2000 [1975]) and Geddes (1999).

5 In Diamond’s (2002) classification, CA is one of the hybrid regime types, along with ‘hegemonic authoritarian’ and ‘ambiguous’ regimes. In hegemonic authoritarian regimes, elections are no more than a show to affirm the ruling party’s power, as only satellite parties are allowed to run. Ambiguous regimes lie between electoral democracy and CA.

6 Exceptions include Muslim countries such as Bangladesh (Mostofa and Subedi 2021) and Malaysia (Giersdorf and Croissant 2011).

7 The most notable exception was the 1946 election. It is known as ‘elections with stick’ (sopalı seçimler) because of open voting and secret counting, and is notorious for widespread electoral malpractice and fraud on the part of the CHP. The illegal counting of unsealed ballot boxes in the 2017 constitutional referendum is another instance of serious violation of electoral integrity in Turkey.

8 Gerrymandering practices in Istanbul’s Şişli district include the 2012 transfer of three of its neighbourhoods (Maslak, Ayazağa and Huzur) to the Sarıyer district, where the competition between the AKP and the CHP is tighter. In fact, though, this gerrymandering did not work well for the government until more recently (Arslantaş 2019).

9 For an excellent account of militarism in Turkey, see Öztan (2014).

10 The others were the Democrat Party (Demokrat Parti, 1950s), the Justice Party (Adalet Partisi, 1960s) and the Motherland Party (Anavatan Partisi, 1980s).

11 The trajectory of the Public Procurement Law (PPL) best illustrates this tendency. To date, the PPL has been changed more than 190 times (Birgün 2021).

12 The liberal democracy index of the V-Dem dataset measures the rule of law, civil liberties, checks and balances, and limitations on executive power. The egalitarian democracy index refers to the level of material and immaterial inequalities, along with electoral democracy. The electoral democracy index looks at the institutions of representative democracy, such as free and fair elections, as well as the independence of civil society and media.

13 Nonetheless, the AKP government succeeded in changing the constitution several times, most notably with the 2010 and 2017 referendums.

14 Currently, CHP-controlled municipalities host half of Turkey’s population and produce 60% of the total gross domestic product (Sözcü 2019).

15 From 1957 to 1971, the UMNO had extraordinary powers in the process of becoming independent from Britain. Greene (2007) therefore rightly calls it a ‘fully-closed authoritarian regime’ in this period.

16 For a detailed account of developments during the 2000s up until 2018, see Wong and Ooi (2018).

17 Exceptions include the 1994, 2014 and 2019 elections, which indicate growing discontent with one-party rule in the country.

18 For instance, in the 2019 elections, the BDP won 38 seats in the 65-seat parliament with 52.6% of the vote, while the UDC won only 15 seats with 35.8% of the vote.

19 The third wave of democracy started with the 1974 Carnation Revolution in Portugal and ­involved the transition of more than 30 countries to democracy by 1990 (Huntington 1991).

20 On the scope of these changes, see eg Cumhuriyet (2011), Deutsche Welle (2021) and Gazeteduvar (2018).

21 As Sözen (2020) argues in his excellent review article, the most important contribution of the CA framework (along with ‘electoral authoritarianism’), however, was in triggering a shift to categorising Turkey as a diminished subtype of authoritarianism rather than as a democracy.

22 Using an original data set for the years 1981–2006, Smith (2014) shows that boycotts can be an effective strategy to weaken authoritarian rule without destabilising it much.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Düzgün Arslantaş

Düzgün Arslantaş is Lecturer and Post-doctoral Researcher at the Cologne Center for Comparative Politics, University of Cologne. He was Doctoral and Post-doctoral Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, Cologne, and the University of Cologne, Cologne Center for Comparative Politics. He was Visiting Scholar at Columbia University in 2018. His research focuses on parties and party systems, clientelism, and authoritarianism. His publications have appeared in the Swiss Political Science Review, the British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies and New Perspectives on Turkey.

André Kaiser

André Kaiser is Professor of Comparative Politics at the Cologne Center for Comparative Politics, University of Cologne. His research focuses on the relevance of institutions for political action. His publications have appeared in, among other venues, the American Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies and the European Journal of Political Research.