Abstract
Political clientelism refers to a socio-political structure and set of relations formed by the reciprocal and personal exchange acts that the patrons of political positions can use for the clients in exchange for votes or political support. While this kind of political bond can encourage democratic development, it can also produce detrimental effects on democracy if the phenomenon becomes widespread. This study will examine the basic studies in the field of political clientelism and emphasize some basic features underlined by the concept. Some aspects of these key features reveal the tense relationship between political clientelism and democracy. As a particular and informal form of participation, political clientelism exist in a tense relationship with certain dimensions of democracy in terms of the open public debate and inclusion. This tense relationship between democracy and political clientelism constitutes one other fundamental dimension underlined by studies of clientelism. Another aim of the presented study is to touch upon the development process of clientelistic politics in Turkey and examine its connection with democracy. Studies of political clientelism in Turkey emphasize that there is a transition from traditional patronage to party-based broker clientelism. Political clientelism increasingly dominated by urban dynamics in the multi-party era (1946–2002) becomes the fundamental form of interaction between the party and the electorate. In the period of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), which has been in power from 2002 to the present, political clientelism has become extraordinarily widespread, triggering political polarization and ultimately bringing along a great decline in terms of democratic competition and accountability.
Zusammenfassung
Politischer Klientelismus bezieht sich auf eine sozio-politische Struktur und ein Beziehungsgeflecht, das sich aus gegenseitigen und persönlichen Tauschgeschäften zusammensetzt, die die Inhaber politischer Ämter für ihre Klienten im Gegenzug für Stimmen oder politische Unterstützung nutzen können. Diese Art von politischer Bindung kann die demokratische Entwicklung fördern, sie kann aber auch negative Auswirkungen auf die Demokratie haben, wenn das Phänomen weit verbreitet ist. In dieser Studie werden die grundlegenden Studien auf dem Gebiet des politischen Klientelismus untersucht und einige grundlegende Merkmale des Konzepts hervorgehoben. Einige Aspekte dieser Hauptmerkmale machen das Spannungsverhältnis zwischen politischem Klientelismus und Demokratie deutlich. Als eine besondere und informelle Form der Partizipation steht der politische Klientelismus in einem Spannungsverhältnis zu bestimmten Dimensionen der Demokratie in Bezug auf die offene öffentliche Debatte und die Einbeziehung. Dieses Spannungsverhältnis zwischen Demokratie und politischem Klientelismus stellt eine weitere grundlegende Dimension dar, die in Studien zum Klientelismus hervorgehoben wird. Ein weiteres Ziel der vorliegenden Studie ist es, den Entwicklungsprozess der klientelistischen Politik in der Türkei zu beleuchten und ihre Verbindung zur Demokratie zu untersuchen. Studien zum politischen Klientelismus in der Türkei betonen, dass es einen Übergang vom traditionellen Klientelismus zum parteibasierten Maklerklientelismus gibt. Der politische Klientelismus, der in der Ära der Mehrparteienparteien (1946–2002) zunehmend von der städtischen Dynamik dominiert wurde, wird zur grundlegenden Form der Interaktion zwischen der Partei und der Wählerschaft. In der Ära der Partei für Gerechtigkeit und Entwicklung (AKP), die von 2002 bis heute an der Macht ist, hat sich der politische Klientelismus außerordentlich stark ausgebreitet, was zu einer politischen Polarisierung geführt hat und letztlich einen starken Rückgang des demokratischen Wettbewerbs und der Rechenschaftspflicht mit sich brachte.
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Notes
Since clientelism is basically a social power relationship that binds the parties to each other through various unequal resource exchanges, such relationships tend to transform or transform into a political relationship that operates within modern political institutions around the patron and client.
While modern group organizations typically occur through categorical, horizontal, or shared characteristic ties (such as ethnic or religion-based, occupational and class grou**s), clientelistic grou** is more of a hybrid form of organization constructed through dyadic, personal, and vertical ties, and dynamics may differ from categorical grou**s (Scott 1972, p. 97).
Brokers have the opportunity to limit their clients’ rights to vote freely and engage in political activity, thanks to the tight control and supervision network they have built over voters. In their relationships with clients, brokers implicitly suggest that the support provided can only continue with success in the elections. Since providing assistance and support informally causes arbitrariness, clients who receive various assistance from patron or brokers are often ready to offer their support in different forms in elections to ensure the continuity of this support (Stokes et al. 2013; Auyero 2001, p. 83).
In the case of Mexico, Fox (1994) draws attention to the importance of autonomous community organizations, especially in rural and urban areas, in providing a democratic transformation against clientelistic organization and dependency relations.
Kitschelt and Wilkinson (2007, p. 2) show that liberal democratic representation and responsible party-model approaches that dominate democracy studies mostly focus on formal relations between the party, voters or citizens based on institutional and normative basic assumptions, and informal patronage or clientelistic ties are ignored. Accordingly, clientelistic policies may harm the principle of democratic accountability. Where clientelistic relations dominate, the success of politicians is determined not by distribution policies and collective goods offerings benefited by large segments of citizens, but by an interaction in which citizens’ votes are directly exchanged in return for direct payments, continued access to jobs, goods and services, and thus a form of interaction that undermines democratic will in representation. In the new democracies develo** in Latin America, Post-Communist Eastern European countries, South and Southeast Asia and some African countries, it is based on patronage or clientelistic party and voter interaction forms rather than the responsible party-model, which foresees a style of interaction in which parties based on consistent programmatic policies compete for electoral votes.
“Conversely, under conditions of weak development, intense competition may encourage politicians to seek an extension of the government’s influence over economic resource allocation with the implicit or explicit objective to create clientelistic principal-agent ties. As already indicated, in the course of such political linkage building, politicians may reduce the competitiveness of democracy. They create associational ‘pillars’ around economic groups and political parties that reduce the size of the electoral market place and may anchor the rise of a hegemonic political party or partisan cartel. As the cases of Austria, Belgium, Italy, or Japan after World War II could show, material bonds of direct citizen-politician exchange kept partisan camps afloat long after their earlier ideological moorings had weakened.” (Kitschelt and Wilkinson 2007, p. 41).
Despite the weak influence of electoral dynamics, the importance of patronage practices in the construction of party networks is particularly evident in the efforts of the İTC to create a Turkish and Muslim national entrepreneurial class. With the monopolization of state resources in the hands of the İTC after 1913, the construction of such patronage networks became the main politics of the party leadership. Although there are many indications pointing to the development of patronage politics in this period, this issue has not been truly analyzed so far. In this respect, the politics of patronage that developed during this period awaits further research. For such policies of the İTC, see also Rustow (1966); Yalman (1997, p. 320); Pamuk (2012, p. 151–152).
In their comparative study, Berenschot and Aspinall make two basic classifications of patronage democracy: Party- and community-based patronage democracies. “Party-centred patronage democracies are characterized by strong party control over state resources, prevalence of longer-term, ‘relational’ forms of clientelism, emphasis on clientelistic exchange of state resources rather than money, and reliance on party-networks to distribute these resources. Such patterns are also characteristic of electoral authoritarian regimes with resilient parties. Among our cases, Turkey, Malaysia, and Ghana are examples. At the other end of the spectrum are community-centred patronage democracies where party control over state resources is weak and politicians rely more on personal, nonparty networks. In these countries, clientelistic practices more often take the form of one-off exchanges of money and community gifts” (Berenschot and Aspinall 2020, p. 3).
When AKP was founded in 2001, one of the most important factors in quickly establishing its cadre and organizations was its reliance on the practices and cadre of the RP period. AKP benefited greatly from the RP experience in building and expanding local network of relationships (Doğan 2019, p. 42).
The concept of civil society used here has a Gramscian rather than a normative-ideal content.
Düzgün Arslantaş and Şenol Arslantaş also draws attention to this fundamental difference as follows: “Last but not least, the AKP monitors clients before and after the elections. This feature distinguishes the AKP from previous incumbents (for example, the Motherland Party [Anavatan Partisi, ANAP]), which was unable to transform the party system into a predominant one because it failed to establish effective monitoring and relied solely on its charismatic leader to underwrite clientelist exchange. The AKP, though, monitors clients through a sophisticated organization that has adequate and up-to-date information on clients because of its daily close contact with them.” (Arslantaş ve Arslantaş 2020, p. 6).
In the AKP period, clientelistic practices and distribution are certainly not limited to elections. However, it is seen that such distribution practices intensify, especially in the election processes. For example, in their empirical study based on the survey data conducted after the 2011 general election Çarkoğlu and Aytaç concluded that the practice of vote buying is one of the basic facts faced by one out of every three voters in Turkey (Çarkoğlu and Aytaç 2015). The authors determine that some general qualifications of the voters are also important here. It is emphasized that especially voters with low education levels or poor voters are more sensitive to vote-buying strategies. These results show that the dispossessed immigrant communities who migrated to the city have emerged as the main target group of the clientelistic strategies of political parties, especially the AKP.
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Bilgin, A. Political clientelism and democracy in Turkey. Z Vgl Polit Wiss 17, 433–459 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12286-023-00589-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12286-023-00589-1