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Abstract
With their “deeply divided societies”, distinctive electoral rules and pivotal religious parties, Israeli and Turkish politics offer crucial cases to probe into “polarization” processes and the ways in which religious parties play a role in them. Using a large sample of public opinion and experimental survey data, the analysis shows how polarization can be marked by some contravening trends. Despite declining social trust, religious party supporters do not denounce any institutions categorically; yet disregard some opposing parties as viable political alternatives. The political positions of religious partisans differ from their party leadership. Supporters assign different levels of significance to polarizing issues and carry the potential of forming issue-based coalitions across different ideological groups. Although they acquire news and political information from different venues, most partisans tend to process factual information through partisan lenses, reinforcing partisan ideological commitments. While religious party supporters increasingly reject the existing markers of politics and show signs of political apathy, they do not withdraw from politics. With their multifaceted commitments, religious party supporters do not fall into mutually exclusive political groups. Given the tendency of the political elite to exacerbate divisions for political expediency, it is ultimately the ability of individuals to engage in politics beyond the confines of party politics that presents an escape from these polarization traps.
Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank the journal editors, special issue editors, and reviewers for their insightful comments and Hakan Yılmaz for providing the Conservatism in Turkey data.
Notes
Palonen, “Political Polarisation”; Lee, “Democratization and Polarization.”
Following Ozzano's definition, religious parties here cover all “religiously oriented parties,” which includes not only explicitly religious parties, but also formally secular parties that dedicate significant sections of their manifestos to religious values and explicitly appeal to religious constituencies.
Kalyvas, “Commitment Problems”; White, Islamist Mobilization.
Israeli Democracy Institute, Israeli Democracy Index.
Agirdir, Social and Political Polarization.
Ibid.
For example, Stokke and Ryntveit, “The Struggle for Tamil Eelam”; Down and Wilson, “Opinion Polarization.”
Brocker, and Künkler. “Religious Parties.”
Hetherington, Turned Off; Jensen and Frølund Thomsen, “Can Party Competition.”
The surveys listed here include distinctive questions and categories. The analysis here focused on the comparable questions. In order to test some of the hypotheses on the implications of polarization, this study integrates an experimental survey which was completed by 400 respondents. The experimental study is exploratory in nature and seeks to shed some light on understudied aspects of polarization. The core group of respondents (60) are mostly students of Istanbul Technical University and Istanbul University. However, in an effort to include respondents with different demographic profiles, the survey was also distributed using the networks of various social groups in major cities, including Ankara, Kayseri, and Diyarbakir. A comparison of the demographic characteristics and party affiliations of the survey's respondents confirm that the survey captured the main political and demographic variations in the population. The results of the survey offer heuristic observations to advance our understanding of some main political-psychological explanations.
Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy; Lemennicier, “Political Polarization”; Layman et al., “Activists and Conflict Extension.”
Dodd, Coalitions; Sartori, Parties and Party Systems; Hazan, Centre Parties.
Fiorina, Abrams, and Pope, Culture War?
Saunders, “Why Can't We All Just Get Along?”
Abramowitz, The Disappearing Center; Levendusky, “Clearer Cues.”
Testa, “Is Polarization Bad?”
Kalyvas, “Commitment Problems”; Schwedler, Faith in Moderation.
Hansen, The Saffron Wave; Rosenblum, “Banning Parties”; Kamil, “Rabbi Ovadia Yosef”; Kardam, Political Polarization in Turkey.
McGraw, Faith in Politics; Reuven, Center Parties.
Ono, Polarized Politics.
Nyhan and Reifler, “When Corrections Fail”; Clark, “The Conditions of Islamist Moderation”; Bafumi and Shapiro, “A New Partisan Voter”; Cavari, “Religious Beliefs, Elite Polarization.”
Kuklinski and Jerit, “The Meaning of ‘Attitude’”; Uslaner, “The Civil State.”
Berelson, Lazarsfeld, and McPhee, Voting; Brader and Tucker, “The Cross-Pressured Citizen”; Mutz, “The Consequences of Cross-Cutting Networks”; Nilson, “Half a Century.”
Brown, Touchton, and Whitford, “Political Polarization as a Constraint”; Wright and Goldberg, “Risk and Uncertainty.”
White, Islamist Mobilization; Willis, “Shas.”
Brown, Touchton, and Whitford, “Political Polarization as a Constraint”; Levendusky, “Clearer Cues.”
Sandler and Rynhold, “Centrism to Neo-Centrism.”
Law 2820, Official Gazette, April 24, 1983.
http://www.knesset.gov.il/elections16/heb/laws/party_law.htm, accessed October 29, 2012.
Law 2820, Part 3.
Although polarization increases voter turnout of strong partisans it often results in overall declining voter turnout. Callander and Wilson, “Turnout, Polarization.”
Schultz, “Polarization and Inefficient Policies.”
Hetherington, “Putting Polarization in Perspective.”
Due to the significant role attributed to Islam in NAP's ideology and programme, it is described here as a national-religious party. The NAP declared a “Turkish-Islamic synthesis,” which views Turkish identity and Islam as inseparable as its core ideology and formed a pre-election coalition with the pro-Islamic Welfare Party in 1991, thus treating it as solely an ethnic or radical nationalist party tends to obfuscate its intricate ideology. The Saadet Party is translated here as Prosperity; not as Felicity, to emphasize the Qur'anic context of the party's name, which emphasizes spiritual well-being and alludes to “asr-i Saadet,” the time of the Prophet.
Yılmaz, “Conversatism, Family, Sexuality and Religion.”
The Israel Election Studies Data. Mafdal merged with Moledet and Tkuma in November 2008 and formed a new coalition, the Jewish Home, Habayit Hayehudi, but it ran under the joint name Habayit Hayehudi-Mafdal HaHadasha in 2009 and Habayit Hayehudi-HaIhud HaLeumi in 2013. The name Mafdal is used to emphasize its distinctive policies and identity.
The 2009 Israel Election Studies Data.
The categories capture different levels of commitment to religious doctrine in political areas. Moderns leave limited room for religion in their political decisions while religious conservatives' decisions are guided by their religious convictions. Traditional conservatives use their religious convictions selectively. Agirdir, Social and Political Polarization.
Nilson, “Half a Century”; Brader and Tucker, “The Cross-Pressured Citizen.”
Arian, Atmor, and Hadar, Auditing Israeli Democracy.
The research categorizes the religious bloc as including traditional, orthodox, and ultraorthodox.
Arian, and Keissar-Sugarman, A Portrait of Israeli Jews.
The 2009–2012 Israeli Democracy Index data.
Dahl, On Democracy.
Uslaner, “The Civil State.”
The 2012 Israeli Democracy Index data.
The 1991–2007 World Values Turkey surveys.
Ibid.
Uslaner, “The Civil State.”
Yılmaz, “Conversatism, Family, Sexuality and Religion.”
Tepe, Religious Party Support.
Ono, Polarized Politics.
Rosenblum, “Banning Parties.”
Kuklinski and Jerit, “The Meaning of ‘Attitude’.”
Kuklinski et al., “Misinformation,” 805.
Mouffe, On the Political.
