Party (de)institutionalization in times of political uncertainty: The case of the Justice and Development Party in Turkey

Abstract

Recently many polities around the world as different as Hungary, Turkey, Venezuela, Thailand suffer from autocratization. This has led to a growing scholarly interest in the process of autocratization. Yet, despite this emerging generation of studies on democratic setbacks, we still do not know much about the changing nature of party politics in the process of autocratization. We argue, in this article, that during autocratization, the incumbent party follows the path of internal and external party deinstitutionalization in response to the changing nature and intensity of political uncertainties. Using the case of the Justice and Development Party in Turkey, we address three questions: (1) How can the concept of party de-institutionalization be revised and used to understand party transformation during autocratization? (2) What explains party deinstitutionalization in transitional contexts? (3) What is the relationship between party de-institutionalization and autocratization? In doing so, this article increases our understanding of party transformation in transitional contexts and more specifically incumbent party change in the process of autocratization by providing a causal theory of party deinstitutionalization.

Regime Consolidation Through Deinstitutionalisation: A Case Study of the 2019 Elections in Thailand

“…We follow a similar focus on the deinstitutionalisation of parties. However, while other studies have emphasised deinstitutionalisation as a process driven by leadership within parties (Yardımcı-Geyikçi and Yavuzyilmaz, 2022), we zero in on deinstitutionalisation pushed by autocratic forces.…”

“…7 Harmel et al (2018) focus on the processes of de-routinisation, decline in value infusion, and weakening of objective durability as aspects of deinstitutionalisation in Nordic right-wing parties. Similarly, in their study of Turkey's Justice and Development Party, Yardımcı-Geyikçi and Yavuzyilmaz (2022) emphasise de-routinisation and de-alignment, where voter attachment moves from party to individual, under conditions of uncertainty. We follow a similar focus on the deinstitutionalisation of parties.…”

“… 6. A recent paper Yardımcı-Geyikçi and Yavuzyilmaz (2022) defines de-institutionalisation “as the mirror image of the process of institutionalisation referring to a process of deterioration in the organisation features that enhance the stability of organisation and declining attachment of its core electorate to the party.”…”

Opposing Power

“…Kenya's Daniel arap Moi, for instance, was able to win the country's presidential elections in 1992 and 1997 with less than an outright majority of votes because the rest of the votes were split between at least three other major opposition candidates. The similar failure of Turkey's opposition parties to coordinate behind a single opposition candidate in the country's 2014 and 2018 presidential elections also strengthened the long-ruling Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (Çarkoğlu and Yildirim 2018;Selçuk and Hekimci 2020;Yardımcı-Geyikçi and Yavuzyilmaz 2020). Both times, their pre-electoral fracture allowed him to win with a majority of votes in the first round of elections, thereby avoiding a second-round runoff.…”

Religious Fundamentalism is Positively Associated with Feeling Privileged: Findings from a Representative Turkish Quota Sample

“…However, as many people oppose the course of the government, Turkey is now considered one of the most polarized societies around the world (Somer, 2019;Yardımcı-Geyikçi & Yavuzyilmaz, 2022) and political polarization, in turn, is a well-known contributing factor to radicalization (McCauley & Moskalenko, 2011;Porta & LaFree, 2012). Polarization shifts social norms to less openness and plurality, and consequentially, fundamentalism as well as related radical ideas become more and more acceptable to the majority (Wodak, 2015;Zick & Böckler, 2015).…”