Tosun, Yasemin. “Winner and Loser or Bigger and Smaller: The Role of Party Size on Protest Behavior.”

Revise & Resubmit, Government and Opposition

This study examines how party size influences representational deprivation and protest behavior, moving beyond simple winner/loser status. In European democracies, where coalition governments are prevalent, policymaking often requires compromises among parties with differing issue positions, leading to varying levels of voter representation. Junior coalition parties, overshadowed by majority partners, have limited decision-making influence, which increases the likelihood that their voters will protest to shape policy agendas. However, smaller coalition parties still offer better representation than those in opposition. As a key indicator of a party’s capacity to represent its voters, party size significantly shapes motivations for protest among both government and opposition parties. Using data from eight waves of the European Social Survey (2004-2018), we find that voters of junior coalition parties are more likely to protest than those of senior coalition partners. Additionally, smaller party size correlates with a higher probability of protest participation, particularly among opposition party voters.

The election law, amended shortly before the announcement of the snap presidential and parliamentary elections in June 2018, provides the Supreme Election Council (SEC) of Turkey with the authority to move or merge polling stations as per local authorities’ requests. As a particular type of electoral manipulation, we argue, this requires affected voters to travel long distances to reach their designated polling stations and significantly increases their cost of voting. This study asks how the Council’s related decisions, which affected no less than 100,000 voters, influenced their turnout and voting behaviors. Our novel geocoded precinct-level dataset allows us to compare the relocated polling stations with others that were proposed (but denied) and that were the designated targets by local authorities. We first investigate whether the selection of the proposed, relocated, and target stations were in line with the legal criteria and SEC’s jurisdiction. We then match the target stations with those with similar geographic and political attributes to assess the causal effect of the SEC’s decisions on affected citizens’ turnout and voting behaviors. The findings suggest a strategic selection of target stations and provide empirical support for our expectations that relocating the polling stations substantially decreased voter turnout and influenced the incumbent and its strongest competitor’s vote shares. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings from the perspectives of democratic representation, electoral manipulation, and competitive authoritarianism.

This study examines online political behavior in Turkey, where social media significantly influences political discourse and often heightens polarization. We use the Secim2023 dataset, collected between March 17 and June 12, 2023, from over 25 million users, to explore these dynamics. By applying the Bayesian Point Estimation model, we capture the ideological positions of Twitter users in our dataset and observe how these positions cluster around specific topics during the 2023 Turkish National Elections. By examining patterns of issue sharing among social media users, this study seeks to understand how ideological alignment shapes the dissemination of political content and highlights how ideological differences manifest across various topics, offering insights into the dynamics of polarization in Turkey. Our approach stands out by employing an extensive range of topics, from economic to security issues, along with a comprehensive dataset capturing political behavior around the most recent general elections in Turkey. These novelties allow us to analyze online behavior across a wide array of political issues that genuinely matter to Turkish citizens. The analyses not only uncover the extent of political polarization by observing clusters around ideological points on different topics but also contribute to broader discussions on the role of social media in shaping public opinion and political polarization.

A conjoint survey experiment in this study examines how election timing and the perceived chance of winning shape individuals’ preferences for engaging in protests. This approach provides a structured framework to assess the factors influencing the choice between institutionalized forms of participation, such as voting, and unconventional actions like protesting. By systematically varying attributes related to elections and protests in hypothetical scenarios, the experiment captures the complex trade-offs individuals consider when deciding how to express their political grievances. This method situates protest behavior within the broader context of electoral cycles, highlighting the dynamic interplay between opportunities for institutionalized and non-institutionalized political engagement. The research contributes to the literature by testing how individual preferences respond to changing political opportunities, offering insights into the conditions under which citizens prioritize one form of participation over another.