Party institutionalization and democratic consolidation

Abstract

The literature on democratic consolidation emphasizes the importance of effective parties for the functioning of democracy. Specifically, the institutional resilience of democracy and the consolidation of broad-based representative government require the institutionalization of major political factions. In this article, I reassess this thesis and apply it to the political parties in Turkey and Southern Europe by employing the comparative method of difference. Two major conclusions are reached. First, party institutionalization does not constitute a sufficient condition for democratic consolidation. Moreover, several institutional rules that may challenge the very idea of democracy tend to support party institutionalization. Second, party institutionalization reinforced by partisan polarization may result in tenser relations among political parties – a situation that does not contribute to democratic consolidation.

Keywords

Democratic consolidation party institutionalization South European parties Turkey

Introduction

In the literature on democratic consolidation, there is a prevailing understanding of the importance of effective parties for democracy. These studies argue that, for parties to fulfil their role in advancing democracy, they need to be institutionalized (Clapham, 1993; Dix, 1992; Mainwaring, 1999; Randall, 2006). The contention is that, although democratic consolidation is not dependent solely on party institutionalization, variances in party institutionalization shape the nature of democratic politics (Mainwaring, 1999: 341).¹

Accordingly, the ‘indispensability of parties’ thesis (Lipset, 2000) has been widely employed in understanding the democratization processes, not only in latecomer European democracies but also in the Third World, including Africa, Asia and Latin America (Randall and Svåsand, 2002a: 3). For instance, analysing the Third World context, Clapham highlights the impossibility of democratic polity in the absence of stabilized party representation (Clapham, 1993). Similarly, and based on a study of ten Asian countries, Diamond reasserts the importance of parties (1989). Moreover, examining democratic consolidation processes in Latin America, Dix argues that institutionalized parties are significant in relation to the enterprise of democracy and asserts that the prospects for democratic consolidation increase as parties become institutionalized (1992).

The importance of parties has also been a pervasive theme in understanding consolidation processes in Southern Europe (see Diamandouros and Gunther, 2001; Pridham, 1990a, b). In most of these studies, factors associated with party institutionalization, such as membership, party identification, organization and roots in society, have been delineated as important anchors of consolidation. In the case of Turkey, as the country has experienced an intense period of political change and democratization since the beginning of 2000s, a review of how parties – the main protagonists – are involved in the process is well overdue. The question, therefore, arises as to whether Turkish parties have achieved the high degree of institutionalization required for leading the process. The irony is, as the comparison with Southern European democracies demonstrates, that Turkish political parties appear to be well institutionalized but still incapable of enhancing democracy in the country.

In this article, which studies Turkish political parties in comparison to their Southern European counterparts, I analyse the complicated relationship between party institutionalization and democratic consolidation. The major contention is that party institutionalization cannot be considered a sufficient condition for consolidation processes. Conversely, party institutionalization reinforced by partisan polarization tends to obstruct relations between parties, which consequently exacerbates consolidation. Accordingly, I address three questions: (1) How can party institutionalization be conceptualized? (2) What factors explain party institutionalization in Turkey? (3) What is the relationship between party institutionalization and democratic consolidation?

Party institutionalization and democratic consolidation

Referring to one of the most cited definitions, democratic consolidation can be defined as ‘a political regime in which democracy as a complex system of institutions, rules and patterned incentives has become… “the only game in town”’, behaviourally, attitudinally and constitutionally (Linz and Stepan, 1997: 15). The concept of consolidation should be considered subsequently as a process rather than an end-product, mainly because different types of democracies exist in between transition and consolidation that are more than electoral democracies and less than consolidated ones.

The most significant question for the study of democratic consolidation has been ‘what consolidates democracy, and which institutions and agents matter most in the process?’ Within this framework, there is widespread agreement that political parties are the principal agents of this process, not only because they are the key strategic actors shaping democracy’s emergence (Capoccia and Ziblatt, 2010: 941), but also because they still retain the exclusive power of controlling access to policymaking positions. According to Pasquino (in Pridham, 1990b: 29), democratic consolidation is differentiated from democratic transition in the sense that it is more of a party-dominated process, which is not always the case for the former. Morlino (1995) asserts that two conditions related to parties are required for the consolidation of democracy: the stabilization of relations between parties and the public and stable patterns of competition among political parties. He suggests that parties need to develop organizationally, form stable relations with other parties and govern effectively, since they are the ones leading the decision-making processes and occupying principal administrative roles (Morlino, 1994).

Mainwaring and Scully (1995) also approach parties and the way they function as key in affecting the viability of democracies, particularly in Latin America. They focus on the notion of party system institutionalization as an important factor in sustaining democracy and promoting effective government by arguing that, in order for a party system to be institutionalized, four conditions must be present: stability in the patterns of interaction, strong party roots in society, party legitimacy and strong party organization. Although they refer to this phenomenon as ‘party system institutionalization’, the dimensions they identify are clearly related more to the individual features of political parties rather than relations among them, so consequently they are more about party institutionalization.

This vast and rich literature on how and why political parties are important in democratic consolidation processes has a common thread in that political parties that form stable relations with the public and have a strong organizational existence, in other words institutionalized parties, are one of the chief requirements for the process of consolidation. However, party institutionalization must be regarded as a double-edged sword. On the one hand, institutionalized parties can help to legitimize democratic procedures and laws. From this perspective, it can also decrease the probability of the emergence of actors that may attempt to reach their objectives through non-democratic means. On the other hand, a high degree of party institutionalization resulting from partisan polarization, which is the case in Turkey, can create tenser relations among parties – a situation that impairs the party system as a whole, which in turn hinders democratic consolidation.

Indeed, the direct causal link between party institutionalization and democratic consolidation has already been problematized in a number of scholarly works. Tóka (1997), examining party institutionalization in Eastern Central Europe, concludes that the presence of institutionalized parties is not a requirement for the consolidation processes. Similarly, Okole (2002) finds that Papua New Guinea has managed to install democracy in the absence of a meaningful party system. Similar to these discussions, Randall (2006) questions the desirability of institutionalized parties for democracy.

Conceptualizing and measuring party institutionalization

The difficulty in conceptualizing and measuring party institutionalization has led to two persistent problems in the literature, namely the ‘unit jump fallacy’² and the lack of operational indicators concordant with the conceptual scheme.

The first problem is related to the lack of differentiation between individual party institutionalization and that of the party system. While some studies use these concepts interchangeably and prefer not to elaborate on the critical differences between them (Morlino, 1998; Rose and Munro, 2003; Tóka, 1997), others attempt to measure system-level institutionalization by examining individual features of political parties (Kuenzi and Lambright, 2001; Mainwaring, 1998; Mainwaring and Torcal, 2006). The main rationale behind these approaches has been the assumption that ‘the institutionalization of a party system directly depends on that of individual parties’ (Meleshevich, 2007: 16). However, the relationship between the two institutions is much more intricate and complicated than has been argued up to this point, particularly in relatively newer democracies. As Randall and Svåsand (2002b) correctly assert, although they are closely related they are neither the same thing nor mutually supportive, and in some cases these two types of institutionalization ‘may even be at odds’. Therefore, it is critical to approach party institutionalization and party system institutionalization as two different phenomena that require separate treatment.

Secondly, the principal shortcoming of theoretical discussions on party institutionalization has been the apparent lack of elaboration on a set of operational indicators (Huntington, 1965; Panebianco, 1988; Randall and Svåsand, 2002b); even when possible indicators are identified, they remain ambiguous. Here, rather than expanding at length on how the notion of party institutionalization has been conceptualized until now, this article borrows Randall and Svåsand’s (2002b) definition, albeit with a small adjustment. Thus, party institutionalization can be defined as ‘the process by which the party becomes established in terms both of integrated patterns of behaviour and of attitudes’ (Randall and Svåsand, 2002b) within and outside the party.³ From this definition, the dimensions of party institutionalization can be identified as organizational development and strong roots in society, both of which appear in the literature over and over again (see Basedau and Stroh, 2008; Kuenzi and Lambright, 2001; Mainwaring, 1999; Webb and White, 2007).

The argument here is that, internally, the more institutionalized a party, the higher degree of organizational development it exhibits, while externally the more institutionalized a party, the stronger it is rooted in society.

Measuring organizational development might not be a simple task though, since the requirements of organizational strength might change in different contexts. In the literature, recurring factors have been conceived as indicators of strong organizational existence, such as membership levels, territorial comprehensiveness and stable resources (Mainwaring, 1999). Accordingly, membership strength measured by the total party membership as a percentage of the overall electorate (M/E ratio) for the whole country, membership density for individual parties measured by dividing a party’s membership by its own electorate (M/V ratio), territorial comprehensiveness measured by the nationwide organizational presence of individual parties and the financial resources of parties constitute the key indicators of organizational development in our analysis.

Stronger roots in society imply stable and persistent linkages between parties and citizens, which indicates a well-institutionalized political party whose existence and legitimacy have been recognized by its own constituency. Measuring roots in society is relatively straightforward because it is possible to employ classical quantitative indicators such as electoral volatility, party identification and trust in political parties.

Comparing political parties in Turkey and Southern Europe

This article integrates theoretical approaches to party institutionalization with empirical operationalization by providing feasible indicators for empirical assessment of the conceptual scheme. This is achieved with a special focus on Turkish political parties compared to their counterparts in Southern Europe. Southern European democracies, namely Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain and Turkey, share a host of common features; however, while these countries have managed to consolidate their democracies, Turkey remains a non-liberal electoral democracy according to the major democracy measures (Bertelsmann Transformation Index, 2012; Freedom in the World, 2012; Polity IV, 2010). All these reports have identified the chief problems of Turkish democracy as the violations of freedom of expression, restrictions on minority rights and issues with human rights, all of which make the country an illiberal democracy wherein political rights and civil liberties are still not fully guaranteed.⁴ The comparative approach adopted here aims to identify whether party institutionalization, which is claimed to be a major condition for consolidation, is different across these otherwise similar countries.

There are two key motives behind comparing Turkey with Southern Europe. First of all, Turkey has suffered from the same maladies that affected the political structures of Greece, Portugal, Italy and Spain during transition and consolidation processes such as frequent resort to repression, the excessive centralization of state power, a heavy reliance on patronage and weak civilian control over the military (Morlino, 1998: 103). Moreover, Turkey possesses many similar characteristics to Southern European democracies in terms both of the level of economic development and industrialization and the timing and problems inherent in state building (McLaren, 2008).

Secondly, the four countries of Southern Europe have managed to move towards stable consolidated democracies and succeeded in developing stable party systems in which clear patterns of alternation in government between the major parties of left and right have been relatively guaranteed and there have been increasing moderation and centripetal drives (Gunther et al., 2006: 2).

In this article, the Turkish parties represented in parliament are compared with two major parties from each country. Since the focus of the article is on Turkey, it is essential to include all Turkish parties to thoroughly observe the ways in which institutionalization of entire political groups affect the process of democratic consolidation. On the other hand, the decision to include two major parties from each of the Southern European democracies can be justified by the fact that the parties under consideration have to be institutionalized with substantial electoral support and a stable organizational existence for the sake of the comparative design. In almost all Southern European democracies, two major parties have been successful in preserving high levels of electoral support during the 2000s. The average shares of vote for Greek, Portuguese, Spanish and Italian major parties in the 2000s were 82.1 percent, 71.5 percent, 78.5 percent and 68.6 percent, respectively. Moreover, with the exception of the Italian case, since the 1980s all of these parties have entrenched their positions in their respective political systems in terms of left–right placement as well as organizational power, and they have been the main government and opposition forces (Bosco and Morlino, 2006).

Therefore, in total, we examine four Turkish political parties – the Justice and Development Party (AKP), the Republican People’s Party (CHP), the Nationalist Action Party (MHP) and the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) – in relation to eight main parties in Southern Europe – the Greek Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) and New Democracy (ND) from Greece, the Social Democratic Party (PSD) and Portuguese Socialist Party (PS) from Portugal, the Popular Party (PP) and Spanish Workers’ Socialist Party (PSOE) from Spain and The People of Freedom (PDL) and Democratic Party (PD) from Italy.

Employing the method of difference in comparing Turkish political parties with their Southern European counterparts, the article aims to examine how far from or close to their Southern European counterparts Turkish political parties are in terms of roots in society and organizational development.

The degree of party institutionalization in Turkey and Southern Europe

Organizational development

Membership strength

Although declining party membership in European democracies has been one of the main themes of political party research in the past two decades (Katz et al., 1992; Mair and Van Biezen, 2001), recent data have demonstrated that Southern European democracies deviate somewhat from this trend (Bosco and Morlino, 2006). Therefore, party membership is still an essential indicator of organizational development for Southern Europe. Table 2 presents the total party membership expressed in raw numbers in each South European country and reports the same data as a percentage of the overall electorate (M/E ratio), a measure that enables comparison of party membership across nations. As inferred from the table, the M/E ratio is noticeably high in Turkey, and the country is an evident outlier in the sense that its figure is double that of its closest follower, Greece.

Table 1.

Dimensions and indicators of party institutionalization.

Dimensions	Indicators
Organizational development	Membership strength
Organizational development	Territorial comprehensiveness
	Financial resources
Roots in society	Electoral volatility of individual parties
	Party identification
	Public legitimacy

Table 2.

Total party membership: Absolute numbers and M/E ratio.

Countries	Year	Total party membership	M/E
Turkey*	2006	6,561,886	15.14
Greece	2008	560,000	6.59
Spain	2008	1,530,803	4.36
Portugal	2008	341,721	3.82
Italy	2007	2,622,044	5.57

Source: Van Biezen et al. (2012). *Data for Turkey from Hurriyet (2007).

Accordingly, although looking at high numbers, one might argue that party membership cannot be considered a valid indicator in Turkey, but 15.1 percent membership is too high to ignore and dismiss; it must indicate something important about political party activity in the country.

It has to be acknowledged that Turkey has experienced three military interventions, in each of which the military attempted to de-politicize society as a whole and political activities such as becoming a member of a political party were punished with imprisonment and repression. Therefore, even under these circumstances, the fact that people continue to become party members justifies the validity of membership data, which in turn explicitly indicates the strong organizational existence of Turkish political parties. Therefore, these data indicate that parties still manage to attract supporters that are willing to participate in party politics and that there is continuous and rising interest in political activity. These high levels of interest with party membership can be mainly explained by the persistence of factional politics in the country which has been heightened by increasing polarization in the past decade. Keeping in mind the fact that not only governing party but all factions manage to attract new members, it can be argued that political motives such as the willingness to fight for their respective social groups seem to play a greater role than material motives for people in becoming party members.⁵

Table 3 shows the trends in membership density (M/V). According to Poguntke, the M/V ratio demonstrates ‘a party’s ability to penetrate its own electorate organisationally’ (Poguntke, 2005: 52). The data clearly support our contention that, compared to other Southern European parties, Turkish political parties, apart from the BDP, are successful in encapsulating electoral support and can be accepted as institutionalized in terms of membership. The AKP’s high M/V ratio, on the one hand, might be related to the party retaining power for the past ten years and turning into ‘a new political force with a broad appeal to the former centre-right, centre, nationalist as well as a portion of Islamist voters’ (Özbudun, 2006) – and so it continues to attract new members. The low M/V ratio of the BDP, on the other hand, is due to an all-embracing restriction on Kurdish ethnic political activity and the repeated termination of Kurdish ethnic parties by the Constitutional Court, the last of which was in 2010. Therefore, for the case of the BDP, membership levels hardly constitute a significant indicator.

Table 3.

Individual party membership: Absolute numbers and membership density (M/V ratio).

Countries	Year	Parties	Party membership	Electorate***	M/V
Turkey*	2006	AKP	1,834,520	16,327,291 (07)	11.23%
	2006	CHP	529,703	7,317,808 (07)	7.23%
	2006	MHP	307,747	5,001,869 (07)	6.15%
	2012	BDP	24,562	2,819,914 (11)**	0.87%
Greece	2005	ND	350,000	2,995,479 (07)	11.68%
	2008	PASOK	210,000	2,727,853 (07)	7.70%
Italy	2006	PD (DS+PPI/DL)	1,063,981	11,928,362 (06)	8.92%
	2007	PDL (FI+AN)	1,006,358	13,752,038 (06)	7.32%
Spain	2007	AP/PP	725,670	10,278,010 (08)	7.06%
	2006	PSOE	552,689	11,289,335 (08)	4.90%
Portugal	2008	PS	105,232	2,077,238 (09)	5.07%
	2008	PSD	153,361	1,653,665 (09)	9.27%

Source: Van Biezen et al. (2012). *Data for Turkey from Hurriyet (2007). **Since the precedent of the BDP had been closed by the Constitutional Court in 2010, the numbers here are the most recent data received from the party headquarters. ***The numbers in parentheses are the years of elections in which party managed to receive this amount of the vote (taken from the Turkish Statistical Institute (TUIK)).

Territorial comprehensiveness

Territorial comprehensiveness refers to a nationwide organizational presence, which demonstrates the spatial organizational expansion of political parties. Since the Greek, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese parties under examination are the two biggest factions in each country, they are more or less organized in each and every local unit. Therefore, we only need to look at the Turkish political parties and observe whether the four parties under examination meet the conditions. Actually, institutional rules in Turkey have encouraged territorially extensive organizations. According to the political party law, in order to enter elections, parties have to be organized in at least 50 percent of provinces. In order to be considered as organized in a province, parties must be operational in one-third of all sub-provinces within the province.

Ilce (a sub-province) is the smallest unit parties are allowed to organize in Turkey. As Table 4 shows, with the exception of the BDP all major parties have sustained strong organizational presence throughout the country. Since the BDP mainly addresses the Kurdish population of the country, which is situated in eastern and south-eastern Anatolia, the organizational presence of the party is compacted together in this region with the big cities, which also have considerable amounts of marginalized Kurds.

Table 4.

Territorial comprehensiveness.

	No. of subprovinces parties organized	Percentage
AKP	957	100.0	Nationwide Presence*
CHP	953	99.6	Nationwide Presence
MHP	947	98.9	Nationwide Presence
BDP	322	33.6	Partial Presence*

Source: Headquarters of parties. *Same terms have been used by Basedau and Stroh (2008).

Needless to say, one has to be cautious when analysing the strength of an organizational network through looking only at the sheer number of sub-provinces organized by parties. For instance, while parties’ organizational existence in large Turkish cities is complex and active, organizational activities in local party units are limited in comparison to larger cities. Accordingly, the degree of organizational complexity and effectiveness depends greatly on the level of urbanization and socio-economic development (Sayari, 1976: 197). However, operating as ‘intervening links between villages and provincial capitals’ (Sayari, 1976), the sub-provincial units of political parties still retain important functions, such as electoral campaigning and candidate selection, which in turn inevitably makes them more than ‘paper’ organizations.

Financial resources

In the past two decades, the public funding of parties has reached such a stage that political entities have even been called ‘public utilities’ (Van Biezen, 2004). While several negative consequences of direct state funding have been discussed, such as ossification of the party system, the stifling of electoral competition, decreasing parties’ social embeddedness and ineffectiveness against corruption (Zamora, 2005: 5), the fact that state-funding provides political parties with stable financial resources makes it favourable for party institutionalization and the stability of parties.

In the case of Southern Europe, the public funding of parties has become the norm rather than the exception. In all countries, except Italy, political parties are entitled to receive regularly provided, direct state-funding (IDEA, 2010). In Italy, the public funding of parties was abolished following a referendum in 1993, since when parties have been reimbursed for campaign expenses (OSCE/ODIHR, 2008). However, even in Italy, public funding still constitutes an important part of party finances. With regard to eligibility for funding, the share of votes in previous elections seems to be the main criterion for almost all countries.

In Turkey, the state-funding of political parties gained constitutional status in 1995, and political parties which manage to garner more than 7 percent of the total valid votes are eligible for state-funding, both annually and in relation to election campaigns (Genckaya, 2009). While in general election years state aid reaches three times that of annual aid, in times of local elections state aid doubles (p. 46).

Table 5 shows annual state subvention as well as the amount of subvention per vote in each country, excluding Greece. As can be observed from the table, the amount of state subvention in Turkey is in line with other countries, and those parties that succeed in receiving 7 percent of the votes are entitled to stable financial resources. Therefore, the fact that neither political parties that fail to receive high shares of the vote nor independents are eligible for state-funding prevents small parties from enjoying stable resources.

Table 5.

State subvention per vote.

	Annual state subvention	Per Vote
Turkey (2011)*	46,228,970 €	1.07 €
Italy (1999)**	∼60,000,000 €	2.10 €
Spain (2000)***	∼40,000,000 €	1.20 €
Portugal (2002)***	∼7,100,000 €	0.80 €

Source:*Data for Turkey: http://bianet.org/bianet/bianet/128595-uc-partiye-327-3-milyon-tl-yardim-24une-0-tl; **Data for Italy: CESifo Dice, Financing of Political Parties: Methods of Funding: www.cesifogroup.de/portal/page/portal/DICE_Content/OTHER_TOPARTYINSTITUTIONALIZATIONCS/Miscellaneous/M050_FINANCING_OF_POLITICAL_PARTIES/Fin-pol-par-meth.pdf; ***Data for Spain and Portugal from Van Biezen (2003).

The BDP and its precedents, for instance, have never been able to obtain funding from the state because the party nominates its candidates as independents in order to escape the 10 percent election threshold and has not succeeded in garnering more than 7 percent of votes in its history. Accordingly, although the public funding of parties, on the one hand, has marginalized certain segments of the political system, it also has stabilized and strengthened the bigger parties and thus facilitated party institutionalization in the country. Although it can be constructive to relax eligibility criteria for newcomers and smaller parties, public funding in Turkey is still constructive in the institutionalization of already existing parties in the system.

When we examine the data on the income of the two biggest parties in Turkey⁶ (Table 6), what we observe is that more than 80 percent of the parties’ financial resources come from the state, which demonstrates that public funding plays a predominant role in the financing of parties. This trend is very similar to the Portuguese and Spanish experiences. In Portugal, for instance, in the early 1990s, more than 80 percent of the annual income of the two major parties came from state subsidies (Van Biezen, 2003: 186). Likewise, Spanish political parties enjoy high levels of state subvention that amount to over 75 percent of their total income (p. 187). Although this trend might make parties almost entirely dependent on public money for sustaining party activity, it evidently resolves the issue of stable financial resources.

Table 6.

Income of Turkish political parties.

Sources of Income (% of total income)	AKP (2011)	CHP (2008–10)
State subventions	85.3	80.4
Donations	5.2	0.02
Other	9.5	19.58
Total	100	100

Source: Official parties’ data.

Consequently, based on the data on membership strength, territorial comprehensiveness and financial resources, it has been verified that comparatively all Turkish political parties, apart from the BDP, have succeeded in developing a strong organizational existence. Owing to strict rules and regulations against ethnic parties, and unfavourable conditions for smaller factions, the BDP has failed to develop what might be considered as a robust organization.

Roots in society

Electoral volatility

The measure of electoral volatility demonstrates to ‘what extent party strength is being reallocated from one election to the next between winning and losing parties’ (Pedersen, 1979: 2). Although it has been widely used in gauging the degree of party system institutionalization, since it shows an electorate’s tendency to stick with the same party or move to another one, it is more likely to illustrate the extent to which parties individually or as a whole manage to retain stable roots in society (Wolinetz, 2006: 5). Individual party volatility in particular demonstrates the degree to which individual parties stabilize relations with their constituencies.

Table 7 presents the electoral volatility scores for individual parties in Southern Europe and indicates that the volatility scores of Turkish political parties are relatively close to their Southern European counterparts. Particularly in the third term, it is evident that the parties have been successful in stabilizing and retaining electoral support. The most striking observation is that the Turkish nationalist MHP and the Kurdish nationalist BDP have been the most successful in keeping low levels of volatility. This evidently supports the claim that the two parties balance each other out in the system.

Table 7.

Electoral volatility for individual parties.*

Countries (election years)	Parties	Volatility I	Volatility II	Volatility III
Turkey (1999–2002–2007–2011)	AKP	–	6.2	1.6
	CHP	5.4	0.8	2.6
	MHP	4.9	3.0	0.7
	BDP	0.7	0.5	0.7
Greece (2000–2004–2007–2009)	ND	1.4	1.8	4.2
	PASOK	1.6	1.3	2.9
Spain (2000–2004–2008–2011)	PP	3.4	1.1	2.4
	PSOE	4.2	0.6	7.6
Portugal (2002–2005–2009–2011)	PSD	5.7	0.2	4.8
	PS	3.6	4.3	4.3
Italy* (1996–2001–2006–2008)	PDL	2.9	2.8	0.5
	PD	0.5	0.1	1.0

* Source: Author’s calculations. Election results received from http://www.parties-and-elections.de/countries.html.

Figure 1 reveals the mean volatility scores of individual parties in the past four elections. Although Turkey has suffered from consistently high volatility scores since the 1960s, when we look at the period from 2002 onwards the mean volatility scores of Turkish political parties are not so high and very much in line with their Southern European counterparts. The decreasing volatility scores can be related to the stabilization effect of deep social cleavages into which the Turkish party system has already become anchored after 1990s (Hazama, 2007: 131).

Figure 1.

Mean volatility scores of individual parties in the last four elections.*

Party identification

Party identification simply refers to the degree to which voters identify themselves with a party (Budge et al., 1979), so it can be defined as public attachment to parties (Dalton and Weldon, 2007: 179), which is still considered one of the central elements of democratic politics (Dalton and Wattenberg, 2002; Miller, 1991). It is an excellent indicator that could provide concrete clues of the extent to which parties manage to form consistent societal allegiances. This indicator can be analysed on two levels – general party identification in each case and individual party identification for each party.⁷ The question as to whether the respondents feel close to any party can be used to examine both aspects.

While the percentage of respondents who report feeling close to any party shows the general attitude towards political parties in the system, the same question when analysed together with the question ‘which party did you vote for in the last elections?’ can indicate individual party identification. Based on the assumption that voters feel closer to the party they voted for, the simultaneous analysis of these two questions (vote choice first, and partisanship second) shows individual party identification. Hence, the percentage of party X’s voters who say yes to the question as to whether they feel close to any party indicates the percentage of party X’s voters that feel close to party X. European Social Survey data (ESS, 2004, 2008) are used to examine party identification for both indicators.

Figure 2 reports the percentage of respondents who feel close to any party. The data show that the party identification figures in Southern Europe, together with Turkey, range from 44.5 percent to 58.7 percent, which is comparatively high. In all of the Southern European democracies and Turkey, on average more than half of the voters feel close to a party and thus identify themselves with a party, which points to parties in general having strong roots in society.

Figure 2.

Percentage close to any party.

Table 8 shows the individual party identifications for each party under examination. As can be observed from the table, Turkish political parties manage to sustain high levels of party identification like their Southern European counterparts. For instance, almost 69 percent of the respondents who voted for the CHP say yes to the question as to whether they feel close to any party. Taking into account the fact that the CHP is the oldest party in the system and the AKP is the youngest, it is not unexpected to see that the CHP enjoys the highest party identification figure, while the AKP has the lowest rating among Turkish parties.

Table 8.

Individual party identification.

Country and survey year	Political parties	Individual party identification (%)
Turkey, 2008	AKP	61.2
	CHP	68.7
	MHP	67
	BDP	63.8
Greece, 2008	PASOK	79.6
	ND	73.3
Spain, 2008	PP	60.5
	PSOE	58.3
Portugal, 2008	PSD	84.8
	PS	71.2
Italy, 2004	PD (DS+PPI /DL)	75.3
	PDL (FI+AN)	68.3

Source: ESS Data Round 2, 4 (2004, 2008).

Public legitimacy

Measuring the public’s trust in political parties can offer a general picture of the degree to which political parties as a whole establish strong relations with the electorate. Needless to say, positive attitudes towards political parties on the part of the public increase the legitimacy of all parties acting in the system, and so ultimately pertain to party institutionalization.

According to Table 9, on average more than 60 percent of respondents have low trust in parties in all the countries in question. Turkish parties also suffer from low trust levels, with 64.3 percent of respondents choosing from 0 to 3 on a scale of 10. However, what is more striking is that, contrary to other Southern European cases, the third tercile is also reasonably high in Turkey. The percentage of respondents who chose from 7 to 10 is 11.6, which is higher than in all the other countries. The difference becomes much more apparent and striking when the percentages of respondents who give parties a 10 (Table 10) are analysed.

Table 9.

Trust in parties.*

	Low trust (%)	Moderate trust (%)	High trust (%)
Turkey	64.3	24.1	11.6
Greece	67.4	28.4	4.2
Spain	52.1	40.1	7.8
Portugal	52	41.5	6.5
Italy**	68.3	28.1	3.6

Source: The ESS Data Round 2, 4 (2004, 2008).

*In the survey, the respondents were asked ‘How much do you personally trust in political parties?’ on a scale from 0 (not at all) to 10 (complete trust). Here, low trust refers to the total percentage of respondents who chose from 0 to 3, moderate trust is from 4 to 6 and high trust from 7 to 10. **The data for Italy are from 2004; while all other surveys were done in 2008.

Table 10.

Percentage of respondents who gave a 10.

	Complete trust (%)
Turkey	5.1
Greece	0.2
Spain	0.3
Portugal	0.3
Italy*	0.1

Source: The ESS Data Round 2, 4 (2004, 2008) *The data for Italy are from 2004; while all other surveys were done in 2008.

Arguably, albeit suffering from the same disease of citizen disaffection, political parties in Turkey still enjoy high levels of trust, which reveals that Turkish society still has a positive attitude towards political groups.

In terms of roots in society, all Turkish parties have also successfully managed to win enduring allegiances within their respective electorates.

Explaining party institutionalization in Turkey

The comparison made with Southern Europe has demonstrated that, with the exception of the Kurdish ethnic party, the BDP, Turkish political parties are relatively institutionalized in terms of organizational development and roots in society. Even the BDP enjoys strong societal roots. What, therefore, accounts for party institutionalization in Turkey? Three major factors appear to play a prominent role in the current level of party institutionalization: the length of democratic experience, the institutional rules, and the extent of ideological polarization reinforced by the types of cleavage.

The length of time a country has experience with democracy is considered to be one of the explanatory factors behind the formation of strong parties (Kuenzi and Lambright, 2001: 466). Keeping in mind that Turkish experience with democracy amounts to more than 60 years, political party development in the country is hardly unexpected. Multiparty politics, competitive elections and the peaceful transfer of power have been the main characteristics of Turkish political life for a long time, unlike the country’s counterparts in the developing world (Sayari, 1997: 29). Furthermore, political parties have demonstrated high degrees of organizational development, complexity and continuity (p. 30), even though from the 1970s to the 1990s Turkish political parties suffered institutional decay (Özbudun, 2000). Thanks to the experience of long-lasting parliamentary democracy, political parties have been fairly successful in fulfilling their critical functions, such as the aggregation and articulation of public opinion, the recruitment of political leadership and organizing the government – all of which have required strong organizational existence and deep roots in society.

The institutional system constitutes another independent variable because institutions establish the rules of the game that draw the boundaries of political party practice. Since the incentives created by the electoral system, together with the way candidates are selected, determine how parties function (Katz, 1980), the electoral system is an important institution that has to be taken into account for understanding political party development. Turkey has a proportional representation system that provides party leadership with considerable authority in deciding on individual candidates. This system, needless to say, has produced centralized party structures that in return have precluded politicians’ incentives for developing personal votes that have a tendency to increase individualism (Mainwaring, 1999: 205). Although strong party leadership can be at odds with intra-party democracy and might lead to personalism on the part of a party leader, it is advantageous for party institutionalization to have authority centralized rather than dispersed.

Furthermore, the 10 percent election threshold in the country tends to create bigger parties that have to be competent enough to establish strong relations with the electorate, so as to maintain their vote-share. With regard to territorial comprehensiveness, political party law again prevents the entrance of small parties into elections, as they are incapable of governing a substantial extent of territory. Another significant institutional rule is related to provisions on the public funding of parties. Since the public funding of political parties supplies parties with stable financial resources, the very existence of high levels of state subvention in Turkey has created institutionalized parties. Although the current provisions and eligibility criteria for the public funding of parties are to the detriment of smaller parties, they still guarantee stable resources for bigger parties and prevent further fragmentation.

Finally, religious and ethnic issues have determined the fault lines of political party practice in Turkey; therefore, ideological polarization has constituted a critical part of politics, since it is much more difficult to resolve such issues through rational bargaining (Özbudun, 2000). A recent survey has also demonstrated that a high level of centrifugal drive is still present in the electorate (see Baslevent, 2009), and there is highly polarized and widening ideological spread along both religious and ethnic dimensions in the Turkish party system (see Kalaycioglu, 2012). Since polarization, defined as the extent of citizens’ dispersion along the ideological dimension (Dalton, 2008: 908), generates stronger attachments and widespread party identification among their supporters, it works in favour of party institutionalization (Morlino, 1995: 349). Accordingly, in Turkey, the extent of ideological polarization reinforced by religious and ethnic cleavages has also had a significant impact on the stabilization of parties.

Concluding remarks: Party institutionalization and democratic consolidation?

Although party institutionalization can play a prominent role in ‘providing effective opposition and government accountability’ (Randall, 2006: 34), it hardly constitutes a sufficient condition for democratic consolidation. The case of Turkey, wherein political parties are well institutionalized but still incapable of leading the process of democratic consolidation, evidently demonstrates the limits of ‘party institutionalization’ in pushing democratic consolidation.

More importantly, the analysis of Turkey also sheds light on the problematic relationship between party institutionalization and democracy. On the one hand, several institutional rules that might go against the very idea of democracy, such as a high election threshold, strong party leadership and stable funding only for bigger parties, tend to breed party institutionalization. For instance, a 10 percent election threshold and public funding only for parties that receive 7 percent of votes in Turkey has excluded certain segments of society, particularly the Kurdish population, which has suffered from underrepresentation for a long period of time. Moreover, strong party leadership has curbed intra-party democracy and created authoritarian party structures that have had adverse effects on democratic quality (see Ayan Musil, 2011). In other words, institutional rubrics established under military rule have favoured stronger parties and forced them to develop well-built organizations and stable roots in society, so have created institutionalized parties; however, all of these factors have also damaged the quality of democracy in the country.

On the other hand, ideological polarization, another important factor explaining party development in Turkey, has been detrimental to the prospects for consolidation. In Italy too, polarization had significant influence on the stabilization of parties during the 1960s (see Barnes, 1967; Tarrow, 1967), and yet Italian democracy has been consolidated. However, what differentiates the Turkish case from the Italian consolidation process is that the centrifugal drive present at the mass level was not reflected at the elite level and party leadership had always managed to reach compromises at the critical junctures (Farneti, 1985). Furthermore, especially towards the end of the 1970s, Italian parties established a sound measure of mutual trust at the parliamentary level (Hine, 1990) and during the early 1980s polarization in the party system decreased largely (Morlino, 1998). Conversely, in the Turkish case polarization among mass publics is also reflected at the elite level in the form of harsh confrontation among party leaders, which impairs mutual trust and legitimacy between the main political parties. Several studies of party systems also assert that high polarization at the elite level may intensify conflicts among political parties, which in turn may increase further radicalization over time among leaders and supporters alike (Morlino, 1995: 349). As the recent deadlock in the new constitution-making process demonstrates very well, the elite disunity caused by polarization in Turkey has also jeopardized the democratic framework by disturbing coalescent and accommodative behaviour on the part of party leaders that has critical importance for the process of consolidation.

In sum, it has been argued in this article that party institutionalization does not constitute a key explanatory factor for understanding consolidation processes. Specifically, through analysing the Turkish case it has been demonstrated that there is even an awkward relationship between party institutionalization and democracy, and the positive impact of party institutionalization on democratic consolidation should not be taken for granted. Rather, the ways in which parties are institutionalized needs to be examined thoroughly, since they might have important implications for the nature of democratic politics as well as the process of democratic consolidation. Yet, given the critical functions of political parties in a democratic polity, the relevance of parties to consolidation should not be disregarded. Rather, the broader contention of this article is that the examination of consolidation processes necessitates a deeper look into the workings of the party system as a whole rather than into solely individual party institutionalization.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Prof Sarah Birch for her contributions to earlier versions of this article. I also thank Prof Vicky Randall, Prof Lawrence Ezrow and anonymous reviewers of this journal for their helpful comments and suggestions.

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes

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