Political Parties and Grassroots Clientelist Strategies in Urban Turkey: One Neighbourhood at a Time

Both principal Turkish political parties make extensive use of patron–client networks, but in very different ways. The CHP relies on competing local brokers and synchronous vote buying. The AKP is at the centre of a network of public and private funding turning social policy to clientelist ends. Socially anchored AKP activists link the party to voters, allowing it to target social assistance for political advantage and take credit for improvement in local conditions. The case presented in this paper provides a natural experiment suggesting that this distinction is an important explanation for the AKP’s electoral success in low-income urban areas.     

Political Efficacy through Deliberative Participation in Urban China: A Case Study on Public Hearings

Since the early 2000s, local governments in China have been holding public hearings to solicit opinion from state, city and township residents about legal and administrative issues. Having begun with a relatively small participation rate, in the last 10 years public hearings have achieved sustainable growth in their frequency and visibility in mainstream and social media. Given that public hearings do not offer decision-making power, the increased participation rate reveals an influence not necessarily on public policy making, but on urban citizens’ attitudes towards available participatory and deliberative mechanisms. This article refers to three bodies of literature: political efficacy, deliberative democracy, and social movements. The literature on political efficacy reveals the link between political attitudes and behaviors. The literature on deliberative democracy is an important part of the analysis because Chinese public hearings are based on deliberative designs imported from North America and Western Europe. The literature on social movements complements the deliberative analysis undertaken in an authoritarian context by providing it with conceptual tools to adapt to this new setting. The public hearings held in Guiyang (Guizhou), Wuhan (Hubei) and Qingdao (Shandong) in 2010 and 2011 are used as case studies to demonstrate participation demographics and the impact of public hearing participation on city dwellers. This article investigates the impact of participation in public hearings on the political efficacy of Chinese citizens, and, based on the results, contends that such participation equips the participants with an increased level of political efficacy, and enables the development of political networks and citizen strategies that help to constrain local officials.     

Friends of the Court: The Republican Alliance and Selective Activism of the Constitutional Court of Turkey

During the past two decades, scholars have noted a global expansion of judicial power and court‐led rights revolutions. Far from leading a rights‐revolution, the Constitutional Court of Turkey became renowned for its restrictive take on civil liberties during this period. Why are some high courts more activist than others in protecting and expanding civil rights and liberties? I argue that judicial power and judicial independence offer incomplete explanations of judicial activism on questions of rights. Even powerful courts are activist only selectively, using their clout to protect some groups while suppressing the demands of others. Building on perspectives on legal mobilization and judicial entrenchment, I argue that the sociopolitical alliances in which high courts and judiciaries participate explain the selective nature of their activism. The initial parameters of these alliances are set during critical junctures when formerly dominant coalitions are displaced and new institutions entrench new alliances. Such alliances are not static, however, and struggles within alliances can transform high courts' orientations on rights questions.     

The transformation of Turkey’s Islamic media and its marriage with neo-liberalism

ABSTRACT

The Islamic press in Turkey started at the beginning of the 20^th century as a reaction to the secularist Young Turks’ revolution of 1908. In the Republican period, Sufi orders and other religious communities maintained internal communication via periodicals despite being interrupted by the 1960, 1971 and 1980 coup d’etats. In the 1990s, the first private Islamic TV channels were opened and soon were targeted by the Turkish Armed Forces through mainstream media in the run-up to the 1997 military memorandum. Only after Erdo?an came to power did the Islamic media find favourable conditions to flourish, lining up with Erdo?an’s AKP. However, there are still small dissident groups who struggle for an independent identity.     

A tale of two railways and the Reuter family

Between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the influence of Baron Julius de Reuter and his famous agency, Reuters, was evident in his and his family's investments around the world. By looking at the histories of the Reuter Concession and the Greek Railway Concession, this work aims to offer insight into the international politics of certain governments and the value of news as a commodity at the time. The Reuter Concession illustrates part of the British-Russian conflict over Persia while the Greek Railway Concession demonstrates British policy toward the Ottoman Empire and Greco-Ottoman relations.