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ABSTRACT
“Party hegemony” is a macro-level characteristic of party systems, which is a product of persistent and overwhelming electoral victories that leads to domination of the parliamentary system by a single party. Party hegemony can only emerge through a collection of individual-level (albeit aggregated), lower-level structural, and macro-level institutional factors. This article intends to shed light on hegemonic party systems by incorporating all of these aspects. It analyses the case of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey as a hegemonic party in the making. Based on individual-level survey data as well as an original province-level dataset, the article examines the role of ideology, pork barrel politics, economic voting, demographics, and political institutions in AKP's rising hegemony. The replicable nature of the dataset enables further testing of these findings in comparable cases for generalizability.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributor
Kursat Cinar earned his PhD in Political Science from Ohio State University. His research interests centre on party politics, democratization, patron–client relationships, and development. He is a Fulbright Alumnus (thanks to his MA in Economics from New York University). He has published in Political Studies, Contemporary Politics, Mediterranean Politics, Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, and Turkish Studies. He is the recipient of the 2013 Sabanci International Research Award. He works at Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey.
Notes
1. Schedler, “What is Democratic Consolidation?”
2. Pempel, Uncommon Democracies, 4.
3. Ibid.
4. Sartori, Parties and Party Systems.
5. Magaloni, Voting for Autocracy, 33.
6. See for instance, Diaz-Cayeros et al., “Tragic Brilliance”; Magaloni, Voting for Autocracy; Kitschelt and Wilkinson, Patrons, Clients, and Policies; Lust-Okar, “Legislative Elections in Hegemonic Authoritarian Regimes”; Smyth et al., “Engineering Victory”; Hadenius and Teorell, “Pathways from Authoritarianism”; Suryadinata, “The Decline of the Hegemonic Party”; Magaloni and Kricheli, “Political Order”; Reuter and Gandhi, “Economic Performance and Elite Defection”.
7. Bader, “Hegemonic Political Parties in Post-Soviet Eurasia.”
8. Trounstine, “All Politics is Local,” 612.
9. Gibson and Suarez-Cao, “Federalized Party Systems.”
10. Grigoriadis, “Islam and Democratization in Turkey”; Ocakli, “Political Entrepreneurs, Clientelism, and Civil Society in Turkey”; Ocakli, “Notable Networks.”
11. Kirdis, “Immoderation”; Somer, “Moderation of Religious and Secular Politics”; Tepe, “The Perils of Polarization.”
12. Radikal, Separation of Powers is an Impediment [Kuvvetler Ayrılığı Engel] December 18, 2012.
13. Gunther and Diamond, “Species of Political Parties.”
14. Ibid., 171.
15. Hürriyet, The Parliament Vice-Chair Yakut: Mixed-gender Education is a Great Mistake [TBMM Başkanvekili Yakut: Kızlı erkekli eğitim büyük bir yanlış] November 21, 2013.
16. Öniş, “Sharing Power”; Cinar and Ugur Cinar, “Building Democracy to Last.”
17. Özbudun, “AKP at the Crossroads,” 1.
18. Müftüler-Baç and Keyman, “Turkey under the AKP,” 86;see also Keyman and Gümüşçü, Democracy, Identity and Foreign Policy in Turkey.
19. Çarkoğlu, “Economic Evaluations vs. Ideology.”
20. The remaining portions are as follows: 3% of the AKP voters state that there is no “viable political alternative.” The remaining 5% chose not to respond to this question.
21. Kalaycıoğlu, “Politics of Conservatism,” 230.
22. Çarkoğlu, “Economic Evaluations vs. Ideology,” 319.
23. World Bank, 2013.
24. 43% of the CHP electorate and 49% of the MHP electorate hold degrees lower than secondary education.
25. Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy; Kitschelt, “Party Systems.” Converse (1964) defines “ideology” as a “configuration of ideas and attitudes in which the elements are bound together by some form of constraint or functional interdependence.”
26. Magaloni, Voting for Autocracy, 15.
27. Keyman and Gümüşçü, Democracy, Identity and Foreign Policy, 128.
28. On the rise of political Islam in the Middle East, see for instance, Tessler, “Religion, Religiosity and the Place of Islam”; Schwedler, “Religion and Politics”; Masoud, “Islamist Parties.”
29. Güneş-Ayata and Ayata, “Ethnic and Religious Bases of Voting,” 148–150.
30. Magaloni, Voting for Autocracy.
31. Suryadinata, “The Decline of the Hegemonic Party.”
32. Diaz-Cayeros et al., “Tragic Brilliance.”
33. Garner and Garner, “Problems of the Hegemonic Party,” 258.
34. Magaloni, Voting for Autocracy, 123.
35. Kitschelt and Wilkinson, Patrons, Clients, and Policies, 2.
36. Reuter and Gandhi, “Economic Performance and Elite Defection.”
37. Poterba, “Demographic Change.”
38. Jennings, “Residues of a Movement.”
39. Kitschelt and Wilkinson, Patrons, Clients, and Policies, 35.
40. Auyero, “The Logic of Clientelism”; Stokes, “Perverse Accountability.”
41. Kitschelt and Wilkinson, Patrons, Clients, and Policies, 2.
42. Carey and Hix, “The Electoral Sweet Spot.” See also Powell and Vanberg, “Election Laws.”
43. All explanatory variables are set to their mean values for reference (by “setx mean” command).
44. White, “Dominant Party Systems”; Wong et al., “Malaysia.”
45. Buğra and Candaş, “Change and Continuity under an Eclectic Social Security Regime,” 523.