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The recent global wave of autocratization is characterized by the incremental subversion of democracy from within by elected governments (democratic erosion). This article explains why democratic erosion is hard to reverse for opposition actors, even though it develops incrementally and often by using formally legal and democratic means. Complex causal mechanisms triggered by what we call regime uncertainty create specific dilemmas dividing opposition actors at elite and mass levels into alarmists, strategic alarmists, and cautioners. The resolution of these dilemmas takes time, learning, and creativity and there is no one-size-fits-all formula: our case studies from Venezuela and Turkey show that opposition actors often experiment and oscillate between normal and extraordinary countering strategies and between preservative and generative political goals. We also offer a preliminary discussion of how opposition actors may manage to address the dilemmas and successfully counter democratic erosion.

This article compares the dynamics of polarization in the eleven case studies analyzed in this special issue to draw conclusions about antecedents of severe political and societal polarization, the characteristics and mechanisms of such polarization, and consequences of severe polarization for democracy. We find that the emergence of pernicious polarization (when a society is split into mutually distrustful “Us vs. Them” camps) is not attributable to any specific underlying social or political cleavage nor any particular institutional make-up. Instead, pernicious polarization arises when political entrepreneurs pursue their political objectives by using polarizing strategies, such as mobilizing voters with divisive, demonizing discourse and exploiting existing grievances, and opposing political elites then reciprocate with similarly polarizing tactics or fail to develop effective nonpolarizing responses. We explain how the political construction of polarization around “formative rifts” (social or political rifts that arise during the fundamental formation/reformation of a nation-state), the relative capacity of opposing political blocs to mobilize voters versus relying on mechanisms such as courts or the military to constrain the executive, and the strategic and ideological aims of the polarizing actors contribute to the emergence of its pernicious form. We analyze the consequences for democracy and conclude with reflections on how to combat pernicious polarization.

Under the Justice and Development Party AKP and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey has become one of the most polarized countries in the world, and has undergone a significant democratic breakdown. This article explains how polarization and democratic breakdown happened, arguing that it was based on the built-in, perverse dynamics of an “authoritarian spiral of polarizing-cum-transformative politics.” Furthermore, I identify ten causal mechanisms that have produced pernicious polarization and democratic erosion. Turkey’s transformation since 2002 is an example of the broader phenomenon of democratic erosion under new elites and dominant groups. The causes and consequences of pernicious polarization are analyzed in terms of four subperiods: 2002–2006, 2007, 2008–2013, and 2014–present. In the end, what began as a potentially reformist politics of polarization-cum-transformation morphed into an autocratic-revolutionary one. During this process, polarization and AKP policies; the politicization of formative rifts that had been a divisive undercurrent since nation-state formation; structural transformations; and the opposition’s organizational, programmatic, and personal shortcomings fed and reinforced each other.

This volume collects and analyzes eleven country case studies of polarized polities that are, or had been, electoral democracies, identifying the common and differing causal mechanisms that lead to different outcomes for democracy when a society experiences polarization. In this introduction, we discuss our goals for the volume, the comparative logic we apply to the cases, our overall methodological approach, and the concepts that ground the analyses. The goal of this volume is to explore pernicious polarization, i.e., when and how a society divides into mutually distrustful “us vs. them” blocs, which endangers democracy. Accordingly, we discuss the effects of such polarization on democracies, and start building a foundation for remedies. In this introductory article, we highlight and explain the inherently political and relational aspects of polarization in general and pernicious polarization in particular, present the concept of formative rifts, and discuss how opposition strategies should be part of an explanation of severe polarization.

""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

This chapter identifies two conceptual distinctions to differentiate Turkey’s current polarization-cum-autocratization from earlier episodes of polarization and to explain how polarization undermines Turkey’s democratization. First, one needs to adopt a “political and relational” definition of polarization. Second, one must distinguish between exclusionary and inclusionary polarizations. Episodes of polarization are started by actors who re-bundle preexisting societal rifts and generate new ones to pursue political goals. But polarization becomes “pernicious,” i.e. begins to erode democracy, “relationally,” i.e. through the actions of these polarizing agents and the reactions of their opponents. In Turkey, exclusionary polarizations were instigated by nationalist elites to exclude various minorities, producing an outright undemocratic legacy. By comparison, inclusionary polarizations had democratizing potential because they were started by political entrepreneurs who pursued popular mobilizations and promised inclusive benefits to disadvantaged groups. Democratization failed in these cases due to shortcomings of intra-elite politics. Three differences distinguish the current polarization from earlier episodes. First, the current polarization, which also started as inclusionary, resulted from the AKP’s relative mass-party characteristics and anti-regime core identity. The latter factors drove the AKP to pursue more “revolutionary” policies and heightened existential threat perception among opponents. Second, the AKP’s ability to subdue authoritarian state institutions that had suppressed earlier polarizations, led to longer-lasting polarization. Consequently, polarization produced deeper social divisions and more severe democratic backsliding than earlier episodes had. Paradoxically, the cure for current polarization-cum-authoritarianism may be found in new polarizations led by democratic-reformist elite coalitions and programs.

This article argues that a common pattern and set of dynamics characterizes severe political and societal polarization in different contexts around the world, with pernicious consequences for democracy. Moving beyond the conventional conceptualization of polarization as ideological distance between political parties and candidates, we offer a conceptualization of polarization highlighting its inherently relational nature and its instrumental political use. Polarization is a process whereby the normal multiplicity of differences in a society increasingly align along a single dimension and people increasingly perceive and describe politics and society in terms of “Us” versus “Them.” The politics and discourse of opposition and the social–psychological intergroup conflict dynamics produced by this alignment are a main source of the risks polarization generates for democracy, although we recognize that it can also produce opportunities for democracy. We argue that contemporary examples of polarization follow a frequent pattern whereby polarization is activated when major groups in society mobilize politically to achieve fundamental changes in structures, institutions, and power relations. Hence, newly constructed cleavages are appearing that underlie polarization and are not easily measured with the conventional Left–Right ideological scale. We identify three possible negative outcomes for democracy—“gridlock and careening,” “democratic erosion or collapse under new elites and dominant groups,” and “democratic erosion or collapse with old elites and dominant groups,” and one possible positive outcome—“reformed democracy.” Drawing on literature in psychology and political science, the article posits a set of causal mechanisms linking polarization to harm to democracy and illustrates the common patterns and pernicious consequences for democracy in four country cases: varying warning signs of democratic erosion in Hungary and the United States, and growing authoritarianism in Turkey and Venezuela.

What do we learn from Turkey and Tunisia regarding the relationship between political Islamism and democratization? Variables identified by current research such as autonomy, “moderation”, and cooperation with secular actors can cut both ways depending on various political-institutional conditions and prerogatives. Particularly, the article argues that preoccupation with “conquering the state from within as opposed to democratizing it” has been a key priority and intervening variable undermining the democratizing potential of the main Turkish and Tunisian political Islamic actors – primarily the AKP and Ennahda. These actors have prioritized acceptance by and ownership of their respective nation states over other goals and strategies, such as revolutionary takeover or Islamization of the state and confrontations with state elites. This has led to a relative neglect of designing and building institutions, whether for Islamic or democratic transformation. Hence, while contributing to democratization...

Turkey’s ‘authoritarian turn’ in recent years indicates a democratic breakdown that can best be analysed by analytically distinguishing between two simultaneous developments. The first is the repro...

Case studies of Turkey are typically read and cited as narratives of the Turkish case itself, suppliers of case-specific data, or at best, applications of more general theories. They are not perceived as theory-testing, producing, or even informing exercises. While this tendency partly results from the institutional, geographical–cultural, and methodological biases of extant social sciences, scholars may also be to blame for neglecting theory-development or for producing descriptive narratives. How can Turkish Studies scholars successfully contribute to general theory-development in their respective disciplines? The main value of Turkey for producing theory may lie in its rare combination of many qualities and in its temporal and regional variations. Thus, this article argues that, besides small-N and large-N comparative studies, the most promising way Turkish Studies can engage in theory-building may be by examining Turkey as a theory-developing critical case, i.e. as a crucial or, pathway or wit...

Turkey often presents itself, and is often hailed by its allies, as being a positive example of secular democracy for Muslim countries to emulate.1Scholars analyze the country as a relatively successful case of secular modernization and state-building in a postimperial, Muslim-majority society. At the same time, Turkish state-dominated secularism (laiklik) has long been criticized as an undemocratic or even unsecular model. But critical accounts often make mutually exclusive and contradictory assertions regarding the nature of Turkish secularism. The question is: What exactly went awry with laiklik?

Based on a within-case comparative analysis of Turkish democratization since the 1920s and data on elite values, this article develops a general theoretical framework to better explain the moderation of religious and secular politics and democratization. First, it is maintained that the content of moderation and its effects on democracy will vary across countries depending on its domestic and international context – called a country's “centre” – and political rivals’ reactions. Second, moderation can further democratization only insofar as it happens with a democratic centre. Third, absent a democratic centre, moderation may involve adoption, retention and reproduction of the centre's undemocratic attributes. In such cases, the challenge of democratization is not moderation per se but the construction of a new, democratic centre by transcending the existing centre. Fourth, moderation is interactive between religious and secular actors, multidimensional and reversible. Turkish democratization began with th...

Do political-Islamic elites need to be democrats for participation in democracy, how do their values compare to secular elites’, and how do their values change through participation and affect democratization itself? A comparative-systematic content analysis of three Islamic-conservative and two pro-secular Turkish newspapers over nine years shows that, overall, political-Islamic elites adopt democratic political values. Furthermore, they began to view that liberal-democratic rights and freedoms serve their interests. However, value democratization, and, thus, moderation and democratization, is not a linear and inexorable process automatically resulting from participation or socioeconomic development. It occurs through ruptures such as conflicts with secular actors, and interdependently through the interactions of secular and religious actors. Hence, religious actors’ adoption of more democracy may paradoxically make some secular actors less democratic. The consolidation of pluralistic democracy requires the emergence of both religious and secular democrats by resolving complex problems of commitment, and of clashes in areas like social pluralism where Islamic values are less open to change.

This article presents a systematic content analysis of three religious-conserva- tive and two pro-secular newspapers in 1996-2004 in Turkey, and discusses some findings and their implications regarding elite values and democratization: considerable internal pluralism within both religious-conservative and pro-secular elites; general consensus on democracy but not on democratic norms' application to specific issues and groups other than one's own; a division of values on religion, secularism, and social pluralism; Political value change in favor of liberal democracy but social conservatism among religious-conservative elites; fragmentation and relative cynicism, but not necessarily authoritarianism, among pro- secular elites; weak ideational change on the Kurdish issue. The article argues that the press plays a significant political role as a site where elite values change or are reproduced through discussion, deliberation, or silence. Values affect and are affected by political developments.

Developing an argument based in theories of democratic consolida- tion and religious competition, and discussing the reasons for the secularist opposition to the government, this article analyses how government by a party rooted in moderate Islamism may affect Turkey's peculiar secular democracy, development and external relations and how Muslims in the world relate to modernization and democracy. Arguing that secularism in advanced democ- racies may be a product of democracy as much as it is the other way around, the article maintains that democratic consolidation may secure further consolida- tion of Turkish secularism and sustainable moderation of Turkish political Islam. Besides democratic Islamic - conservative actors and other factors, democratic consolidation requires strong democratic - secularist political parties so that secularist and moderate Islamist civilian actors check and balance each other. Otherwise, middle class value divisions and mistrust in areas like education and social regulation may jeopardise democratisation and economic modernisation and continuing reconciliation of Islamism with secular democracy and modernity. The main goal of this article is to examine what the current divisions in Turkey over political Islam may imply for the way we envision the relation- ships between religion, Islam and modernisation, especially the relationship between democratic consolidation and secularism. Following its landslide electoral victory in July 2007, Turkey's governing AKP (Justice and Development Party), a party rooted in Islamism, has been solidified as a leading political actor and given a historical opportunity to reshape Turkey's social and political mainstream. How will this affect Turkey's modernisation, secular democracy and external relations, and what

This article analyzes the case of Turkey and theorizes about the causal mechanisms that can explain discursive transformations through which dominant perceptions of ethnic identities are suppressed, revived, and remade. Systematic content analysis of a major Turkish newspaper from 1984 through 1998, comparisons across subperiods, in-depth interviews with prominent journalists, and detailed examination of the historical events constitute the empirical analysis. Arguing that the state elites did not form a monolithic group, it is shown that the transformation of the mainstream discourse during the 1990s occurred after several reversals, relatively swiftly, and at least partly despite resistance from with in the state. The Kurdistan Worker’s Party conflict; shifting instrumental elite beliefs; breakdown of cooperation among moderates; external developments, including those in Iraq; and cascade mechanisms played causal roles. The explanation contributes to a multidisciplinary body of literatures on public-political discourse, cascade theories of social-political change, ethnic conflict, democratization, Turkey, and Kurds and derives policy implications.

This article analyzes the discursive-ideational barriers restricting regional cooperation by examining Turkey's relations with Iraqi Kurds from a critical, theoretical perspective in the context of Turkey's domestic reforms and its relations with the USA and the EU. It is argued that the ethnicity discourse undermines cooperation, insofar as it feeds the perception of rival groups with zero-sum interests. Presenting a simple model, the article argues that replacing the ethnicity discourse with alternative, post-ethnic discourses requires combining alternative discourses with policies that produce positive-sum interests, coordination between groups, and opportunities for joint collective actions. Hence, state capacity to formulate and implement such policies is crucial. Predictions and policy implications are generated accordingly. First, further reconciliation of Turkey's domestic Kurdish conflict through democratic and administrative reforms, EU integration, and the promotion of national-identity models that are more flexible and more reflective of diversity will facilitate cooperation with Iraqi Kurds. Second, prosperity and democratic stability in Iraq will help achieve a lasting resolution in Turkey. Third, regional cooperation requires that domestic and external actors promote the positive-sum perception of Turkish and Kurdish interests. Fourth, research can help by developing linguistic-analytical categories that transcend the narrow discourse of ethnicity in favor of discourses that reflect multiple and compatible group belongings., NA

This article develops new analytical categories that are necessary to analyze Turkey's Kurdish conflict in its changed domestic and international environments and to evaluate the policy options. If Turkish state policies and discourse, and that of the other regional and international actors, signal to Kurds that the Turkish and Kurdish identities are mutually exclusive categories with rival interests, radical shifts may occur in Turkish Kurds' social and political identities and preferences. If state policies promote these identities as complements with compatible interests, radical shifts are unlikely and Turkey can play a more constructive regional role. During the 1990s, Turkey witnessed the rising consciousness and politicization of the Kurdish identity, the surging visibility of the Kurdish category within the mainstream public-political discourse, and the ascent of Turkish nationalism that viewed the Kurdish rebel movement, the Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK), and Kurdish nationalism in general, as the major antagonists.1 After Ocalan, the PKK's leader, was captured in 1999, the diminishing threat to state security by Kurdish separatism and the pull of the EU in a context of democratization further changed the domestic environment of Turkey's Kurdish conflict.2 The PKK renamed itself the Kurdistan Freedom and Democracy Congress (KADEK), and armed clashes between the state forces and Kurdish rebels, which had continued since 1984 except for brief intervals, practically ceased.3 From 1998 to 2002, the percentage of Turkish citizens who viewed "terror and security" as the greatest threats to the country dropped from 39.3 to 5.5%.4 For the first time since the PKK revolt began in 1984, dynamics other than violence and considerations other than state security got a chance to play a significant role in determining the parameters of the conflict. The Parliament passed a series of laws granting significant cultural-linguistic rights to ethnic Kurds, such as broadcasting in and teaching Kurdish. These rights, whose implementation has so far been slow, were modest by world standards and fell short of politically conscious ethnic Kurds' expectations for change. Nevertheless, they were unprecedented steps forward for Turkey in the direction of the normalization of the Kurdish conflict via demilitarization and liberal democracy. In 2003, the US-led war in Iraq and the ensuing uncertainties in that country drastically altered the external environment of the conflict. Iraqi Kurds represented by the KDP (Kurdistan Democratic Party) and PUK (Patriotic Union of Kurdistan) emerged as major US-allies and actors, while groups such as the PKK and Ansar alIslam, which the US government viewed as terrorists, remained active in the region. Northern Iraq borders Turkey's predominantly ethnic Kurdish Southeast. The possibilities of anti-Turkish or irredentist statehood for Kurds and of rising PKK activity in Northern Iraq refueled Turkish policy-makers' security concerns. New clashes occurred between the PKK fighters and the Turkish security forces inside Turkey; DEHAP, the Turkish-Kurdish party widely seen to be the PKK's political arm, organized mass protests that demanded, among other things, Ocalan's release.5 These circumstances increase the risk of renewed armed conflict between Turkey and the Kurdish nationalists. Such a conflict would strain Turkey's efforts to resolve its domestic Kurdish conflict through democratization and to build cooperative relations with Iraqi Kurds. These political and security risks have long been understood and expressed.6 Less understood are the ramifications for, first, the self-conceptions and political beliefs of large portions of Turkish Kurds, and, second, the mainstream Turkish society's perception of Kurds. These are certainly being affected, and will continue to be reshaped, by the developments in this new era, and will bear important implications for Turkey's domestic and external politics. …

By building upon cascades literature, the author offers an explanation for rapid and massive polarization and applies it to the former Yugoslavia. The dominant images of ethnic categories in society change through cascades of individual reactions triggered by traumatic events, ideological shifts, or the activities of ethnic entrepreneurs. Polarization becomes self-propagating if the protagonists of a certain image of ethnic identities, called the divisive image, appear to have reached a critical mass. Downward ethnic preference falsification, people's concealment of their support for the divisive image in public, increases the severity of polarization. The article argues that downward falsification was significant in Yugoslavia before the 1980s due to policies that suppressed the public expression of the divisive image but insufficiently encouraged its elimination in private. In the 1980s, polarization reversed this trend and led to widespread upward ethnic preference falsification, the exaggeration of the support for the divisive image in public.

In this chapter, we aim to put forward and discuss two broad arguments. First, the questions of “new Muslim pluralism”—to be described shortly—in EU countries and Turkey are analytically and politically inter- related in important ways and viewing them as such may help to better address these questions. Second, in both cases, the better way to address this new pluralism seems to be social and political inclusion rooted in the merits of secular and pluralistic democracies with well-developed checks and balances. It is not social and political exclusion rooted in the twin preconceptions that Islam is essentially different from other religions and Islamism is a monolithic and unchanging ideology. Thus, both political institutions and social and political perceptions seem to matter greatly in addressing these questions democratically.

This chapter contrasts the evolution of secular models in two post-Ottoman Muslim- majority countries in Europe – Turkey and Albania. Both countries, and their respective secular models, have historically developed under the heavy influence of European ideals. Their secular arrangements, established especially during their founding moments in the early twentieth century, reflected these new states' engagement with modern European concepts such as nation- and statebuilding, central-state authority, and rational differentiation between state and religion. They also reflected the urge the builders of these new states felt to secure their identities as European states by downplaying and controlling the contested role of Islam in a lukewarm, and predominantly Christian, European geopolitical context. Furthermore, secular arrangements in these countries were affected by their peculiar social-demographic, ideational and historical-institutional settings.What kind of secular models did Turkey and Albania develop under the influence of Europe? How do these models relate to European secular ideals? What are the institutional devices to discipline and manage the role of Islam? And how have Islamic actors operated within these models – adapted to, contested but also benefited from existing institutional frameworks?