Murat Somer
Biographic Data
| ID | 325549 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Murat Somer |
| GIVEN NAMES | Murat |
| FAMILY NAME | Somer |
| SIGNATURE | SOMER M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Koç University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1053-3751 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 28 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 828 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 28 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2001 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 14 |
Pathways of Democratic Backsliding, Resistance, and (Partial) Recoveries
We provide an analytical framework that identifies three distinct institutional pathways for democratic backsliding that culminate in executive aggrandizement: legislative capture, plebiscitary override, and executive power grabs. We also identify a fourth pathway of elite collusion that erodes democracy without necessarily concentrating powers in the executive. These four pathways reflect different combinations of ruling and opposition party str…
A Long Battle
Since 2002, governments led by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his party have taken Turkey's political regime from electoral democracy to electoral autocracy. This has been principally accomplished through legislative capture: control, abuse, and weaponization of Parliament to pass democracy-eroding laws, discredit opposition, and legitimize executive authoritarianism. But other tools, such as executive power grabs, were also used against strong state i…
Politics of Notables versus National Machine
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 ce…
Overcoming Polarization
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 exp…
Pernicious polarization, autocratization and opposition strategies
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 perni…
Turkey
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 …
Transformations through Polarizations and Global Threats to Democracy
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 anal…
Toward a Theory of Pernicious Polarization and How It Harms Democracies
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 attributabl…
Déjà vu? Polarization and Endangered Democracies in the 21st Century
As political and societal polarization deepens, democracies are under stress around the world. This article examines the complex relationship and causal direction between democracy and polarization and posits three theoretical possibilities: (1) polarization contributes to democratic backsliding and decay, (2) polarization results from democratic crisis, and (3) polarization contributes to democratic deepening. We argue "politics" is central to p…
Polarization and the Global Crisis of Democracy
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 poli…
Conquering versus democratizing the state
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…
Understanding Turkey’s democratic breakdown
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 reproduction of Turkey’s long-existing semi-democratic regime – which the article calls old authoritarianism – in a new historical and dominant political–ideological context and under an Islamist-leaning government. The second is the emergence of a new type …
Is Islam the Solution? Comparing Turkish Islamic and Secular Thinking toward Ethnic and Religious Minorities
Can Islamic political actors manage ethnic diversity better than secular political actors? From Muslim Brothers to ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria), Islamists with very different orientations have long claimed that they can “absorb and resolve ethnic conflicts on the basis of Muslim unity and brotherhood.”1 In short, they assert that “Islam is the solution.” At first sight validating these claims, Turkey's ruling pro-Islamic Justice and Dev…
Theory-consuming or Theory-producing
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-dev…
Moderation of religious and secular politics, a country's “centre” and democratization
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" – …
Is Turkish Secularism Antireligious, Reformist, Separationist, Integrationist, or Simply Undemocratic
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 …
Does It Take Democrats to Democratize? Lessons From Islamic and Secular Elite Values in Turkey
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 t…
Media Values and Democratization
This article presents a systematic content analysis of three religious‐conservative 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…
T urkey's N ew K urdish O pening
Why Aren't Kurds Like the Scots and the Turks Like the Brits
By modelling and analysing Turkey's Kurdish question in light of democratic transition theories, the Scottish Case and recent developments, this article explains the lack of cooperation between the `moderate' Turkish majority and Kurdish actors pursuing peace and European Union membership. It analyses whether there may be more cooperation in the near future and discusses implications for theories of political moderation. A `most different case', …
Moderate Islam and secularist opposition in Turkey
Developing an argument based in theories of democratic consolidation 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 democracies may…
Failures of the Discourse of Ethnicity
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 ar…
Defensive- vs. Liberal-Nationalist Perspectives on Diversity and the Kurdish Conflict
The main goal of this article is to highlight the importance and implications of a debate that is ongoing in Turkey over the meaning, social-political role, and regulation of Turkey's ethnic-cultural diversity, especially that of its Kurdish component. By itself, this debate can neither bring about any significant change in the political realm nor have a major influence on the “mainstream” Turkish social-political discourse. Despite significant c…
Resurgence and Remaking of Identity
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 empir…
Turkey's Kurdish Conflict
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' so…
Polarization and the Global Crisis of Democracy
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 poli…
Toward a Theory of Pernicious Polarization and How It Harms Democracies
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 attributabl…
Pernicious polarization, autocratization and opposition strategies
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 perni…
Turkey
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 …
Déjà vu? Polarization and Endangered Democracies in the 21st Century
As political and societal polarization deepens, democracies are under stress around the world. This article examines the complex relationship and causal direction between democracy and polarization and posits three theoretical possibilities: (1) polarization contributes to democratic backsliding and decay, (2) polarization results from democratic crisis, and (3) polarization contributes to democratic deepening. We argue "politics" is central to p…
Conquering versus democratizing the state
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…
Overcoming Polarization
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 exp…
Moderation of religious and secular politics, a country's “centre” and democratization
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" – …
Transformations through Polarizations and Global Threats to Democracy
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 anal…
Moderate Islam and secularist opposition in Turkey
Developing an argument based in theories of democratic consolidation 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 democracies may…
Cascades of Ethnic Polarization
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…
Resurgence and Remaking of Identity
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 empir…
Turkey's Kurdish Conflict
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' so…
Does It Take Democrats to Democratize? Lessons From Islamic and Secular Elite Values in Turkey
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 t…
T urkey's N ew K urdish O pening
Media Values and Democratization
This article presents a systematic content analysis of three religious‐conservative 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…
Pathways of Democratic Backsliding, Resistance, and (Partial) Recoveries
We provide an analytical framework that identifies three distinct institutional pathways for democratic backsliding that culminate in executive aggrandizement: legislative capture, plebiscitary override, and executive power grabs. We also identify a fourth pathway of elite collusion that erodes democracy without necessarily concentrating powers in the executive. These four pathways reflect different combinations of ruling and opposition party str…
Is Islam the Solution? Comparing Turkish Islamic and Secular Thinking toward Ethnic and Religious Minorities
Can Islamic political actors manage ethnic diversity better than secular political actors? From Muslim Brothers to ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria), Islamists with very different orientations have long claimed that they can “absorb and resolve ethnic conflicts on the basis of Muslim unity and brotherhood.”1 In short, they assert that “Islam is the solution.” At first sight validating these claims, Turkey's ruling pro-Islamic Justice and Dev…
Why Aren't Kurds Like the Scots and the Turks Like the Brits
By modelling and analysing Turkey's Kurdish question in light of democratic transition theories, the Scottish Case and recent developments, this article explains the lack of cooperation between the `moderate' Turkish majority and Kurdish actors pursuing peace and European Union membership. It analyses whether there may be more cooperation in the near future and discusses implications for theories of political moderation. A `most different case', …
Failures of the Discourse of Ethnicity
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 ar…
Defensive- vs. Liberal-Nationalist Perspectives on Diversity and the Kurdish Conflict
The main goal of this article is to highlight the importance and implications of a debate that is ongoing in Turkey over the meaning, social-political role, and regulation of Turkey's ethnic-cultural diversity, especially that of its Kurdish component. By itself, this debate can neither bring about any significant change in the political realm nor have a major influence on the “mainstream” Turkish social-political discourse. Despite significant c…
Is Turkish Secularism Antireligious, Reformist, Separationist, Integrationist, or Simply Undemocratic
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 …
A Long Battle
Since 2002, governments led by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his party have taken Turkey's political regime from electoral democracy to electoral autocracy. This has been principally accomplished through legislative capture: control, abuse, and weaponization of Parliament to pass democracy-eroding laws, discredit opposition, and legitimize executive authoritarianism. But other tools, such as executive power grabs, were also used against strong state i…
Theory-consuming or Theory-producing
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-dev…
Ethnic Kurds, Endogenous Identities, and Turkey's Democratization and Integration with Europe
Cascades of Ethnic Polarization
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…
Path to Collective Madness
Ethnic Kurds, Endogenous Identities, and Turkey's Democratization and Integration with Europe
Turkey's Kurdish Conflict
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' so…
Failures of the Discourse of Ethnicity
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 ar…
Defensive- vs. Liberal-Nationalist Perspectives on Diversity and the Kurdish Conflict
The main goal of this article is to highlight the importance and implications of a debate that is ongoing in Turkey over the meaning, social-political role, and regulation of Turkey's ethnic-cultural diversity, especially that of its Kurdish component. By itself, this debate can neither bring about any significant change in the political realm nor have a major influence on the “mainstream” Turkish social-political discourse. Despite significant c…
Resurgence and Remaking of Identity
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 empir…
Moderate Islam and secularist opposition in Turkey
Developing an argument based in theories of democratic consolidation 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 democracies may…
Why Aren't Kurds Like the Scots and the Turks Like the Brits
By modelling and analysing Turkey's Kurdish question in light of democratic transition theories, the Scottish Case and recent developments, this article explains the lack of cooperation between the `moderate' Turkish majority and Kurdish actors pursuing peace and European Union membership. It analyses whether there may be more cooperation in the near future and discusses implications for theories of political moderation. A `most different case', …
Media Values and Democratization
This article presents a systematic content analysis of three religious‐conservative 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…
T urkey's N ew K urdish O pening
Does It Take Democrats to Democratize? Lessons From Islamic and Secular Elite Values in Turkey
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 t…
Is Turkish Secularism Antireligious, Reformist, Separationist, Integrationist, or Simply Undemocratic
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 …
Theory-consuming or Theory-producing
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-dev…
Moderation of religious and secular politics, a country's “centre” and democratization
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" – …
Understanding Turkey’s democratic breakdown
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 reproduction of Turkey’s long-existing semi-democratic regime – which the article calls old authoritarianism – in a new historical and dominant political–ideological context and under an Islamist-leaning government. The second is the emergence of a new type …
Is Islam the Solution? Comparing Turkish Islamic and Secular Thinking toward Ethnic and Religious Minorities
Can Islamic political actors manage ethnic diversity better than secular political actors? From Muslim Brothers to ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria), Islamists with very different orientations have long claimed that they can “absorb and resolve ethnic conflicts on the basis of Muslim unity and brotherhood.”1 In short, they assert that “Islam is the solution.” At first sight validating these claims, Turkey's ruling pro-Islamic Justice and Dev…
Conquering versus democratizing the state
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…
Déjà vu? Polarization and Endangered Democracies in the 21st Century
As political and societal polarization deepens, democracies are under stress around the world. This article examines the complex relationship and causal direction between democracy and polarization and posits three theoretical possibilities: (1) polarization contributes to democratic backsliding and decay, (2) polarization results from democratic crisis, and (3) polarization contributes to democratic deepening. We argue "politics" is central to p…
Polarization and the Global Crisis of Democracy
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 poli…
Turkey
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 …
Transformations through Polarizations and Global Threats to Democracy
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 anal…
Toward a Theory of Pernicious Polarization and How It Harms Democracies
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 attributabl…
Overcoming Polarization
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 exp…
Pernicious polarization, autocratization and opposition strategies
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 perni…
Law (25 works) · Political science (25 works) · Politics (23 works) · Sociology (23 works) · Political economy (22 works) · Political Conflict and Governance (21 works) · Democracy (19 works) · Turkey's Politics and Society (19 works) · Law (14 works) · Economics (11 works)