Erdem Aytaç
Biographic Data
| ID | 324155 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Erdem Aytaç |
| GIVEN NAMES | Erdem |
| FAMILY NAME | Aytaç |
| SIGNATURE | AYTAÇ E |
| AFFILIATIONS | Koç University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6544-8717 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 30 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 466 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 30 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
Does crisis lending help China win friends and influence people
When polarization meets backsliding: Affective polarization and support for undemocratic practices in Turkey
The polarised electorate: Affective polarisation and electoral loyalty in Turkey’s 2023 critical election
Voter reaction to the government’s refusal of natural disaster assistance: Experimental evidence from Turkey and India
How do citizens respond to their government’s decision to accept or reject foreign assistance in the face of a natural disaster? While the increased frequency and intensity of natural disasters necessitate international cooperation for effective response, there have been numerous instances where states have declined foreign assistance offers due to reputation concerns. In this article, we focus on the domestic audience dynamics of such behavior. …
Inflation and Incumbent Support: Experimental Evidence from the 2024 US Presidential Election
It is widely believed that high inflation reduces the popularity of incumbents, and contributed to poor incumbent performance in recent elections in the United States and elsewhere. Existing research shows that voters’ inflation perceptions are associated with their evaluations of incumbent parties, but these observational studies cannot eliminate the possibility that the causal relationship runs the other way, where opposition to incumbent gover…
Populist Appeals, Emotions, and Political Mobilization
Populist politicians frequently employ anti-establishment appeals in their discourse by targeting an imagined or real power elite. Do such appeals have a mobilizing effect among voters? What role do the emotional responses of voters play in this process? We address these questions using a vignette experiment embedded into a nationally representative survey fielded in Turkey, a country where a populist party has long been in power. Our research de…
Economic voting in the 2023 Turkish general election
The Turkish economy presented a complicated picture ahead of the 2023 election, with significant currency depreciation and soaring inflation yet robust growth and stable employment levels. How did voters’ economic perceptions shape election results in such a context? Drawing on Turkish Election Study surveys, this study reaches two main conclusions. First, while the average evaluation of the economy in the electorate was quite poor, there is a sh…
Developing-Country Representation and Public Attitudes toward International Organizations: The Case of IMF Governance Reform
Several prominent international organizations (IOs) maintain decision-making structures that under-represent developing countries. This paper argues that individuals in developing countries are more supportive of engaging with IOs that give a greater voice to fellow developing countries. We posit that the balance of decision-making power influences support for IOs by improving perceptions of both input legitimacy and output legitimacy. Empiricall…
Economic Insecurity and Voter Attitudes about Currency Crises
Cognitive political networks: A structural approach to measure political polarization in multiparty systems
An experimental investigation of voter myopia in economic evaluations
Do Voters Respond to Relative Economic Performance
An emerging literature suggests that economic voting is driven by incumbents’ relative performance, that is, how the national economy performed relative to recent past outcomes in the country (domestic comparison) and in a cross-national perspective (international comparison). While scholars have presented macro-level evidence in this direction, to date there has been scant micro-level evidence as to whether voters’ evaluations of incumbent compe…
Terror attacks, issue salience, and party competence: Diagnosing shifting vote preferences in a panel study
How does a dramatic shift in political context that renders security concerns the most salient electoral issue influence voting? To address this question, we take advantage of the peculiar timing of elections and heightened terror attacks in Turkey with the use of original panel data. The June 2015 Turkish general election resulted in a hung parliament, and a snap election was held in November. While the period before June was relatively calm, th…
Partisanship, elite messages, and support for populism in power
Discontent is seen as a critical driver for the appeal of populism, yet studies have typically focused on cases of populism in opposition. We argue that scholars’ emphasis on populism in opposition led them to overlook the roles of elite messages and partisanship in the adoption of populist attitudes. Drawing on theories of elite-driven public opinion, we contend that populist attitudes do not need to be rooted in discontent. In cases of populism…
Effectiveness of Incumbent's Strategic Communication during Economic Crisis under Electoral Authoritarianism: Evidence from Turkey
To minimize damage to their popularity during economic downturns, rulers in electoral autocracies can draw on their propaganda advantage to keep the economy off the political agenda or shift the blame to other actors. How successful are these strategies in swaying citizens' views? While electoral autocrats frequently resort to these strategies, there is surprisingly little evidence about their effectiveness. To address this gap, I took advantage …
Beyond Opportunity Costs: Campaign Messages, Anger and Turnout among the Unemployed
Are people under economic stress more or less likely to vote, and why? With large observational datasets and a survey experiment involving unemployed Americans, we show that unemployment depresses participation. But it does so more powerfully when the unemployment rate is low, less powerfully when it is high. Whereas earlier studies have explained lower turnout among the unemployed by stressing the especially high opportunity costs these would-be…
Populism in Turkey
Internet and social media use and political knowledge: Evidence from Turkey
What are the implications of citizens turning to online sources for news and information about politics? As the Internet and social media have become popular sources of news and information about politics, there has been a growing interest in understanding how this trend affects political knowledge. In this article, we analyze the effects of the Internet and social media use on the Turkish electorate’s political knowledge drawing on an original, …
Why Bother: Rethinking Participation in Elections and Protests
Ethnicity and religiosity-based prejudice in Turkey: Evidence from a survey experiment
Threat perceptions and prejudice underlie a large number of intergroup conflicts. In this article we explore prejudicial attitudes in Turkey regarding ethnic Kurdish and devout Muslim religious identities as opposed to Turkish and less observant, secular identities. Utilizing a population-based survey experiment, we use vignettes about a hypothetical family as a neighbour, with randomized ethnicity and religiosity-related cues. We find evidence f…
Relative Economic Performance and the Incumbent Vote: A Reference Point Theory
How can voters make sense of economic outcomes they observe when deciding whether to reelect the incumbent? I propose a reference point theory of economic voting that emphasizes voters' need for reference points when evaluating incumbents' performance. Consideration of economic outcomes during the incumbent's term relative to recent past outcomes in the country and in a cross-national perspective provides two such reference points, enabling a bet…
Presidents Shaping Public Opinion in Parliamentary Democracies: A Survey Experiment in Turkey
Why Do People Join Backlash Protests? Lessons from Turkey
When people learn that demonstrators are being subjected to harsh treatment by the police, sometimes their reaction is to join demonstrations. What explains the potentially mobilizing power of repression? Information-oriented theories posit that repression changes people’s beliefs about the likely success of the protests or the type of the government, thus encouraging them to join. Social–psychological theories posit that repression provokes a mo…
Giving Behavior in Turkey: Determinants of Individual Donations and Volunteering
This paper shares the results of a recent study about the giving of donations or time (volunteering) among citizens of Turkey. It examines the determinants of giving in light of recent research on this topic from other countries. We find level of education and institutional trust to be positively associated with giving, particularly to civil society organizations. In contrast to other studies, age is not associated with giving and men give at a h…
Taking Sides: Determinants of Support for a Presidential System in Turkey
A key issue on the Turkish political agenda concerns a transition to presidentialism, with a constitutional amendment proposal submitted in December 2016. While the positions of political elites are well known, we lack a detailed analysis of the electorate's views on such a transition. To fill this gap, we present cross-sectional and panel data collected over the period from spring 2015 to winter 2015-16. Partisanship emerges as the key factor sh…
Why Do People Join Backlash Protests? Lessons from Turkey
When people learn that demonstrators are being subjected to harsh treatment by the police, sometimes their reaction is to join demonstrations. What explains the potentially mobilizing power of repression? Information-oriented theories posit that repression changes people’s beliefs about the likely success of the protests or the type of the government, thus encouraging them to join. Social–psychological theories posit that repression provokes a mo…
Varieties of Populism in a Changing Global Context: The Divergent Paths of Erdoğan and Kirchnerismo
Distributive Politics in a Multiparty System: The Conditional Cash Transfer Program in Turkey
What are the dynamics of distributive politics in a setting of multiparty competition? Existing studies on the allocation of resources across multiple electoral districts focus primarily on a setting of two-party competition and consider only the core versus swing district hypotheses. This framework does not correspond to the actual electoral setting in many countries and ignores valuable information furnished by a context of multiparty competiti…
Relative Economic Performance and the Incumbent Vote: A Reference Point Theory
How can voters make sense of economic outcomes they observe when deciding whether to reelect the incumbent? I propose a reference point theory of economic voting that emphasizes voters' need for reference points when evaluating incumbents' performance. Consideration of economic outcomes during the incumbent's term relative to recent past outcomes in the country and in a cross-national perspective provides two such reference points, enabling a bet…
Who gets targeted for vote-buying? Evidence from an augmented list experiment in Turkey
Understanding the dynamics of vote-buying is essential for improving accountability in elections in developing democracies. While list experiments are useful for attenuating social desirability bias associated with measuring vote-buying, they are not conducive to multivariate analyses, and the question of what types of individuals are targeted is left inadequately explored. We overcome this limitation by combining a population-based list experime…
Effectiveness of Incumbent's Strategic Communication during Economic Crisis under Electoral Authoritarianism: Evidence from Turkey
To minimize damage to their popularity during economic downturns, rulers in electoral autocracies can draw on their propaganda advantage to keep the economy off the political agenda or shift the blame to other actors. How successful are these strategies in swaying citizens' views? While electoral autocrats frequently resort to these strategies, there is surprisingly little evidence about their effectiveness. To address this gap, I took advantage …
Protests and Repression in New Democracies
Elected governments sometimes deal with protests by authorizing the police to use less-lethal tools of repression: water cannons, tear gas, rubber bullets, and the like. When these tactics fail to end protests and instead spark larger,backlash movements, some governments reduce the level of violence but others increase it, causing widespread injuries and loss of life. We study three recent cases of governments in new democracies facing backlash m…
Taking Sides: Determinants of Support for a Presidential System in Turkey
A key issue on the Turkish political agenda concerns a transition to presidentialism, with a constitutional amendment proposal submitted in December 2016. While the positions of political elites are well known, we lack a detailed analysis of the electorate's views on such a transition. To fill this gap, we present cross-sectional and panel data collected over the period from spring 2015 to winter 2015-16. Partisanship emerges as the key factor sh…
Beyond Opportunity Costs: Campaign Messages, Anger and Turnout among the Unemployed
Are people under economic stress more or less likely to vote, and why? With large observational datasets and a survey experiment involving unemployed Americans, we show that unemployment depresses participation. But it does so more powerfully when the unemployment rate is low, less powerfully when it is high. Whereas earlier studies have explained lower turnout among the unemployed by stressing the especially high opportunity costs these would-be…
Terror attacks, issue salience, and party competence: Diagnosing shifting vote preferences in a panel study
How does a dramatic shift in political context that renders security concerns the most salient electoral issue influence voting? To address this question, we take advantage of the peculiar timing of elections and heightened terror attacks in Turkey with the use of original panel data. The June 2015 Turkish general election resulted in a hung parliament, and a snap election was held in November. While the period before June was relatively calm, th…
Why some countries are immune from the resource curse: The role of economic norms
The political resource curse - the detrimental effect of natural resource dependence on democracy - is a well-established correlate of authoritarianism. A long-standing puzzle, however, is why some countries seem to be immune from it. We address this issue systematically by distinguishing two kinds of economies: contract-intensive, where individuals normally obtain their incomes in the marketplace; and clientelist, where individuals normally obta…
Partisanship, elite messages, and support for populism in power
Discontent is seen as a critical driver for the appeal of populism, yet studies have typically focused on cases of populism in opposition. We argue that scholars’ emphasis on populism in opposition led them to overlook the roles of elite messages and partisanship in the adoption of populist attitudes. Drawing on theories of elite-driven public opinion, we contend that populist attitudes do not need to be rooted in discontent. In cases of populism…
Do Voters Respond to Relative Economic Performance
An emerging literature suggests that economic voting is driven by incumbents’ relative performance, that is, how the national economy performed relative to recent past outcomes in the country (domestic comparison) and in a cross-national perspective (international comparison). While scholars have presented macro-level evidence in this direction, to date there has been scant micro-level evidence as to whether voters’ evaluations of incumbent compe…
Internet and social media use and political knowledge: Evidence from Turkey
What are the implications of citizens turning to online sources for news and information about politics? As the Internet and social media have become popular sources of news and information about politics, there has been a growing interest in understanding how this trend affects political knowledge. In this article, we analyze the effects of the Internet and social media use on the Turkish electorate’s political knowledge drawing on an original, …
Ethnicity and religiosity-based prejudice in Turkey: Evidence from a survey experiment
Threat perceptions and prejudice underlie a large number of intergroup conflicts. In this article we explore prejudicial attitudes in Turkey regarding ethnic Kurdish and devout Muslim religious identities as opposed to Turkish and less observant, secular identities. Utilizing a population-based survey experiment, we use vignettes about a hypothetical family as a neighbour, with randomized ethnicity and religiosity-related cues. We find evidence f…
Cognitive political networks: A structural approach to measure political polarization in multiparty systems
Presidents Shaping Public Opinion in Parliamentary Democracies: A Survey Experiment in Turkey
Populist Appeals, Emotions, and Political Mobilization
Populist politicians frequently employ anti-establishment appeals in their discourse by targeting an imagined or real power elite. Do such appeals have a mobilizing effect among voters? What role do the emotional responses of voters play in this process? We address these questions using a vignette experiment embedded into a nationally representative survey fielded in Turkey, a country where a populist party has long been in power. Our research de…
Developing-Country Representation and Public Attitudes toward International Organizations: The Case of IMF Governance Reform
Several prominent international organizations (IOs) maintain decision-making structures that under-represent developing countries. This paper argues that individuals in developing countries are more supportive of engaging with IOs that give a greater voice to fellow developing countries. We posit that the balance of decision-making power influences support for IOs by improving perceptions of both input legitimacy and output legitimacy. Empiricall…
The polarised electorate: Affective polarisation and electoral loyalty in Turkey’s 2023 critical election
An experimental investigation of voter myopia in economic evaluations
Distributive Politics in a Multiparty System: The Conditional Cash Transfer Program in Turkey
What are the dynamics of distributive politics in a setting of multiparty competition? Existing studies on the allocation of resources across multiple electoral districts focus primarily on a setting of two-party competition and consider only the core versus swing district hypotheses. This framework does not correspond to the actual electoral setting in many countries and ignores valuable information furnished by a context of multiparty competiti…
Varieties of Populism in a Changing Global Context: The Divergent Paths of Erdoğan and Kirchnerismo
Who gets targeted for vote-buying? Evidence from an augmented list experiment in Turkey
Understanding the dynamics of vote-buying is essential for improving accountability in elections in developing democracies. While list experiments are useful for attenuating social desirability bias associated with measuring vote-buying, they are not conducive to multivariate analyses, and the question of what types of individuals are targeted is left inadequately explored. We overcome this limitation by combining a population-based list experime…
Why some countries are immune from the resource curse: The role of economic norms
The political resource curse - the detrimental effect of natural resource dependence on democracy - is a well-established correlate of authoritarianism. A long-standing puzzle, however, is why some countries seem to be immune from it. We address this issue systematically by distinguishing two kinds of economies: contract-intensive, where individuals normally obtain their incomes in the marketplace; and clientelist, where individuals normally obta…
Giving Behavior in Turkey: Determinants of Individual Donations and Volunteering
This paper shares the results of a recent study about the giving of donations or time (volunteering) among citizens of Turkey. It examines the determinants of giving in light of recent research on this topic from other countries. We find level of education and institutional trust to be positively associated with giving, particularly to civil society organizations. In contrast to other studies, age is not associated with giving and men give at a h…
Taking Sides: Determinants of Support for a Presidential System in Turkey
A key issue on the Turkish political agenda concerns a transition to presidentialism, with a constitutional amendment proposal submitted in December 2016. While the positions of political elites are well known, we lack a detailed analysis of the electorate's views on such a transition. To fill this gap, we present cross-sectional and panel data collected over the period from spring 2015 to winter 2015-16. Partisanship emerges as the key factor sh…
Protests and Repression in New Democracies
Elected governments sometimes deal with protests by authorizing the police to use less-lethal tools of repression: water cannons, tear gas, rubber bullets, and the like. When these tactics fail to end protests and instead spark larger,backlash movements, some governments reduce the level of violence but others increase it, causing widespread injuries and loss of life. We study three recent cases of governments in new democracies facing backlash m…
Relative Economic Performance and the Incumbent Vote: A Reference Point Theory
How can voters make sense of economic outcomes they observe when deciding whether to reelect the incumbent? I propose a reference point theory of economic voting that emphasizes voters' need for reference points when evaluating incumbents' performance. Consideration of economic outcomes during the incumbent's term relative to recent past outcomes in the country and in a cross-national perspective provides two such reference points, enabling a bet…
Presidents Shaping Public Opinion in Parliamentary Democracies: A Survey Experiment in Turkey
Why Do People Join Backlash Protests? Lessons from Turkey
When people learn that demonstrators are being subjected to harsh treatment by the police, sometimes their reaction is to join demonstrations. What explains the potentially mobilizing power of repression? Information-oriented theories posit that repression changes people’s beliefs about the likely success of the protests or the type of the government, thus encouraging them to join. Social–psychological theories posit that repression provokes a mo…
Populism in Turkey
Internet and social media use and political knowledge: Evidence from Turkey
What are the implications of citizens turning to online sources for news and information about politics? As the Internet and social media have become popular sources of news and information about politics, there has been a growing interest in understanding how this trend affects political knowledge. In this article, we analyze the effects of the Internet and social media use on the Turkish electorate’s political knowledge drawing on an original, …
Why Bother: Rethinking Participation in Elections and Protests
Ethnicity and religiosity-based prejudice in Turkey: Evidence from a survey experiment
Threat perceptions and prejudice underlie a large number of intergroup conflicts. In this article we explore prejudicial attitudes in Turkey regarding ethnic Kurdish and devout Muslim religious identities as opposed to Turkish and less observant, secular identities. Utilizing a population-based survey experiment, we use vignettes about a hypothetical family as a neighbour, with randomized ethnicity and religiosity-related cues. We find evidence f…
Beyond Opportunity Costs: Campaign Messages, Anger and Turnout among the Unemployed
Are people under economic stress more or less likely to vote, and why? With large observational datasets and a survey experiment involving unemployed Americans, we show that unemployment depresses participation. But it does so more powerfully when the unemployment rate is low, less powerfully when it is high. Whereas earlier studies have explained lower turnout among the unemployed by stressing the especially high opportunity costs these would-be…
An experimental investigation of voter myopia in economic evaluations
Do Voters Respond to Relative Economic Performance
An emerging literature suggests that economic voting is driven by incumbents’ relative performance, that is, how the national economy performed relative to recent past outcomes in the country (domestic comparison) and in a cross-national perspective (international comparison). While scholars have presented macro-level evidence in this direction, to date there has been scant micro-level evidence as to whether voters’ evaluations of incumbent compe…
Terror attacks, issue salience, and party competence: Diagnosing shifting vote preferences in a panel study
How does a dramatic shift in political context that renders security concerns the most salient electoral issue influence voting? To address this question, we take advantage of the peculiar timing of elections and heightened terror attacks in Turkey with the use of original panel data. The June 2015 Turkish general election resulted in a hung parliament, and a snap election was held in November. While the period before June was relatively calm, th…
Partisanship, elite messages, and support for populism in power
Discontent is seen as a critical driver for the appeal of populism, yet studies have typically focused on cases of populism in opposition. We argue that scholars’ emphasis on populism in opposition led them to overlook the roles of elite messages and partisanship in the adoption of populist attitudes. Drawing on theories of elite-driven public opinion, we contend that populist attitudes do not need to be rooted in discontent. In cases of populism…
Effectiveness of Incumbent's Strategic Communication during Economic Crisis under Electoral Authoritarianism: Evidence from Turkey
To minimize damage to their popularity during economic downturns, rulers in electoral autocracies can draw on their propaganda advantage to keep the economy off the political agenda or shift the blame to other actors. How successful are these strategies in swaying citizens' views? While electoral autocrats frequently resort to these strategies, there is surprisingly little evidence about their effectiveness. To address this gap, I took advantage …
Cognitive political networks: A structural approach to measure political polarization in multiparty systems
Economic Insecurity and Voter Attitudes about Currency Crises
Economic voting in the 2023 Turkish general election
The Turkish economy presented a complicated picture ahead of the 2023 election, with significant currency depreciation and soaring inflation yet robust growth and stable employment levels. How did voters’ economic perceptions shape election results in such a context? Drawing on Turkish Election Study surveys, this study reaches two main conclusions. First, while the average evaluation of the economy in the electorate was quite poor, there is a sh…
Developing-Country Representation and Public Attitudes toward International Organizations: The Case of IMF Governance Reform
Several prominent international organizations (IOs) maintain decision-making structures that under-represent developing countries. This paper argues that individuals in developing countries are more supportive of engaging with IOs that give a greater voice to fellow developing countries. We posit that the balance of decision-making power influences support for IOs by improving perceptions of both input legitimacy and output legitimacy. Empiricall…
The polarised electorate: Affective polarisation and electoral loyalty in Turkey’s 2023 critical election
Political science (24 works) · Politics (21 works) · Law (20 works) · Law (18 works) · Economics (15 works) · Political economy (14 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (12 works) · Populism, Right-Wing Movements (10 works) · Psychology (9 works)