Political Science Speakers Series

The Political Science Speakers Series presents the talk Majoritarianism without the Majority: The precarious continuity of the predominant party system in Turkey. About the speaker Dr. Yunus Sözen is an assistant professor at Özyeğin University. He received his Bachelor of Arts from Boğaziçi University, Department of Political Science and International Relations in 2000, his Masters of Arts in Political Science from Syracuse University in 2002, and his PhD in Politics from New York University in 2010. Sözen’s research focuses on the relationship between political ideas/ideologies and political regime dynamics. About the talk As a result of the June 2015 election, the predominant ruling party of Turkey (the AKP), lost its parliamentary majority in a constitutional parliamentary system. This has created challenges for the party to maintain the system characterized by power concentration. However, the AKP managed to overcome those challenges. What were the mechanisms that enabled the ruling party to keep its power intact, free of external checks, and internal fissures? To answer this question, first, Sözen gives an account of the particular ways that concentration of power is developed in Turkey, building on entangled yet separate literatures on the vertical and horizontal divisions of power, political parties, electoral and party systems. Based on this account, Sözen argues that two interrelated factors provided formal and informal instruments to the ruling party, and helped it shape not only the post-election government formation process, but also politics in general: Turkey’s political institutional framework, and its mixed political regime (competition combined with increasing authoritarianism and personalization tendencies). Therefore, to understand the persistence of predominant party systems, the Turkish case points out the significance of contextualizing these systems within the larger political institutional framework and the political regime context. For more information, please visit poli.ucalgary.ca
Location:
Social Science Tower 729
Speaker:
Dr. Yunus Sözen, Özyeğin University
More information at http://www.ucalgary.ca/events/calendar/political-science-speakers-series