Comparative Politics

Session: B14(b) - Deconsolidation Panels: Semi-Authoritarianism

Date: Jun 1, 2017 | Time: 01:30pm to 03:00pm | Location: VIC-209 (Victoria Building)| iOS / Outlook

Chair/Présidente: Juan Wang (McGill University)

Discussant/Commentatrice: Juan Wang (McGill University)

Participants & Authors/Auteurs:

Marella Bodur Un (Cukurova University), Hasan Caglar Basol (Cukurova University) : Elite and Media Framing of the Gezi Park Movement in Turkey
Abstract: Over the past few years, social movements around the world (e.g. Indignados in Spain, Occupy Wall Street in the US, and the İstanbul Gezi Movement) demanded social and economic justice and real democracy. This study focuses on the Gezi movement in Turkey that started as a peaceful demonstration against an urban planning project and spread to the other cities as an anti-government campaign. The study explores “non-movement framing” by analyzing the ways in which the Gezi Movement was represented by the mainstream media and political elites in Turkey. To this end, prominent Turkish newspapers, representing different political camps, are examined to uncover their framing practices, which are compared to the portrayal of the movement by Turkish political elites. The study aims to answer the following questions: How did the major mainstream newspapers portray the Gezi movement? How did political elites frame the Gezi Park protests? Were the media frames constructed by the Turkish newspapers consistent with the interests of the political elites? The study reveals that different frames were employed by the newspapers to depict the movement, and through their framing practices the mass-media played an important role in shaping the public perception of the Gezi movement. The study also reveals the existence of multiple, competing frames sponsored by different actors, including the mass media, politicians and protestors. The theoretical framework of this paper draws on Teun A. Van Dijk’s discourse analysis and the literature on social movements.

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Andrew Basso (University of Calgary) : The Rise of Semi-Authoritarian Politics in Russia, Rwanda, and Turkey: Implications for the Study of 21st Century Democracy
Abstract: There is a new wave of anti-democratic politics threatening democracies worldwide. While much attention is being paid to the nativist populism in countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Hungary, there is a critical gap in understanding the rise of semi-authoritarian politics in democracies located beyond the Western world. Russia, Rwanda, and Turkey are undergoing profound and long-lasting political shifts towards semi-authoritarianism. Russia's Vladimir Putin has, over the past two decades of post-Soviet Russia, consolidated and centralized formal and informal individual and institutional powers to himself. Similarly, Rwanda's Paul Kagame has been centralizing power to himself over the past 23 years since the 1994 Rwandan Genocide largely by exploiting the public memory of the atrocities. Finally, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has slowly consolidated political power to himself. The recent failed coup attempt and subsequent firing of over 100,000 public sector employees can be understood as nothing but illegitimately destroying opposition to his increasingly repressive rule. These three leaders have centralized power and undermined democracy by creating cults of personality around their constructed strongman political personas, exploited and rewritten history for current hypernationalism to manufacture political homogeneity, and have attempted to hide their centralizations of power behind democratic institutions which they frequently tamper with. Guided by Marina Ottaway's identification of semi-authoritarian governance, this paper analyzes democratic breakdowns in Russia, Rwanda, and Turkey to understand the tenuousness and fragility of democracy and the foreseeable implications of these democratic breakdowns moving forward.

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Qinghua Yi (Simon Fraser University) : Democracy with Chinese Characters? Evidence from China’s Government Innovation Programs
Abstract: This paper contributes to recent debates on whether adoption of democratic mechanism in authoritarian regimes is a sign of authoritarian resilience or initiation of democratization. Conducting textual analysis on China’s government innovation programs (2000-2014), I present a mixed picture: for programs show signs of democratization (measured by the frequency of democracy or terms related to democratic values), government control (measured by the frequency of government related terms) is also emphasized in their implementation. I further use multivariate analysis to identify the impact of education, economic development, social pressure on the democratic quality of these programs (measured by a combination of democratization and government control.

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