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This article reviews the existing body of scholarship and draws on original qualitative research that compares the party organizations of four major Turkish parties. By doing so, it highlights the causal relationships -mediated by political agency– between socioeconomic structures and party politics. Clientelism remained part and parcel of Turkish party politics and state-society relations since the transition to multi-party system in mid-20th century through AKP governments. However, important changes occurred in terms of who effectively supplied it, how, and to whom on the basis of broader socioeconomic transformations of Turkey. Political parties did not equally or homologously adjust and respond to social change. The AKP’s successful organizational responses to socioeconomic transformations had important implications for Turkey’s political regime. In pre-AKP clientelism, the state and powerful local notables within parties were key to the supply and distribution of clientelistic benefits. We argue that this contributed to the emergence of electoral democracy under tutelage of military-bureaucratic state actors who faced weak resistance from a fragmented civilian political class. In turn, during AKP governments, the locus of patronage shifted from state to party and from local notables to the AKP party machine: national machine politics. This helped the party to pacify military-bureaucratic tutelage and achieve dominance in party politics, but, the lack of a categorically pro-democratic party ideology and the paradoxes of national machine politics together led the party to transform Turkey to an electoral autocracy instead of developing democracy. Further, the AKP reshaped the Turkish state, which on the surface began to look like a party-state. By revising and providing nuance to this observation, we discuss the emergence of a popular broker-state mediating between national and local state institutions and local communities through its control over resources. We maintain that all these changes facilitated also the party’s internal decay. This generates important opportunities for opposition parties, who however continue to rely heavily on pre-AKP forms of clientelistic politics. Without refashioning their party organizations and party-voter linkages, they may not be able to defeat the AKP electorally, and even if they are, they may not be able to secure successful democratization. They also face difficulties of altering how they form clientelistic linkages with society without controlling state resources at national level.

Supplemental material, Online_Appendix for Dynamics of Polarization in the Greek Case by Jennifer McCoy, Murat Somer, Ioannis Andreadis and Yannis Stavrakakis in The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science

Supplemental material, Online_Appendix for The Political Nature of Ideological Polarization: The Case of Hungary by Jennifer McCoy, Murat Somer and Federico Vegetti in The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science

""Pernicious polarization"" - the division of society into mutually distrustful Us versus Them camps in which political identity becomes a social identity - fosters autocratization by incentivizing citizens and political actors alike to endorse non-democratic action. An exploratory analysis of new V-Dem data on polarization indeed shows the negative relationship between the level of political polarization and liberal democracy ratings. How can pernicious polarization be avoided or reversed once present? By drawing on an endogenous explanation of polarization, where the decisions and actions of both opposition actors and incumbents contribute to its evolution, we focus on the question of what democratic opposition actors can do to stop or reverse pernicious polarization. Based on insights from examples across the world and deductive theory-building, along with illustrative cases, we offer a typology of potential opposition goals, strategies and tools, and then analyse how these may affect polarization and in turn democratic quality at early and late stages. We identify goals as either generative or preservative, and we argue that ""active-depolarizing"" and ""transformative-repolarizing"" strategies are more promising than ""passive-depolarizing"" and ""reciprocal polarizing"" strategies to improve a country's resilience to autocratizing pressures. The specific tools employed to pursue these goals and strategies are also crucial, though the effectiveness of available institutional accountability and mobilizational tools will change as the process of polarization advances. The emerging literatires on opposition strategies to democratize electoral autocracies and to improve the resilience of democracies should incorporate their impact on polarization as a critical intervening variable., Central European University Institute of Advanced Studies

Around the world, democracy is being undermined by elected leaders using polarizing political strategies that divide societies into mutually distrustful camps. The logic of polarization creates incentives for political leaders and voters alike to sacrifice democratic principles rather than risk their side losing power, and it changes the capacity of institutions designed to manage political conflict and sustain democracy. Drawing lessons from experiences around the world, we propose strategies for oppositions to depolarize or repolarize around democracy-building agendas. We further analyze the challenges of “the day after” polarizing incumbents are removed, and how strategic choices to emphasize long-term collective interests over short-term partisan interests can begin to shift the vicious cycle to a virtuous one., NA

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Ortadoğu çalışmaları, diğer bölge çalışmalarıyla aynı düzeyde ilerleyemiyor. Öne sürülen teoriler süratle Latin Amerika, Uzak Asya ve Doğu Avrupa'ya uyarlanıp uygulanırken, Ortadoğu çalışmaları istisnailikten mustarip. Bu tez, iki hedefi gerçekleştirmeyi amaçlıyor. Öncelikle bu çalışma, Ortadoğu'nun bütünleşmiş bir bölge olarak kabul edilebileceğini savunarak bölgeyi karşılaştırmalı ekonomipolitik genel tartışmalarına, özellikle karşılaştırmalı kapitalizmler literatürüne dâhil ediyor. Farklı kapitalizm ideal tiplerinin açıklama gücünü ve bunların Ortadoğu bağlamına uygulanabilirliklerini analiz ediyor. Bu analize göre, piyasa-dışı bir kapitalizm türü olarak patrimonyal kapitalizm Ortadoğu bağlamına genel olarak uyuyor. Patrimonyal kapitalizm, Sovyet bakiyesi ülkeler gibi başka alanlarda da gözlemlenen ve standart altı ekonomik performansa yol açan modern bir görüngü olduğu için; bu kavramsallaştırma Ortadoğu bölgesinin az gelişmişliğine dönük özcü/kültürcü teorilere karşı çıkılmasına yardımcı oluyor. 23 ülkenin kümeleme analizi ve dört ülkenin (Tunus, Katar, Rusya Federasyonu ve İran) karşılaştırmalı vaka analizi ile Ortadoğu'yu Sovyet bakiyesi ülkelerle karşılaştıran bu çalışma, patrimonyal kapitalizmin yekpare bir kavram olmadığını ve alt tiplerinin olduğunu savunuyor. Ortadoğu'nun bölgeler arası bir karşılaştırmayla bu literatüre dahil edilmesi, patrimonyal kapitalizme dair anlayışımızı güçlendiriyor. Ayrıca bu çalışma, Ortadoğu'da bölge-içi çeşitliliği de Ortadoğu ülkelerinin patrimonyal kapitalizmin farklı alt kategorilerine sınıflandırılmasıyla açıklıyor. Ortadoğu bölge çalışmalarında, rejim tipleri ve otoritarizm dereceleriyle bölge-içi çeşitliliği izah eden analizler hâkim konumdayken; bu tez, bölge çalışmalarına ve bölgedeki ekonomipolitik varyasyona dair anlayışımıza katkı sunuyor. Tez, özellikle petrol zengini rejimler arasındaki farklılaşmayı önemli kurumsal alanlar olan kurumsal finansman, endüstriyel ilişkiler ve düzenleyici çerçeveler üzerinden açıklıyor. Middle Eastern studies do not generally keep pace with other regional studies. While emerging theories are quickly adapted and applied to specific contexts in Latin America, East Asia, and Eastern Europe, Middle Eastern studies often suffer from exceptionalism. This thesis is aimed at accomplishing two goals. Firstly, it incorporates the Middle East as a region into general discussions concerning comparative political economy, specifically the literature of comparative capitalism, by outlining justifications for why the Middle East should be treated as an integrated region. It evaluates the explanatory power of different concepts or ideal types of capitalism and their applicability to the Middle Eastern context and maintains that patrimonial capitalism, which is a 'non-market type of capitalism', generally fits the Middle Eastern context well. Since patrimonial capitalism is a modern phenomenon which explains sub-optimal economic performance in other settings such as post-Soviet countries, this designation helps challenge culturalist and essentialist theories regarding the underdevelopment of the Middle East. By comparing the Middle Eastern context with post-Soviet countries through cluster analysis of 23 countries and using comparative case studies (Tunisia, Qatar, Russian Federation, and Iran), this thesis argues that patrimonial capitalism is not a monolithic concept and rather has its own sub-types. The incorporation of the Middle Eastern context into this literature via cross-regional analysis will thus enhance our understanding of patrimonial capitalism. Secondly, this thesis acknowledges the high degree of diversity across the region by classifying Middle Eastern countries into various subgroups of patrimonial capitalism. As Middle Eastern studies are currently dominated by analyses focusing on regime types and degrees of authoritarianism, this thesis will contribute to the regional studies and to our general comprehension of variations in political economies across the region by differentiating between oil-rich regimes along lines of vital institutional domains such as corporate financing, industrial relations, and regulatory frameworks. 168