Instrumentalizing the Military in Competitive Authoritarian Regimes

• In Event: Public Opinion and International Security

Abstract

Leaders in all regime types prioritize their survival in the office. To this end, many of them manipulate state institutions in order to appeal to voters so that they keep their advantageous position in the elections vis-à-vis their opponents. The leadership can use economic institutions to boost economic growth or increase the wages at the expense of hidden inflation prior to elections. In societies where peoples are highly polarized over their ethnic and/or religious identities, the leadership might take the advantage of security sentiment in the society in addition to economic matters. Namely, the government might target a separatist group or a terror organization more often as the upcoming elections approach. In this paper, I test whether the Turkish government AKP and the Turkish Armed Forces conduct significantly more numbers of military operations against the separatist pro-Kurdish PKK prior to elections than in non-election times. I use a monthly time-series data consisting of both police and military operations against terror groups in Turkey.

Author

• Huseyin Zengin, University of Pittsburgh