Killing Competitive Authoritarianism Softly: The 2019 Local Elections in Turkey

Berk Esen and Sebnem Gumuscu

South European Society and Politics, 2019, vol. 24, issue 3, 317-342

Abstract: On 31 March 2019 Turkish voters ended the Islamist local governance in the country’s largest cities after 25 years and handed the ruling AKP its most serious electoral defeat since its rise to power in 2002. The article explores the electoral strategies of major parties in the local election, offers a comparative analysis of the results, and discusses post-election developments, including the rerun in Istanbul. The election and its aftermath reaffirmed the competitive authoritarian nature of the regime, as the governing bloc enjoyed an uneven playing field, while the opposition had to meet a higher electoral bar than the incumbents to win. The economic crisis, growing discontent with the government’s policies, and effective coordination of opposition parties facilitated this outcome.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13608746.2019.1691318 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:fsesxx:v:24:y:2019:i:3:p:317-342

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/fses20

DOI: 10.1080/13608746.2019.1691318

Access Statistics for this article

South European Society and Politics is currently edited by Susannah Verney

More articles in South European Society and Politics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().