Cihan Tuğal
Biographic Data
| ID | 77465 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Cihan Tuğal |
| GIVEN NAMES | Cihan |
| FAMILY NAME | Tuğal |
| SIGNATURE | TUĞAL C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Berkeley |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2794-4488 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 40 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 280 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 39 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
Passive revolution
The articles in this volume show that “passive revolution” is a type of social transformation distinct from other paths. In countries ranging from Mexico and South Africa to Trinidad and Tobago and Iran, revolution was thoroughly integrated with restoration. This happened through absorbing the cadres, policies, and language of radical challengers into existing structures of domination. The authors do not entirely align on how this process is link…
Populism, Emotions, and Boundary Work Among Political Activists in the Trump Era
How do emotions shape boundary work among populists and anti-populists? Based on 52 in-depth interviews, we analyze how political activists construct their positions through “emotive contestation.” Much of the existing literature emphasizes the negative feelings of populists, ignores the centrality of emotions in anti-populism, and handles emotions and rationality as mutually exclusive. Without denying the centrality of fear and resentment to som…
Of Elephants and Scholars
Democratic Autocracy
What are the social dynamics behind the rise and resilience of today’s authoritarian regimes? This paper seeks to answer this question by focusing on the longest lasting elected autocracy of our era, the AKP (Justice and Development Party) regime in Turkey. Building on the authoritarian neoliberalism literature’s criticism of the scholarship on competitive authoritarianism, I point out the seeds of authoritarianism in the pro-market reforms of th…
South Africa's passive revolution and informal working-class politics in a global context
Three Routes to Autocratic Rule
How do the economy, right-wing legacies, and personal style shape today’s autocracies? Analysts have commented that especially three contemporary autocrats—Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Narendra Modi, and Rodrigo Duterte—have similar styles, motivations, or bases of support. Yet, this paper will show that the paths that took them to their thrones are quite distinct. Neoliberalization had disorganized society in Turkey, India, and the Philippines. The rul…
After Populism
Dialectics of Revolution
Politicized Megaprojects and Public Sector Interventions
Scholars have argued that megaprojects' turn away from issues of employment, and mass housing are among the core traits of neoliberalism. Turkey, though once seen as a paragon of neoliberalism, problematizes this generalization. Erdoğanist megaprojects have created jobs and residence for millions, and garner consent. 'Embedded neoliberalism', a concept frequently used to explain increasing state involvement under neoliberalism, sheds light on the…
The strengths and limits of neoliberal populism
Neoliberal populism', as both concept and mode of government, has peculiar capacities and strengths. But the concept should not be overstretched, and the strength of pure neoliberal populism should not be overestimated. The most resilient of the regimes that have been labelled 'neoliberal populist' (Erdoğan's Turkey and Orbán's Hungary) could not go beyond ten years without mobilising statist tools much more heavily than others. In comparison to …
Turkey at the Crossroads
Reconfiguration of the AKP regime, amid domestic upheaval, economic turbulence, regional devastation and a growing gravitational pull from Eurasia. Contrasts and continuities of Erdoğan’s militarized foreign policy with the liberal-Islamic formula lauded by the West
Urban Symbolic Violence Re-Made
The symbolic and physical map of Istanbul has undergone dramatic shifts over the past four decades. Squatters-the persistent underdogs in this huge metropolis-have mounted an attack against established economic and cultural hierarchies. This challenge has transformed the structures of symbolic violence through the production of an alternative urban space (contentious neighborhoods and districts, teahouses, innovative district and street layouts, …
The spiritual transformation of giving
How has the 'benevolent self's relation to others changed as a result of (first) the liberalization of monotheisms and (then) the uneven transition to post-religious spiritual formations? The apparent (and misleading) effacement of the self in traditional monotheistic generosity has ultimately given way to a 'liberal' glorification of the self. In advanced liberalism (typically dubbed 'neoliberalism'), the glorification intensifies, but paradoxic…
Populism Studies
Studies of populism have shifted from substantive to discursive/performative and institutional perspectives in recent decades. This shift resolved some long-standing problems but insulated the analysis of populism from theoretical and methodological debates in the social sciences. Theoretical restrictions have gone hand in hand with geographical neglect: The near-exclusive focus on the United States, Europe, and Latin America reinforces the blind…
Building Blocs
Going against the prevailing notion that political parties mirror divisions in society, Building Blocs argues that some parties actively structure those divisions. Using international case studies and Gramscian social theory, this volume demonstrates that political articulation is not the work of ambitious politicians or of the state, but primarily of parties. With one foot in society they also control the system of nominations, appointments, and…
The Counter-Revolution's Long March
Why is the contemporary Right fascinated by Lenin? Commentators take this infatuation as evidence that the Right has forsaken freedom. By taking Lenin out of context, this argument not only reproduces a wrong reading of history, but misconstrues what the Right learns from its undeclared mentor. Leninism's crux is neither authoritarianism nor zealotry, but the formulation of a long-term strategy in hostile terrain. Based on conflicting right-wing …
Caring for the Poor
An unmoving wall or a shifting one? The American right's deep emotional politics and its emaciated counterpart
The Uneven Neoliberalization of Good Works
Why is neoliberalization experienced unevenly throughout the Islamic world? This article explores Islam-inspired Egyptian and Turkish organizations’ competing orientations to poverty relief. The study is based on interviews, direct observation, and comparative historical analysis. While there was a contested balance between neoliberal and communitarian orientations to charitable giving in Egypt, in Turkey neoliberal approaches marginalized commun…
Neoliberal populism as a contradictory articulation - Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos. Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (New York, Zone Books, 2015)
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Faiths with a Heart and Heartless Religions
The Left usually dismisses charity as demeaning intervention into the lives of oppressed classes, an obfuscation through which exploitation is legitimated. Few arguments by Marx and Engels are as deeply ingrained in Marxism as their statements on charity. This can be traced back to Marxism’s common roots with liberalism. Marketization, religious reform, and liberal political economy undermined traditional conceptions of poverty and relief, which …
The fall of the Turkish model
Just a few short years ago, the "Turkish Model" was being hailed across the world. The New York Times gushed that prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) had "effectively integrated Islam, democracy, and vibrant economics," making Turkey, according to the International Crisis Group, "the envy of the Arab world." And yet, a more recent CNN headline wondered if Erdogan had become a "dictator." In this incisiv…
Elusive revolt
What lies behind the amalgam of liberalism, elitism, anti-capitalism, and fascistic elements in today's street politics? This essay analyzes this mixture in light of the shifting class locations of middle strata. Intensified business dominance has not only proletarianized some middle strata but has led to a dry life for even the privileged ones. Middle classes are now taking to the streets to reclaim their specialness. Their exact agendas might n…
Resistance everywhere
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Contesting Benevolence
Resistance everywhere
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Political Articulation
Political parties do not merely reflect social divisions, they actively construct them. While this point has been alluded to in the literature, surprisingly little attempt has been made to systematically elaborate the relationship between parties and the social, which tend to be treated as separate domains contained by the disciplinary division of labor between political science and sociology. This article demonstrates the constructive role of pa…
Islamism in Turkey
The purpose of this essay is to show that strictly materialist or culturalist approaches are inadequate for the theorization of religious political movements. Drawing from the insights provided by these approaches, I contend that Islamism is a novel form of counter-hegemonic politics, which I call religio-moral populism. Like every hegemony, it has to be handled as an articulation of conflicting interests and aspirations. By deploying Castoriadis…
Transforming everyday life
The Islamist movement in Turkey bases its mobilization strategy on transforming everyday practices. Public challenges against the state do not form a central part of its repertoire. New Social Movement theory provides some tools for analyzing such an unconventional strategic choice. However, as Islamist mobilization also seeks to reshape the state in the long run, New Social Movement theory (with its focus on culture and society and its relative …
Populism Studies
Studies of populism have shifted from substantive to discursive/performative and institutional perspectives in recent decades. This shift resolved some long-standing problems but insulated the analysis of populism from theoretical and methodological debates in the social sciences. Theoretical restrictions have gone hand in hand with geographical neglect: The near-exclusive focus on the United States, Europe, and Latin America reinforces the blind…
Politicized Megaprojects and Public Sector Interventions
Scholars have argued that megaprojects' turn away from issues of employment, and mass housing are among the core traits of neoliberalism. Turkey, though once seen as a paragon of neoliberalism, problematizes this generalization. Erdoğanist megaprojects have created jobs and residence for millions, and garner consent. 'Embedded neoliberalism', a concept frequently used to explain increasing state involvement under neoliberalism, sheds light on the…
The fall of the Turkish model
Just a few short years ago, the "Turkish Model" was being hailed across the world. The New York Times gushed that prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) had "effectively integrated Islam, democracy, and vibrant economics," making Turkey, according to the International Crisis Group, "the envy of the Arab world." And yet, a more recent CNN headline wondered if Erdogan had become a "dictator." In this incisiv…
The strengths and limits of neoliberal populism
Neoliberal populism', as both concept and mode of government, has peculiar capacities and strengths. But the concept should not be overstretched, and the strength of pure neoliberal populism should not be overestimated. The most resilient of the regimes that have been labelled 'neoliberal populist' (Erdoğan's Turkey and Orbán's Hungary) could not go beyond ten years without mobilising statist tools much more heavily than others. In comparison to …
Elusive revolt
What lies behind the amalgam of liberalism, elitism, anti-capitalism, and fascistic elements in today's street politics? This essay analyzes this mixture in light of the shifting class locations of middle strata. Intensified business dominance has not only proletarianized some middle strata but has led to a dry life for even the privileged ones. Middle classes are now taking to the streets to reclaim their specialness. Their exact agendas might n…
Fight or Acquiesce? Religion and Political Process in Turkey's and Egypt's Neoliberalizations
The Polanyian expectation that disruptive marketization will lead to movements and policies that seek to 'embed' the market in society needs to be tempered by closer scrutiny to historical, religious and political contexts. This article studies how movements respond to marketization. The analysis proceeds through a comparison of the Turkish and Egyptian neoliberalizations, religious movements of the last decades, secular opposition, and finally r…
The Urban Dynamism of Islamic Hegemony
The transformation of urban space constitutes one of the most dynamic aspects of the Islamist movement. Prevalent models have accounted for this phenomenon by referring to the rural immigrants' capacity for autonomous network building or their creative subjectivities. This article analyzes Islamization by studying the interactions between Islamists and the residents in a poor district in Istanbul. It demonstrates not only that the urban poor are …
The Appeal of Islamic Politics
The author explores the reasons underlying the growing effectiveness of Islamic movements by studying ethnographically the interaction between the religious movement and the people in a squatter district of Istanbul, Turkey. The empirical analysis examines how the state and the Islamists impact the lives of the residents, and how secularizing and ritualizing interventions are incorporated and resisted. These interventions and the resulting resist…
Contesting Benevolence
The Counter-Revolution's Long March
Why is the contemporary Right fascinated by Lenin? Commentators take this infatuation as evidence that the Right has forsaken freedom. By taking Lenin out of context, this argument not only reproduces a wrong reading of history, but misconstrues what the Right learns from its undeclared mentor. Leninism's crux is neither authoritarianism nor zealotry, but the formulation of a long-term strategy in hostile terrain. Based on conflicting right-wing …
The Uneven Neoliberalization of Good Works
Why is neoliberalization experienced unevenly throughout the Islamic world? This article explores Islam-inspired Egyptian and Turkish organizations’ competing orientations to poverty relief. The study is based on interviews, direct observation, and comparative historical analysis. While there was a contested balance between neoliberal and communitarian orientations to charitable giving in Egypt, in Turkey neoliberal approaches marginalized commun…
Faiths with a Heart and Heartless Religions
The Left usually dismisses charity as demeaning intervention into the lives of oppressed classes, an obfuscation through which exploitation is legitimated. Few arguments by Marx and Engels are as deeply ingrained in Marxism as their statements on charity. This can be traced back to Marxism’s common roots with liberalism. Marketization, religious reform, and liberal political economy undermined traditional conceptions of poverty and relief, which …
Serbest meslek sahibi
Some of the literature on neoliberal subjectivity tends to attribute omnipotence and impeccable consistency to neoliberalism. Other recent literature, by contrast, has emphasized how actually existing neoliberal subjectivity combines liberal and non-liberal elements, some of the latter emanating from local culture. However, even this revisionist scholarship holds that the non-liberal elements only lead to a smoother functioning of neoliberalism. …
Democratic Autocracy
What are the social dynamics behind the rise and resilience of today’s authoritarian regimes? This paper seeks to answer this question by focusing on the longest lasting elected autocracy of our era, the AKP (Justice and Development Party) regime in Turkey. Building on the authoritarian neoliberalism literature’s criticism of the scholarship on competitive authoritarianism, I point out the seeds of authoritarianism in the pro-market reforms of th…
South Africa's passive revolution and informal working-class politics in a global context
Urban Symbolic Violence Re-Made
The symbolic and physical map of Istanbul has undergone dramatic shifts over the past four decades. Squatters-the persistent underdogs in this huge metropolis-have mounted an attack against established economic and cultural hierarchies. This challenge has transformed the structures of symbolic violence through the production of an alternative urban space (contentious neighborhoods and districts, teahouses, innovative district and street layouts, …
On Erik Olin Wright, Envisioning Real Utopias, London and New York, NY, Verso, 2010
Journal Article On Erik Olin Wright, Envisioning Real Utopias, London and New York, NY, Verso, 2010 Get access Socio-Economic Review, Volume 10, Issue 2, April 2012, Pages 369–402, https://doi.org/10.1093/ser/mwr032 Published: 19 December 2011
Islamism in Turkey
The purpose of this essay is to show that strictly materialist or culturalist approaches are inadequate for the theorization of religious political movements. Drawing from the insights provided by these approaches, I contend that Islamism is a novel form of counter-hegemonic politics, which I call religio-moral populism. Like every hegemony, it has to be handled as an articulation of conflicting interests and aspirations. By deploying Castoriadis…
Islamic Political Identity in Turkey
Journal Article Islamic Political Identity in Turkey Get access Islamic Political Identity in Turkey by M. Hakan Yavuz. New York, Oxford University Press, 2003. 336 pp. $49.95. Cihan Z. Tugal Cihan Z. Tugal Northwestern University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Political Science Quarterly, Volume 119, Issue 2, Summer 2004, Pages 360–361, https://doi.org/10.2307/20202362 Published: 15 February 2013
State and Society in the Study of Islam
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
The Appeal of Islamic Politics
The author explores the reasons underlying the growing effectiveness of Islamic movements by studying ethnographically the interaction between the religious movement and the people in a squatter district of Istanbul, Turkey. The empirical analysis examines how the state and the Islamists impact the lives of the residents, and how secularizing and ritualizing interventions are incorporated and resisted. These interventions and the resulting resist…
Nato’s Islamists
Analysing the current hegemony of Erdoğan’s AKP in Turkey, Cihan Tuğal argues that the party has been the agent of a classic passive revolution, effectively shoring up the Kemalist state. Paradoxes of ‘Americanization with Muslim characteristics’, against the backdrop of Western military intervention in the Middle East
The Greening of Istanbul
Its population swollen by six million new arrivals in thirty years, Istanbul has sprawled outwards from the Bosphorus with dramatic speed. Cihan Tugal analyses the contradictions of an urban Islamism, wedded both to vote-winning populism and to financial markets
Passive Revolution
While Islamic politics pose a challenge to capitalism in some parts of the world, they have actually advanced capitalism and democracy in Turkey. This work looks closely at this transition in Turkey, and examines why this shift has not taken place in Egypt and Iran.
The Urban Dynamism of Islamic Hegemony
The transformation of urban space constitutes one of the most dynamic aspects of the Islamist movement. Prevalent models have accounted for this phenomenon by referring to the rural immigrants' capacity for autonomous network building or their creative subjectivities. This article analyzes Islamization by studying the interactions between Islamists and the residents in a poor district in Istanbul. It demonstrates not only that the urban poor are …
Political Articulation
Political parties do not merely reflect social divisions, they actively construct them. While this point has been alluded to in the literature, surprisingly little attempt has been made to systematically elaborate the relationship between parties and the social, which tend to be treated as separate domains contained by the disciplinary division of labor between political science and sociology. This article demonstrates the constructive role of pa…
Transforming everyday life
The Islamist movement in Turkey bases its mobilization strategy on transforming everyday practices. Public challenges against the state do not form a central part of its repertoire. New Social Movement theory provides some tools for analyzing such an unconventional strategic choice. However, as Islamist mobilization also seeks to reshape the state in the long run, New Social Movement theory (with its focus on culture and society and its relative …
Democratic Janissaries
Turkey has been hailed in the West as a democratic model for the Islamic world. Cihan Tuğal takes a cool look at the Erdoğan government’s domestic and foreign-policy record, from ‘zero problems’ diplomacy to the blockade of Libya and dirty war on Damascus, airstrikes on Turkish Kurds and silence on Bahrain
Serbest meslek sahibi
Some of the literature on neoliberal subjectivity tends to attribute omnipotence and impeccable consistency to neoliberalism. Other recent literature, by contrast, has emphasized how actually existing neoliberal subjectivity combines liberal and non-liberal elements, some of the latter emanating from local culture. However, even this revisionist scholarship holds that the non-liberal elements only lead to a smoother functioning of neoliberalism. …
Fight or Acquiesce? Religion and Political Process in Turkey's and Egypt's Neoliberalizations
The Polanyian expectation that disruptive marketization will lead to movements and policies that seek to 'embed' the market in society needs to be tempered by closer scrutiny to historical, religious and political contexts. This article studies how movements respond to marketization. The analysis proceeds through a comparison of the Turkish and Egyptian neoliberalizations, religious movements of the last decades, secular opposition, and finally r…
On Erik Olin Wright, Envisioning Real Utopias, London and New York, NY, Verso, 2010
Journal Article On Erik Olin Wright, Envisioning Real Utopias, London and New York, NY, Verso, 2010 Get access Socio-Economic Review, Volume 10, Issue 2, April 2012, Pages 369–402, https://doi.org/10.1093/ser/mwr032 Published: 19 December 2011
Resistance everywhere
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Contesting Benevolence
Janízaros democráticos
O artigo avalia o histórico das políticas domésticas e externa do governo de Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (AKP) e investiga os bastidores da ascensão da Turquia ao papel ambíguo de "modelo democrático do mundo islâmico", a diplomacia de "zero problemas" com países árabes vizinhos e Israel, o bloqueio da Líbia e o envolvimento no conflito sírio, a violência contra os curdos e o silêncio em relação à repressão dos movimentos que ficaram conhecidos como Pri…
Elusive revolt
What lies behind the amalgam of liberalism, elitism, anti-capitalism, and fascistic elements in today's street politics? This essay analyzes this mixture in light of the shifting class locations of middle strata. Intensified business dominance has not only proletarianized some middle strata but has led to a dry life for even the privileged ones. Middle classes are now taking to the streets to reclaim their specialness. Their exact agendas might n…
Neoliberal populism as a contradictory articulation - Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos. Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (New York, Zone Books, 2015)
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Faiths with a Heart and Heartless Religions
The Left usually dismisses charity as demeaning intervention into the lives of oppressed classes, an obfuscation through which exploitation is legitimated. Few arguments by Marx and Engels are as deeply ingrained in Marxism as their statements on charity. This can be traced back to Marxism’s common roots with liberalism. Marketization, religious reform, and liberal political economy undermined traditional conceptions of poverty and relief, which …
The fall of the Turkish model
Just a few short years ago, the "Turkish Model" was being hailed across the world. The New York Times gushed that prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) had "effectively integrated Islam, democracy, and vibrant economics," making Turkey, according to the International Crisis Group, "the envy of the Arab world." And yet, a more recent CNN headline wondered if Erdogan had become a "dictator." In this incisiv…
Caring for the Poor
An unmoving wall or a shifting one? The American right's deep emotional politics and its emaciated counterpart
The Uneven Neoliberalization of Good Works
Why is neoliberalization experienced unevenly throughout the Islamic world? This article explores Islam-inspired Egyptian and Turkish organizations’ competing orientations to poverty relief. The study is based on interviews, direct observation, and comparative historical analysis. While there was a contested balance between neoliberal and communitarian orientations to charitable giving in Egypt, in Turkey neoliberal approaches marginalized commun…
Building Blocs
Going against the prevailing notion that political parties mirror divisions in society, Building Blocs argues that some parties actively structure those divisions. Using international case studies and Gramscian social theory, this volume demonstrates that political articulation is not the work of ambitious politicians or of the state, but primarily of parties. With one foot in society they also control the system of nominations, appointments, and…
Political science (29 works) · Sociology (26 works) · Law (22 works) · Politics (20 works) · Political economy (18 works) · Turkey's Politics and Society (18 works) · Law (13 works) · Islam (10 works) · Populism, Right-Wing Movements (9 works) · Philosophy (8 works)