Sycophants in 280 characters

Using Twitter to measure the authoritarian sentiment of presidential advisors in Turkey

Bibliographic Data

ID6315228
AuthorsDean Schafer (0000-0001-6774-3755, The Graduate Center, City University of New York, New York, NY, USA, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume30
Issue2
Pages379-386
Publication date2024-03-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueParty Politics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1354-0688 • E-ISSN: 1460-3683
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/13540688231153099
OpenAlexW4318825776
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited21

Top-level presidential advisor appointments provide would-be autocrats in backsliding democracies a quick and effective means to coopt elites and assemble an authoritarian coalition. Such appointments represent a mechanism for making promises of patronage that are more credible and more directly under the executive’s control than patronage facilitated by their party. Elites who join the executive’s coalition via such appointments have incentives to maintain their privileged access and therefore are more likely to match or even surpass the authoritarian sentiment of an autocratic executive. This research uses a sentiment analysis model trained with 2 years of Twitter data—between 2019 and 2021—to compare the authoritarian sentiment of Turkey’s major political parties and to examine differences between groups within Turkey’s ruling party. The evidence shows that President Erdogan’s advisors are significantly more authoritarian than the rest of the party, and, as such, they form an authoritarian vanguard within an already authoritarian party

Authoritarianism · Autocracy · Democracy · Economics · Incentive · Market economy · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Presidential system · Public relations · Sociology · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Law · Populism, Right-Wing Movements · Turkey's Politics and Society

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