The emergence of inter-state party cartelization?: comparative study of foreign policy behavior about the cases of keystone XL pipeline project between Canada and the U.S. and Kürecik radar base between the U.S. and Turkey

Political parties’ evolutionary trajectory starts from elite party to mass party, to catch-all party, and to cartel party (Katz and Mair, 1995: 18). Cartel party modeling envisions oligopoly of political parties that sustain market-economy oriented policies irrespective of the divisions among the left-right spectrum of the electorate. This thesis investigates presence/absence of inter-state party cartelization in the international relations of countries with cartel party system. The research inquires whether there will be increased cooperation among cartel parties of two states, if the policy question is market-based [and blended with (non-) traditional form of national security]. The analysis focuses on two case studies: Keystone XL pipeline project debate in the U.S. and Canada at the federal government level since 2008 and Turkish-American memorandum of understanding to host “the Army Navy Transportable Radar Surveillance System (AN/TPY-2)” (Kaya, 2011) on Turkey’s Malatya province’s Kürecik district in September 2011. The research integrates James N. Rosenau’s (1966) “pre-theories” framework with electoral and party systems literature from comparative politics and refers to the stream of democratic peace theory studies. This study employs the most different systems design along with chi-square statistics and Pearson’s r. Robert D. Putnam’s (1988) two-level game analysis is utilized as the foreign policy decision-making modeling. In the case of high politics (security issues) [Kürecik radar base], cartel party hypothesis’ projection into foreign policy decision-making process is statistically supported. As for low politics (welfare issues) [Keystone XL pipeline], cartel party hypothesis’ application into foreign policy decision-making process is not statistically validated.