Browsing by Subject "Clientelism"
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Item Open Access A comparative analysis of clientelism in Greece, Spain, and Turkey: the rural–urban divide(Routledge, 2016) Cinar, K.This article examines the evolution of patron–client relationships in Greece, Spain, and Turkey through the prism of the rural–urban divide. It traces which modes of clientelism (rural or urban) are more evident in these countries today, and why. Further, it finds that in rural modes of clientelism, normative bonds of deference and loyalty with a Weberian notion of ‘traditional authority’ and affective ties between political patrons and clients are more observable whereas urban modes of clientelism usually yield Downsian competition between political machines with more coercive motives. It suggests that these two notions of clientelism are not mutually exclusive but should rather be seen in a continuum. More generally, this article demonstrates the need in the existing literature for more contextualized analyses that take into account differences between socioeconomic and geographical antecedents of rural vs. urban clientelism and their divergent political reflections. © 2015 Taylor & Francis.Item Open Access Why did Turkish democracy collapse? A political economy account of AKP’s authoritarianism(SAGE Publications, 2021) Esen, Berk; Gümüşcü, Ş.After decades of multiparty politics, Turkey is no longer a democracy. A theory-upending case, the country has descended into a competitive authoritarian regime under the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi—AKP), despite rising income and education levels and strong links with the West. What accounts for democratic breakdown in such an unlikely case? Instead of ideological and institutional factors, we offer a political economy account. We contend that the coalitional ties that the AKP forged with businesses and the urban poor through the distribution of public resources has altered the cost of toleration for the party leadership and their dependent clients, while reducing the cost of suppression for incumbents. This new political calculus led to increasing authoritarianism of the AKP government through securitization of dissent, mounting repression, and systematic violation of civil liberties.