Explaining the Variance in Intraparty Authoritarianism in Turkey

Abstract

Chapter 5 has demonstrated the four patterns of intraparty authoritarianism—clandestine, benign, challenged, and coercive—observed within the 16 relationships between the national party leaders and local party actors from four districts and four party organizations of Turkey. Having observed such variance, the aim of this chapter is to investigate the empirical plausibility of the theoretical arguments outlined in Chapter 3 and 4: First it shows that the principle-agent (PA) relationship within these party organizations is constructed in a way where the national party leaders (NPLs) act as the principals and the local party activists (LPAs) and the members (LPMs) are the agents. Second, it outlines the variance in intraparty authoritarianism as the consequence of the differentiation in interest configurations between these principals and agents based on two variables: (1) the differences between the material and ideational interests of the agents; (2) the exogenous and endogenous triggers in the political system altering the status quo in these interest configurations. For the exogenous and endogenous triggers to be influential on the power structure within parties, the agents must further possess sufficient power resources—such as information, social and economic status, legitimacy—that can challenge the authoritarianism within parties.