Strategies of Indoctrination: Evidence from Religious Schooling in Turkey

• In Event: Methods of Authoritarian Domination (Virtual Session)

Abstract

The literature on indoctrination in authoritarian contexts downplays the strategic calculations made by autocrats. Scholars implicitly assume that indoctrination policies are viewed uniform across localities and communities and fail to consider existing heterogeneity in social preferences (Wedeen 1999). In part, this omission stems from an issue of case selection: Most studies of indoctrination draw from totalitarian or single-party regimes. Such intensely closed party-state regimes are a rarity, however, and many authoritarian contexts exhibit hybrid elements, or at least mimic democratic institutions in some way, including through elections (Guriev and Treisman 2019). A now well-established literature on "authoritarian logics” examines autocrats’ objectives in adopting these ostensibly democratic institutions, particularly as they can serve to help to secure regime stability through monitoring, cooption and legitimation (Gandhi and Przeworski 2007; Blaydes 2011).

In the proposed paper, we build on this literature to examine how, in hybrid regimes, autocrats' electoral calculations influence the local targeting and distribution of educational resources—one potential type of indoctrination resource. We start from the premise that the perceived value and objective of state-directed, educational resources are not uniform across society. Instead, they depend on one’s relationship to the regime. For regime supporters, state educational resources will be viewed as a benevolent public good and potential engine of social development. For regime opponents, however, these same educational resources will be seen as levers of regime repression, indoctrination, and unwanted social control. In such contexts, autocrats’ objectives are not clear. They may seek to “reward” areas of core support with disproportionate educational resources to consolidate their powerbase. Or, conversely, they may seek to “punish” opposition areas by targeting educational resources there, in an effort to enforce obedience and subtly change how people learn, think and behave. Thus, we ask: How do the electoral calculations of autocrats in hybrid regimes shape the distribution of potentially “contentious” public goods, such as educational resources?

To study this question, we construct a novel dataset on the distribution of a “contentious” educational resource in Turkey—Imam Hatip schools. These religious schools first emerged as part of a secularization project in 1924 to train state clerics, but under the AKP rule (2002-present) the number of schools has multiplied significantly, and the secular opposition has come to view Imam Hatip’s as venues for the projection of Erdogan's indoctrination policies to raise a pious youth.

We first descriptively examine the distribution of Imam Hatip schools across districts that are core sites of AKP support, core sites of AKP opposition, and those that are contested. Next, adopting a regression discontinuity design, we examine how the distribution of these religious schools differs across regions with high electoral competition to test whether supporters or opponents are likely to be targeted disproportionately. Finally, we study second order effects, examining whether or not the targeting of contentious public goods succeeds in changing public opinion. Specifically, we analyzed whether the disproportional distribution of religious Imam Hatip schools is correlated with youth populations adopting views more closely aligned with the AKP’s ideology.

Authors

• Huseyin Emre Ceyhun, Princeton University

• Kristin E. Fabbe, Harvard Business School

• Amaney Jamal, Princeton University