Weakly Institutionalized Decentralization and Political Competition

• In Event: Local and Regional Dynamics of Autocracy

Abstract

Through political decentralization political parties can access local state resources that they can use for electoral mobilization (Brancati 2006). However, if political decentralization is weakly institutionalized, as we would expect in electoral or competitive authoritarian systems (Lagace and Gandhi 2015), credibility of having control over these resources would be low and parties might experience reversals in their access to local state resources. One of the ways in which this might come about is with the local mayor’s office. Mayors have been recognized as important in democratic transitions, e.g., Chile 1990s, but there has been less interest in them in cases of democratic erosion. Yet, in locations where security tensions have been heightened and political party-terrorist entity ties have been evoked, the mayor from an opposition party can be particularly at risk of removal. The removal of these mayors might then influence the party’s performance in subsequent elections. We look at one particular case – Turkey in the aftermath of 2016 which witnessed a coup attempt and deadly terrorist attacks – where elected mayors were replaced by centrally appointed trustees (kayyums). We examine whether losing control over municipal resources decreases the mobilization capacity of the party that was the main target of this central government intervention – HDP, which receives most of its support from Kurdish voters. Following the 2014 local elections where the BDP (the predecessor to HDP) won the mayor’s position in 97 municipalities, two parliamentary elections were held in 2015, one referendum was called in 2017 and the country’s first presidential elections of the newly established presidential system took place in 2018 along with the national legislative elections. In order to understand how the loss of local municipal resources affected HDP’s local mobilization capacity, we compare turnout in the two elections before 2016 when the appointments took place with the turnout in the referendum and the 2018 elections. Through these quantitative and qualitative analyses, we attempt to contribute to discussions on (local) democracy and conflict.

Authors

• Ozge Kemahlioglu, Sabanci University

• Resat Bayer, Koç University