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Kursat Cinar - OSU Dissertation.pdf (2.68 MB)

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The Rise of Hegemonic Party Rule: The Case of Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey

Cinar, Suleyman Kursat
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1429175431

Abstract Details

2015, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Political Science.
There are many long-lasting hegemonic parties throughout the world, which have ensured successive electoral victories with comfortable margins in semi-authoritarian, multi-party settings. The extant body of the literature on hegemonic parties focuses either on the survival or the demise of these regimes. Yet, how these parties establish their hegemonic status in the first place has caught scant attention. Aiming to address this literary gap, I provide a theory about the emergence of hegemonic parties in this dissertation. I argue that a combination of individual, local, and national level factors should come together for the rise of hegemonic parties. At the individual level, I explore the effect of ideology and clientelism in hegemony building. At the local level, I examine the role of pork barrel politics, locality-specific socio-cultural and political factors behind the emergence of hegemonic parties. At the national level, I delve into important issues in hegemony building, such as intra-party politics, electoral institutions, regime type, and government-opposition relations. I conduct research at these levels, thanks to a multi-method approach that incorporates a diverse set of techniques including, but not limited to, content analysis, elite-level interviews, statistical analyses, and surveys. In my theory of hegemony building, I take the case of Turkey under the rising hegemony of Justice and Development Party (AKP) rule as my main case study. Since its establishment, AKP has succeeded in winning all the national and local elections in Turkey with comfortable margins. AKP has also started to establish its governmental hegemony in recent years, as crystallized in the party’s multiple forays into the judiciary and efforts to shape the education system. AKP intends to build a “New Turkey”, unlike the secular state that the founders of the Turkish Republic, first and the foremost Mustafa Kemal Ataturk once envisioned, along with the party’s religious ideology imposed on all members of the society for years to come. This dissertation explores how the AKP has succeeded in building its hegemony through multiple means, thanks to its dense organizational network of party organization and ancillary organizations; promotion of its religious ideology and the polarization of secular-religious social cleavage in Turkey; the marginalization and subordination of the opposition in politics, media, and financial sectors; its partisan bias of the distribution of government resources both at the individual and local levels; and finally by the help of the disproportional electoral institutions. I then juxtapose the analysis of the AKP case in Turkey with other comparable cases of hegemony building. While specifically focusing on the cases of Azerbaijan, Malaysia, and Russia, I explore the institutional conditions and state-society relations behind the rise of hegemonic parties throughout the world. To this end, I incorporate the issues of electoral institutions, regime type, patronage, electoral strategies, and intimidation of the opposition during the establishment of hegemony in a comparative setting. I finally offer policy prescriptions for newly established, non-consolidated democracies in the world against the decay of democracy and the emergence of hegemonic parties. These include establishing an institutional framework that would prevent the tyranny of the majority by ensuring separation of powers and proper checks and balances and avoiding highly disproportional, majoritarian electoral institutions.
Anthony Mughan (Committee Chair)
Richard Gunther (Committee Member)
Jeremy Wallace (Committee Member)
255 p.
Political Science
hegemonic party; hegemony building; Turkey; Justice and Development Party; authoritarianism; decay of democracy; democratic consolidation

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Cinar, S. K. (2015). The Rise of Hegemonic Party Rule: The Case of Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1429175431

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Cinar, Suleyman Kursat. The Rise of Hegemonic Party Rule: The Case of Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey. 2015. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1429175431.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Cinar, Suleyman Kursat. "The Rise of Hegemonic Party Rule: The Case of Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2015. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1429175431

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1429175431
932
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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.