When do workers support executive aggrandizement? Lessons from the recent Turkish experience

• Published date: 01 March 2022
• Author: Fulya Apaydin,Ferit Serkan Öngel,Jonas W. Schmid,Erol Ülker
• Date: 01 March 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/irj.12360

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

When do workers support executive

aggrandizement? Lessons from the recent

Turkish experience

Fulya Apaydin

1

| Ferit Serkan Öngel

2

| Jonas W. Schmid

3

|

Erol Ülker

4

1

Institut Barcelona d'Estudis

Internacionals, Barcelona, Spain

2

Kamu Yönetimi Bölümü, Kentles¸me ve

Çevre SorunlarıAnabilim Dalı, Gaziantep

Üniversitesi _

Islahiye _

I_

IBF, Islahiye-

Gaziantep, Turkey

3

University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

4

Faculty of Economics and

Administrative Sciences, Department of

International Relations, Is¸ık University,

S¸ile/Istanbul, Turkey

Correspondence

Fulya Apaydin, Institut Barcelona

d'Estudis Internacionals, Carrer de

Ramon Trias Fargas 25-27, UPF

Ciutadella Campus, Barcelona 08005,

Spain.

Email: fapaydin@ibei.org

Funding information

Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation

and Universities (MICINN), Grant/Award

Number: PGC2018-093719-A-I00

Abstract

Following the 2017 constitutional referendum under

the Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi (Justice and Develop-

ment Party-AKP) rule in Turkey, the reforms granted

judicial and legislative powers to the head of the execu-

tive under a presidential system. Initial observations

reveal that some blue-collar workers who are members

of a historically progressive union have also supported

these reforms. This is surprising because the union

leadership has publicly opposed these changes. What

explains this discrepancy? Why did some of these

workers support reforms in favour of a powerful execu-

tive? Based on a sample from a major metalworking

union, this paper finds that partisan identity moderates

support for AKP's push for challenging the separation

of powers. Although we find that higher amount of

debt may reduce worker support for stronger executive,

this is conditional on the metal workers' pre-existing

partisan commitments. Under these circumstances,

highly indebted partisan workers do not diverge from

the party line. These results also raise further questions

for students of labour and regime change elsewhere in

the developing world.

DOI: 10.1111/irj.12360

© 2022 Brian Towers (BRITOW) and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

142 Ind. Relat. 2022;53:142–159.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/irj

1|INTRODUCTION

The 2017 constitutional referendum marked a major change that pushed executive aggran-

dizement under the Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi (Justice and Development Party-AKP) rule

in Turkey. Recent scholarship classifies this change as the beginning of authoritarian con-

solidation (Akçay, 2021; Ocakli, 2021). Initial findings reveal that there has been consider-

able support for these reforms among the members of a historically progressive union—

Birlesik Metal-Is.

1

This is surprising because the union leadership has publicly opposed

these changes.

2

What explains this discrepancy? Why did some of these workers support

Erdogan's bid for presidential system where power is predominantly concentrated in the

executive?

We think this is an important question for two reasons. First, the size of the Turkish work-

ing class is not inconsequential.

3

This group constitutes a diverse, but politically important

cleavage whose behaviour influences electoral outcomes (Öztürk, 2018).

4

In the industrial sec-

tor where manufacturing wages have grown yet received a lesser share of the pie, most workers

have increasingly found themselves mired in debt as a result of policies that prioritized credit-

driven growth.

5

In this context, the fact that even a sizeable percentage of rank-and-file mem-

bers of historically progressive unions offer support for this change begs a more systematic

explanation.

Much of the existing work that explores the link between unions and the political behaviour

of workers focuses on cases in advanced industrialized democracies. In the context of the

United States, most findings suggest that unions do not simply channel the political orientation

of the rank-and-file, but they also affect the policy choices of their members (Kim &

Margalit, 2017). Proposed mechanisms include greater political discussion in the workplace and

the direct provision of information by the union management (Macdonald, 2021). In particular,

the traditional forms of communication between the union leaders and the members encourage

workers to align themselves with the official line of the management when casting their vote

for presidential candidates in the United States (Juravich & Shergold, 1988). Other works based

on evidence from Switzerland and the United Kingdom suggest that political transformation of

the workers may well begin before becoming a member (e.g. via exchanges with union mem-

bers and/or leaders), and the impact of the union may be more pronounced once the worker

becomes a card-carrying member (Hadziabdic & Baccaro, 2020). However, these explanations

are unable to account for the empirical puzzle at hand: among workers organized under

Birlesik Metal-Is, a convergence between individual political preferences of the rank-and-file

and the union does not seem to be the case.

In this study, we seek to explore why some rank-and-file members diverge from the official

line of the union management by exploiting a unique and original dataset that includes granu-

lar information on randomly sampled workers who are organized under a major metal workers

union in Turkey. In doing so, we follow recent studies (e.g. Hadziabdic & Baccaro, 2020) that

put the focus on dynamics that affect the political preferences of the workers beyond the union.

Based on this sample from Birlesik Metal-Is, this paper reveals that partisan identity is critical

to understand the support for Erdogan's reforms among these workers.

6

These findings further

speak to the growing literature that highlight partisanship as an electoral stabilizer in unstable

democracies, where partisan polarization may further prevent voters from critically assessing

early signs of democratic backsliding due to hardening of ideological positions (Çakır, 2020;

Graham & Svolik, 2020). Specifically, although we find that higher amount of debt may reduce

worker support for presidentialism, this is conditional on workers' pre-existing partisan

WHEN DO WORKERS SUPPORT EXECUTIVE AGGRANDIZEMENT?

LESSONS FROM THE RECENT TURKISH EXPERIENCE

143