Economic voting in Turkey: single- vs. multi-party governments

ABSTRACT

This study investigates the strength of economic voting in Turkey under various types of governments. A vote equation developed for this purpose, which takes into account all of the key factors mentioned in the economic voting literature, shows that voters hold coalition governments less responsible for their economic performance than single-party governments and minor partners of a coalition government less responsible than its major member. These gaps widen as political fragmentation of the government increases. In governments involving many parties and parties with significantly different ideologies, some of the junior coalition members benefit rather than suffer from a bad economy.

KEYWORDS:

• elections
• voter behaviour
• economic voting
• coalition governments
• governance
• Turkey

Acknowledgments

This work was sponsored by the Economic Research Forum (ERF) and has benefited from both its financial and intellectual support. However, the contents and recommendations do not necessarily reflect ERF’s views. An earlier version of this paper, then titled ‘Economic Voting under Single-party and Coalition Governments: Evidence from the Turkish Case’ was presented at the 23rd Annual Conference of the ERF held in Amman, Jordan, 18–20 March 2017. I have benefited greatly from the comments I have received from the audience and the discussant at that meeting.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. According to Lewis-Beck and Stegmaier (2019), this literature involves more than 600 books and articles. Surveys of these are provided by Lewis-Beck and Paldam (2000), Akarca and Tansel (2006, 2007), Lewis-Beck and Stegmaier (2000, 2008, 2015, 2019), Lewis-Beck and Lobo (2017), Stegmaier and Lewis-Beck (2013) and Stegmaier et al. (2017).

2. Akarca and Tansel (2006, 2007) show that Turkish electorate’s behaviour in that regard is not that different from their counterparts in other countries.

3. The term single-party government should not be confused with one-party state. The term refers to a government formed solely by one of the multiple parties in the country.

4. However, the topic of economic performance under different types of governments is beyond the scope of the present study.

5. Akarca (2009, 2010, 2011, 2015a, 2015b), Akarca and Başlevent (2009), Akarca and Tansel (2006, 2007, 2016), Başlevent (2012), Başlevent and Kirmanoğlu (2016), Başlevent et al. (2009), Çarkoğlu (2008, 2012), Çınar (2016), Hazama (2007, 2009, 2012, 2018), Işık and Pınarcıoğlu (2010), Kalaycıoğlu (2014, 2018), Köksal et al. (2010), Toros (2011, 2012), and Yüksel and Civan (2013) are the noteworthy studies on economic voting in Turkey.

6. Causes of that realignment are beyond the scope of the present paper but are discussed in many studies such as Akarca and Başlevent (2011) and Akarca (2011).

7. As mentioned above, alliances existed in the 2018 election as well. However, unlike the 2019 election, in 2018 every party entered the election under its own banner and candidates. Alliances mattered only in the allocation of the parliamentary seats among the parties in the alliance. Nevertheless, the existence of alliances may have affected the outcome of the 2018 election. To check for this possibility dummy variable for that election was considered as well but came out highly insignificant in all of the regressions presented in the next section.

8. Leader of the major incumbent party changed in 1993 as well. However, in preliminary investigation of major party leadership changes individually, it was found that while the 1965 and 1991 changes made large and statistically significant effects on the vote shares of the government and the major incumbent party, the one in 1993 did not, perhaps because it coincided with the change in the leadership of its junior coalition partner. Similar examination of the 1995 election showed the change in the leadership of the minor incumbent party created no noticeable impacts. The changes in the chair of the incumbent party in 2014 and 2016 were not considered leadership changes because the previous chair who became president of the country remained as de facto leader of his party and resumed his position officially in 2017.

9. A unidirectional causality running from economic activity to electoral outcomes is assumed. This is justifiable in view of Luca (2016) who investigated this issue in the case of Turkey using panel data, and found that causality in the reverse direction to be negligible.

10. The 1961 and 1983 elections are not included in the sample because then the military was the incumbent for which there is no lagged vote share value.

11. Akarca (2019) verifies this for the Turkish case.

12. According to this literature, more inefficient projects are undertaken under coalition governments, in particular, those involving partners with conflicting ideologies, than under single-party governments, because under the former less of the costs are internalized (Bawn and Rosenbluth 2006). This causes, in addition, government spending and deficit, and thus inflation and interest rates to be higher and investment to be lower. Also, fiscal discipline is weaker under coalitions because such governments have shorter lives and thus shorter time horizons and lower discount factors (Bejar et al. 2011). With each member of coalition acting as a veto player, it becomes more difficult to respond to changing conditions, to correct policy mistakes, and to resist rent-seeking (Tsebelis 1995, 2002, Hall and Nishikawa 2014). However, one should not conclude that economic growth is always better under single-party governments. The literature studying political determinants of economic performance shows that economic growth typically exhibits an inverted-U type of pattern over the life of a government. All long-lasting governments in Turkey were single-party governments. As Akarca (2019) points out, the growth rate of per capita real GDP under such governments has been three to five times higher during their first terms than in their later terms. This has to do more with lack of institutions providing checks and balances, in particular lack of intra-party democracy, than voter behaviour.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ali T. Akarca

Ali T. Akarca is a Professor  (Emeritus) of Economics at the University of Illinois at Chicago with which he has been affiliated since 1975. He has also worked as a Research Associate at the Department of Public Policy Studies of the University of Chicago during 1978-1980.  His articles on the behavior of oil prices and their impact on the economy;  the effect of tax rate changes on tax revenues; economic, social and political  determinants of election outcomes and of government performance;  causes and consequences of coups; and economic and political consequences of  internal migration are published in various academic journals and books. His analyses and accurate predictions about Turkish elections regularly appear in the media.