Dissertation project
Why do autocrats target one group of the elite under an economic crisis rather than others for financial repression?
Read more:
Under protracted economic crises, authoritarian co-optative systems often become untenable. Economic crises put constraints on available resources and the range of policy options at the regime’s disposal. As a response, if autocrats lack access to other natural resources, they must ramp up repression and reduce the winning coalition’s size. In other words, under economic constraints, autocrats do not just repress opponents but also coerce allies and purge them out of the power-sharing arrangements. This shift in gears, however, is not of choice but necessity. Under resource constraints, an autocrat must prioritize one group of close allies over the others to keep the support coalition intact. Yet, we still know very little about who exactly autocrats decide to kick out from the ruling coalition and target with repression under resource constraints. This is the gap my dissertation aims to fill.
First, I argue that under resource constraints, autocrats’ hands may be tied regarding whom they can sideline from the ruling coalition. Their political economies may structurally determine the menu of options available. The targeting decisions of repression are contingent on the regime's economic growth strategy and the type of economic crisis that the country is going through. That is why the economic sector that a business elite operates in and their firm's characteristics shape a dictator's decisions on financial coercion. In other words, beyond perceptions of threat and loyalty, there are certain political economy considerations at play.
Secondly, autocrats employ polarization in tandem with repression of the business elite to justify their policies by tapping into anti-business public sentiment. Public support is a key mechanism here because elite purges and repression are often coupled with legitimation efforts around these coercive acts to hedge against a potential elite dissent. Because the co-opted business elite is often perceived as corrupt by the masses, marked by easened bureaucratic regulations, preferential treatments, and lucrative public contracts, autocrats exploit polarized environments to quickly stigmatize an in-group member of the business elite working in a co-opted industry and blame them for pressing economic problems. That means autocrats may find it easier to enlist public support for ousting previously co-opted allies in politicized and co-opted sectors with a long history of receiving public bids. Polarization is a useful tool of political technology, especially in times of dwindling resources, since it provides maneuvering room for the autocrat to calibrate the existing ruling coalition and justify expropriation and economic coercion.
Peer-reviewed publications
(2023) Out of sight, out of mind: The impact of lockdown measures on sentiment towards refugees. Journal of Information Technology & Politics (March): 1-10 (with Amir Abdul Reda and Amine Aboussalah).
Abstract:
How did COVID-19 related movement restrictions impact sentiment toward refugees? Existing theories offer conflicting answers. On the one hand, contact theories suggest that movement restrictions might reduce casual interactions with refugees, leading to less negative sentiments. On the other hand, integrated threat theories suggest refugees may be perceived as a security threat and blamed for these movement restrictions in the first place. To gauge the effect of movement restrictions, we investigate the effect of physical isolation on sentiments toward refugees in Turkey by using a novel dataset. We use Google Mobility Reports’ measurements of movement and our measures of sentiments toward refugees using refugee-related tweets from Turkey. Statistical analysis shows that xenophobic sentiment generally decreased during the pandemic. Our study shows that different types of reduced mobility correlate with increased sympathy toward refugees: the more people stay at home, the more positive sentiments toward refugees they exhibit on Twitter. We conclude by proposing two possible causal mechanisms for these findings. The findings suggest that the absence of casual contact with refugees may yield less negative sentiment, and/or that a rally around the flag mechanism yields unprecedented levels of social solidarity in response to the pandemic.
(2022) Containing ethnic conflict: Repression, cooptation, and identity politics. Comparative Politics 54(4): 765-86 (with Ceren Belge). [replication]
Abstract:
Why do states target some civilians with collective punishment while coopting others with material goods during an ethnic civil war? This article examines how the Turkish government calibrated its repression and cooptation policies towards the Kurdish population during the counterinsurgency of the 1990s. In contrast to the situational conflict dynamics emphasized by the civil war literature, we explain the distribution of cooptation and repression with the state's identity policy: government policies were more punitive in areas that displayed strong Kurdish linguistic/political identity, or high tribal concentration, while they were more cooptative where the government had fostered a Sunni-Muslim Kurdish identity. The study is based on a novel dataset that includes information about displacement, tribal concentration, and violent events from archival sources.
(2021) Mobilizing the masses: Measuring resource mobilization on Twitter. Sociological Methods & Research (February): 1-40 (with Amir Abdul Reda and Mohamed Abdalla).
Abstract:
How can we measure the resource mobilization (RM) efforts of social movements on Twitter? In this article, we create the first-ever measure of social movements’ RM efforts on a social media platform. To this aim, we create a four-conditional lexicon that can parse through tweets and identify those concerned with RM. We also create a simple RM score that can be plotted in a time series format to track the RM efforts of social movements in real-time. We use our tools with millions of tweets from the United States streamed between November 28, 2018, and February 11, 2019, to demonstrate how our measure can help us estimate the saliency and persistency of social movements’ RM efforts. We find that our measure captures RM by successfully cross-checking the variation of this score against protest events in the United States during the same time frame. Finally, we illustrate the descriptive and qualitative utility of our tools for understanding social movements by running conventional topic modeling algorithms on the tweets that were used to compute the RM score and point at specific avenues for theory building and testing.
Under review
(2021) Divided at home, divided abroad? Affective polarization and political tolerance among migrants (with Selin Kepenek). [replication]
Abstract:
How does polarization at home shape social network formation and political tolerance among immigrants? The existing scholarship suggests that networks with co-nationals in the country of destination can potentially provide a ‘haven’ for newcomers and facilitate their search for jobs, accommodation, and social connections. However, the impact of polarization in the home country on these everyday interactions between immigrants is understudied. We conducted survey experiments using a novel visual treatment of fake Facebook profiles. Our results indicate that home country polarization between regime supporters and opponents travels abroad. Under high polarization in the home country, anti-government immigrants are significantly less likely to help and socially engage with government-supporting co-nationals and tolerate political activities in the host country. However, despite high political polarization at home between anti-government groups, this divisiveness disappears abroad, as they are as likely to support, politically tolerate, and socially engage with each other. The findings offer insight into the mechanisms through which polarization at home can diffuse abroad and how contextual factors can mitigate affective polarization.
Working papers
(2023) Taming the paper tiger? A political economy of support for the repression of the business elite.
Abstract:
Why do autocrats financially repress some allies but not others during an economic crisis? When too many foxes are in the henhouse, an autocrat may purge his allies in bad times and shrink the winning coalition. However, it is a risky enterprise. If he targets the wrong elite, it may backfire and trigger coups and dissent. Despite the high risk, we still do not know much about precisely who autocrats are likely to sideline from the ruling coalition. I suggest that the autocrat’s business allies are a politically expedient target during economic crises because the people perceive the co-opted business elite as corrupt. Given their low public popularity, the autocrat may justifiably blame the greedy business elite for the country’s economic woes. To develop a framework for public support for repression, I focus on Turkey as a case – a highly polarized country that has experienced a protracted financial crisis. One novel contribution of this study is the use of visual conjoints. I created fake LinkedIn profiles of hypothetical businesspeople with AI-generated profile pictures and business logos. I measured people’s support for their financial repression, depending on their firm’s characteristics, sectoral affiliations, and partisan attitudes toward the government’s economic policies. The results suggest that public support for financial coercion depends on the regime’s political economy. People are more likely to condone the extra-taxation of the business elite, who owe their success to the regime and are perceived as responsible for the economic crisis. This paper contributes to a growing scholarship on micro-level determinants of autocratic purges, and its findings have broad implications for our understanding of elite defection and autocratic power-sharing arrangements.
(2023) Cross-partisan outreach, political tolerance, and affective polarization in Turkey (with Michael Donnelly).
Abstract:
How do opposition parties achieve depolarization against populist autocratic incumbents? Which depolarization strategies are effective? We examine the impact of opposition parties’ cross-partisan post-disaster relief aid on affective polarization and political tolerance, and whether government counterpropaganda mitigates its impact. To that aim, we conducted in-person survey experiments in Turkey. This highly polarized country recently went through natural disasters, including floods and wildfires. By randomizing the partisan identity of the aid recipients, our study measures the heterogenous treatment effects of depolarization strategies on different partisan groups in the context of an electoral autocracy. The results indicate that such strategies may be more effective in boosting political tolerance of the opposition rather than reducing affective polarization.
(2023) Authoritarian power-sharing and information leaks (with Sahib Jafarov).
Abstract:
How do autocrats manufacture public support for their repression of the elite? There is an extant scholarship on how autocratic regimes manage the information environment. However, we still know very little about the effectiveness of such information management strategies in creating mass support for autocratic repression. One such understudied tactic that autocrats frequently use is to leak compromising information about their target in advance of their coercive act to rally support. However, this tactic may backfire: leaks erode trust among the elites, signal to the opposition that there are divisions within the ruling coalition, and also serve as rallying points for popular uprisings against the regime. Given these inherent risks, the frequent employment of such strategies by autocrats is puzzling. We propose that information leaks serve as an effective tool to manipulate mass support, thereby allowing for the effective repression of ruling elites under autocracies. Our argument is twofold: First, when an autocrat leaks kompromat in advance of their coercion to fight corruption or cite national security reasons, their public support often surges, enabling the autocrat for power grabs and increasing personalism. However, such revelations generally erode the public's confidence in the regime's performative legitimacy and diminish trust in its institutions. In other words, information leaks serve as a double-edged sword.
Ongoing research
(2023) The impact of fiction on support for repression (with Michael Donnelly).
Abstract:
We collected experimental data in Turkey using TV series clips as visual treatments to assess the effect of ultra-nationalist/militarist fiction/TV series on public support for autocratic repression and cross-border military operations.
(2023) The determinants of business support for authoritarianism.
Abstract:
Why does the business elite defect? On the one hand, it’s a risky enterprise to challenge an autocratic incumbent, as the threat of expropriation, imprisonment, or any other type of repression is real. On the other hand, the business elite sometimes does defect from autocratic regimes and in some cases, even spearheads the social mobilization against them. What determines this variation? Using the V-DEM data, I analyze the determinants of business opposition to autocratic regimes.
(2023) The determinants of defection in civil wars: Survey experiments with rebel groups in Myanmar (with POSTCOR).
Abstract:
We will conduct list and conjoint experiments through online surveys with active armed group members in Myanmar and the Philippines to better understand rebel retention. We also hope to establish some priors for future experimental research with active rebel group members. To what extent do they strategically misreport? Are they less attentive compared to the general population? Do they differ in terms of their values/attitudes, including trust in institutions, life satisfaction, and attitudes toward democracy?
(2023) The prosecution of heads of state and democratic backsliding (with Seva Gunitsky).
Selected presentations
(2022) Does Every Cloud Have a Silver Lining? Disasters and Polarization. APSA Annual Conference, Montreal (with Michael Donnelly).
(2020-21) Divided at Home, Divided Abroad? APSA Annual Conference, Seattle; ECPR General Conference (with Selin Kepenek).
(2019) Containing Ethnic Conflict: Repression, Co‑optation, and Identity Politics. ISA Annual Convention, Toronto (with Ceren Belge).
(2014) A Typology of Welfare Regimes in the Middle East and North Africa. ECPR General Conference, Warsaw.
Other research experience
(2022) Preventing civil war recurrence (with POSTCOR Lab).
(2020) Protests, resource curse, and economic diversification (with Jacques Bertrand).