Browsing by Subject "Domestic politics"

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Open Access
Election proximity and the effectiveness of economic sanctions
(Sage Publications Ltd., 2024-05-27) Zarplı, Ömer; Peksen, Dursun
Do elections matter for sanction effectiveness? Scholars have long highlighted the importance of domestic political factors in target (i.e. sanctioned) states in explaining when economic sanctions work. This line of research, however, has primarily focused on political regime characteristics and interest groups that are relatively low time-variant during sanction episodes. Building on this literature, we explore the effect of temporal proximity to elections. While the impact of elections have been examined in the context of military conflicts, their possible effects on sanction effectiveness have not been subject to systematic scrutiny. We argue that target governments are more likely to comply with sender demands as elections loom near in order to avoid the likely political costs of sanctions. The effect of elections, however, is likely to vary across different election characteristics and political regime types. We assess the empirical merits of our claims using data on over 1,000 sanction cases between 1950 and 2020. The results from a battery of empirical tests, including those that account for potential selection bias, support our hypotheses. We find that elections have a positive effect on sanction success, and this effect is more prominent in less democratic states that hold competitive elections. This suggests that even if sanctions have a relatively low success rate against non-democratic polities, elections may provide a window of opportunity for senders to extract concessions from target states.
Open Access
The July 15 failed coup attempt and its implications for Turkish foreign policy
(Ahmet Yesevi University, 2016) Usluer, Ayşe Sözen
In the aftermath of the July 15 coup attempt, Turkish foreign policy has once again become the subject of debate amongst political, academic and diplomatic circles, as well as media outlets. The discussions put forward questions on Turkey’s NATO membership, its relations with the EU, its trustworthiness in allying in the fight against ISIL in the region, and the likeliness of Turkey’s slide into new axis of alliance with Russia and Iran. Despite the speculative potential of these foreign policy questions, Turkish foreign policy inclinations and the country’s interactions with international institutions and individual nation states need to be revised after the July 15 coup attempt. This paper argues that that the recent domestic developments in Turkey, which actually started with a confrontation between the Gulenists and AK Party government over the control of state institutions and then resulted in the coup attempt, have certain implications for the country’s near foreign policy inclinations. New Turkish foreign policy, which can be traced back to the end of 2013, takes on the mantel of a more rational, operational and internationally-focused policymaker. Although rational and operational mode of action may signal neorealism in the new Turkish foreign policy, Turkey will continue its value-based reservations, especially in the making of international order.