Oppositional Unity in Competitive Authoritarian Regimes: A Comparison of Turkey and Hungary

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F25940082%3A_____%2F21%3AN0000005" target="_blank" >RIV/25940082:_____/21:N0000005 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

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DOI - Digital Object Identifier

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Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Oppositional Unity in Competitive Authoritarian Regimes: A Comparison of Turkey and Hungary

Original language description

The existing literature includes a substantial gap in understanding the change that each individual party goes through while joining an oppositional alliance in competitive authoritarian regimes (CARs). This paper aims to fill this gap, and as opposed to the existing explanations, underlines the significance of the agential factors that produce oppositional unity in CARs. Building upon the theories of party change, it provides a two-dimensional framework in explaining the formation of oppositional unity. Within this framework, each opposition party must gradually 1/ transform into an anti-system party, which would create a delegitimizing impact on the political system created by the ruling party, 2/ develop trust in other opposition parties to cooperate. This paper presents this framework based on a most-different-system analysis of Hungary and Turkey: In both countries, despite fundamental differences in economic, cultural settings as well as political cleavages, the opposition managed to mobilize the masses in a united manner and remove the populist-authoritarian incumbents from mayoral office in two most strategic cities: Budapest and Istanbul. In each mayoral election, the local nature of political competition almost became national. The empirical analysis on the creation of oppositional unity is based on data from interviews conducted with a total of 32 opposition party activists from both countries as well as the public statements of mayoral candidates in each election. [Presetation on 72nd Political Studies Association Annual International Conference, 11-13 April 2022].

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

O - Miscellaneous

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

50601 - Political science

Project

<a href="/en/project/GA19-14654S" target="_blank" >GA19-14654S: Democratic recessions in the post-communist and Muslim world: an institutional approach</a><br>

Continuities

P - Projekt vyzkumu a vyvoje financovany z verejnych zdroju (s odkazem do CEP)

Publication year

2021

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů