https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2421-9109
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ABSTRACT
Incumbent parties are often able to control state resources in ways that allow them to garner support in a clientelistic fashion. When regulatory institutions cannot restrain the incumbent’s discretionary control over these resources, monopolistic control can give these parties a major political advantage. Focusing on clientelistic strategies employed by Turkey’s ruling AK Party in comparison to opposition parties, this paper discusses mechanisms through which the incumbent party garners advantages through clientelism. While doing so, it presents evidence from an original fieldwork conducted in an Istanbul neighbourhood.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
ORCID
Kerem Yıldırım http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2421-9109
Notes
1 Somer, “Understanding Turkey’s Democratic Breakdown.” suggests a clear periodization and argues that since 2015 Turkey has been experiencing democratic reversal based on the capture of the state by the ruling party.
2 For a detailed conceptual discussion of dominant party systems, see Trantidis, “Clientelism and the Classification of Dominant Party Systems.” According to Sartori’s definition, hegemonic parties do not allow party competition. Inclusiveness under recent AKP governments is a point of discussion and the Turkish party system may be evolving to a hegemonic one with higher AKP control over electoral competition. However, at least until 2015 (corresponding to the period of fieldwork presented in this study) defining the AKP as a hegemonic party would be a “distant fit,” (Çarkoğlu and Aksen, “Partisan and Apportionment Bias,” 44).
3 Bobonis et al., “Vulnerability and Clientelism.”
4 Wantchekon, “Clientelism and Voting Behavior.”
5 Greene, “Buying Discretion in Mexico’s New Democracy.”
6 Szwarcberg, “Revisiting Clientelism.”
7 Folke, Hirano, and Snyder, “Patronage and Elections in U.S. States.”
8 Berenschot and Aspinall, “Varieties of Clientelism.”
9 For a detailed definition of dominant party systems, see Greene, Why Dominant Parties Lose; and for a discussion of its emergense in Turkey, see: Ayan Musil, “Emergence of a Dominant Party System After Multipartyism”
10 Heper and Keyman, “Double-Faced State.”
11 Sayarı, “Political Patronage in Turkey,” 111.
12 For instance, see Ayata, CHP: Organization and Ideology.
13 Buğra, State and Business in Modern Turkey.
14 Filiztekin, “Income Inequality Trends in Turkey”; Buğra and Keyder, “The Turkish Welfare Regime in Transformation.”
15 Esen and Gümüşçü, “Building a Competitive Authoritarian Regime.”
16 For examples, see Aytaç, “Distributive Politics in a Multiparty System.” and Ark-Yıldırım, “Political Parties and Grassroots Clientelist Strategies.” For studies on how social assistance is captured by the government for clientelistic purposes.
17 Zeng, “Engineering Popular Support.”
18 Esen and Gümüşçü, “Building a Competitive Authoritarian Regime.”
19 Konda Barometer uses a stratified sampling technique based on neighbourhood and village level (the smallest administrative units). Interview locations are randomly selected according to the population size of the strata. The survey was conducted with 2,666 respondents. For further details of Konda Barometer survey sampling and fieldwork methodology, see: https://tinyurl.com/y4kbhs36 date accessed May 31, 2017.
20 On how targeted social assistance can increase support for the incumbent’ policy proposals, see Özel and Yıldırım, “Political Consequences of Welfare Regimes.”
21 For details of the 2011 survey, see Çarkoğlu and Aytaç, “Who Gets Targeted for Vote-Buying?” and for 2014, see Kalaycıoğlu, “Local Elections and the Turkish Voter.”
22 Kitschelt, “Clientelistic Linkage Strategies.”
23 İnan, “Social Assistance Duties of Municipalities.”
24 Arıkan Akdağ, Ethnicity and Elections in Turkey.
25 Bobonis et al., “Vulnerability and Clientelism.”
26 Holland, “Forbearance”; Başlevent and Dayıoğlu, “The Effect of Squatter Housing.”
27 Kuyucu and Ünsal, “'Urban Transformation’ as State-Led Property Transfer.”
28 Marschall, Aydoğan, and Bulut, “Does Housing Create Votes?”
29 Ark-Yıldırım, “Political Parties and Grassroots Clientelist Strategies.”
30 Şahin, “The Urbanization Policy of Turkey.”
31 See https://tinyurl.com/yyttlbj3 [in Turkish] for details, date accessed March 10, 2019.
32 Çınar, “Local Determinants of an Emerging Electoral Hegemony,” 1230.
33 See https://tinyurl.com/y3gmgbjq for details of this incident, date accessed July 4, 2018.
34 Chattharakul, “Thai Electoral Campaigning”; Aspinall, “When Brokers Betray.”
35 Auyero, Poor People’s Politics; Szwarcberg, Mobilizing Poor Voters.
36 Sayarı, “Interdisciplinary Approaches to Political Clientelism.”
37 Ark-Yıldırım, “Political Parties and Grassroots Clientelist Strategies.”
38 Özbudun, “From Political Islam to Conservative Democracy,” 553.
39 For Welfare Party’s mobilization strategies and party organization, see White, Islamist Mobilization and also, Arat, Rethinking Islam and Liberal Democracies.
40 Ibid.,78–89.
41 Yeşilada, “The Virtue Party,” 70.
42 Berenschot and Aspinall, “Varieties of Clientelism.”
43 In its most acute forms, lack of competition can even provide further regime stability through control over allocation of various resources, especially in single party authoritarian regimes. For details of how clientelism can buttress authoritarian regime types, see Geddes, “What Do We Know about Democratization?”, but also note that elite pacts for “protection rather than provision” (i.e. threat perceptions rather than flow of patronage) can explain authoritarian continuity (Slater, Ordering Power, 49).
44 Chandra, “Counting Heads.”
45 Robinson and Verdier, “The Political Economy of Clientelism.”
46 Greene, Why Dominant Parties Lose; Greene, “Buying Discretion in Mexico’s New Democracy.”
47 Zeng, “Engineering Popular Support.”
48 The central government has 17 social assistance schemes and Aytaç, “Distributive Politics in a Multiparty System.” suggests that these programmes leave much room for discretionary provision of benefits.
49 Aytaç, “Distributive Politics in a Multiparty System.”
50 For problems in judicial independence and media pluralism, see Özbudun, “Turkey’s Judiciary”; Çarkoğlu, Baruh, and Yıldırım, “Press-Party Parallelism.”
51 Ark-Yıldırım, “Political Parties and Grassroots Clientelist Strategies.”
52 Hidalgo, “Hugo Chávez’s ‘Petro-Socialism’,” 79.
53 Reuter, “Regional Patrons and Hegemonic Party.”
54 Ellen Lust, “Competitive Clientelism in the Middle East.”
55 Mares and Young, “The Core Voter’s Curse.”
56 Markowski, “Creating Authoritarian Clientelism.”
57 For recent discussions of Turkish democratic backsliding, see Öniş, “Turkey's Two Elections”; Çınar, “Local Determinants of an Emerging Electoral Hegemony”; Somer, “Understanding Turkey’s Democratic Breakdown”; Esen and Gümüşçü, “Building a Competitive Authoritarian Regime”; Kalaycıoğlu, “Two Elections and a Political Regime in Crisis”; Yilmaz and Bashirov, “The AKP after 15 Years.”
58 For details of this decision by the council to repeat metropolitan mayor elections, see https://tinyurl.com/y6jfphyu, date accessed May 6, 2019.
59 Trantidis, “Clientelism and the Classification of Dominant Party Systems,” 121.
60 Stokes, “Perverse Accountability.”
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Kerem Yıldırım
Kerem Yıldırım is a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Political Science at Duke University. His research focuses on the effect of various institutions and socioeconomic structures on party-voter linkages, political competition, and political communication. He is the co-author of Political Consequences of Welfare Regimes: Social Assistance and Support for Presidentialism in Turkey (2019) and Party competition in the Middle East: spatial competition in the post-Arab Spring era (2019).