Warsaw and Istanbul in de-democratising countries. Democratic enclaves or sham democracies?

Abstract

ABSTRACT Many large cities after the success of opposition in local elections are becoming ‘democratic enclaves’ in the de-democratising countries. It is worth posing a question about the effectiveness of this role in the face of further autocratisation at the national level. It requires investigating if taking over the power by these democratic forces as well as characteristics of major cities, favourable in many aspects for democratisation (they have often a ‘democratic potential’) enable the cities to play a role of effective democratisers. The author of this paper takes this task and analyses the cases of Warsaw and Istanbul. He verifies the hypothesis that the combination of long-term democratic deficits, including the local level, impact of the de-democratisation present at the national level and the current centralisation or re-centralisation process undermines the role of both cities as democratic enclaves.