Fragile Hegemony, Flexible Authoritarianism, and Governing From Below

Politicians' Reports in Early Republican Turkey

Bibliographic Data

ID8965161
AuthorsMurat Metinsoy (0000-0002-6399-2014, corresponding author)
Year2011
Volume43
Issue4
Pages699-719
Publication date2011-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Journal Middle East Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0020-7438 • E-ISSN: 1471-6380
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0020743811000912
OpenAlexW2103658666
LanguageEN
Citations received14
References cited27

This article scrutinizes election district and inspection district reports written by the deputies of the Turkish single-party government and the role of these reports in state decision making. Underscoring social discontent and the fragile hegemony of the new regime—both of which motivated the republican elite to monitor state and party administrations and public opinion—the article argues that the practice of reporting was neither a project of social engineering nor a practice peculiar to the Turkish state but rather a requirement of a polity concerned with the opinion of its citizens. In the absence of direct political participation of the people in government, the reports mediated between the state and society. Contrary to conventional accounts of the single-party period, the article argues that the republican elite did not govern the country through top-down decrees but instead sought to ascertain public opinion and its own administrative defects so as to consolidate its fragile hegemony. Based on these findings, I propose that we redefine the early republican state as a flexible authoritarian regime that was not detached from the society

Authoritarianism · Democracy · Elite · Government (linguistics · Hegemony · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Polity · Public opinion · Sociology · State (computer science · Turkish · Islamic Studies and History · Law · Political Conflict and Governance · Public Administration · Turkey's Politics and Society

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