When do workers support executive aggrandizement? Lessons from the recent Turkish experience

Abstract

Following the 2017 constitutional referendum under the Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi (Justice and Development Party‐AKP) rule in Turkey, the reforms granted judicial and legislative powers to the head of the executive under a presidential system. Initial observations reveal that some blue‐collar workers who are members of a historically progressive union have also supported these reforms. This is surprising because the union leadership has publicly opposed these changes. What explains this discrepancy? Why did some of these workers support reforms in favour of a powerful executive? Based on a sample from a major metalworking union, this paper finds that partisan identity moderates support for AKP's push for challenging the separation of powers. Although we find that higher amount of debt may reduce worker support for stronger executive, this is conditional on the metal workers' pre‐existing partisan commitments. Under these circumstances, highly indebted partisan workers do not diverge from the party line. These results also raise further questions for students of labour and regime change elsewhere in the developing world.