Browsing by Author "İnan, Murat"

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Proximity or Directional Model of Voting for the Turkish Voter?
(HİTİT ÜNİVERSİTESİ, 2024) İnan, Murat; Arıkan Akdağ, Gül; 0000-0001-7554-6217; AGÜ, İnsan ve Toplum Bilimleri Fakültesi, Siyaset Bilimi ve Uluslararası İlişkiler Bölümü; İnan, Murat
Voting behavior is a very complex type of political behavior. Therefore, understanding why voters vote for a particular political party or a candidate requires developing complex models. In 1957, Anthony Downs, who built his model on Hottelings’ and Smithies’ models, argued that political parties’ and candidates’ ideological and issue positions can be expressed on a one-dimensional space. On one hand, it was highly reductionist to argue that political ideas on a particular issue can be expressed this way, on the other, it was highly practical from analytical point of view. Locating parties, candidates and voters on a one-dimensional space according to their ideological or issue positions was then a revolutionaly idea and helped comparing party, candidate and voter ideological and issue positions within and across countries. These models, which were called spatial models of party competition were further developed over time and helped understanding voting behavior. Currently, spatial models of party competition have two major competing models linking voter ideological positions with party ideological positions. Simply, while the proximity model proposes that voters vote for the parties or candidates that hold ideological positions in the political space that are closest to their own, the directional model suggests that the voters vote for the parties or candidates that are on their side of the two-dimensional political spectrum and more extreme than their own while being within the acceptability region. This research aims to test the applicability of these two voting models for the Turkish voter. Türkiye constitutes an interesting case study with its long-term PR electoral system as it was suggested in the extant literature that proximity model is a more appropriate tool to explain voting behavior in Proportional (PR) systems. Thus, we hypothesize that in Türkiye, where a PR electoral system is in effect for parliamentary elections, voter electoral preferences are better explained by the proximity model than the directional model. Our research analyzes Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) data for voters of the four major political parties in Türkiye, the Justice and Development Party (JDP), the Republican People’s Party (RPP), the National Action Party (NAP), and the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). A series of Multiple Linear Regression Analyses were conducted to reveal associations between the dependent and the independent variables. Voter embracement, as expressed as like-dislike of each political party for each voter, is seperately used as the dependent variable for each analysis. Issue distance and issue scalar product were used as key independent variables representing the formulas for the proximity and the directional models, respectively. Additionally, education, age, gender and income were recruited as classical control variables. Comparing explanatory powers of the statistical models showed that, contrary to the findings of MacDonald and his colleagues, the proximity model of voting is a more appropriate tool than the directional model to explain voting behavior in Türkiye. From a macro-political perspective, this finding supports Westholm’s (1997) argument that the PR provides a more appropriate tool to explain voting behavior in PR systems. Yet, it should be noted that further multi-country comperative analyses required for certain results.
Tracing Trajectories of Regime Support in Turkey
(EGE UNIV, FAC ECONOMICS & ADMIN SCIENCESDEPT BUSINESS ADMIN, BORNOVA, 35100, TURKEY, 2022) Inan, Murat; AGÜ, İnsan ve Toplum Bilimleri Fakültesi, Siyaset Bilimi ve Uluslararası İlişkiler Bölümü; İnan, Murat
According to the legitimacy approach of political culture research, public’s approval of a particular regime as the best form of government and rejection of its alternatives provides public support for that particular regime. This research attempted to trace temporal trajectories of approval of democratic political system as well as it’s three alternative forms of government among the electorates of recent three major political parties in Turkey, the Justice and Development Party (AKP), the Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). It also revealed the extent these parties’ manifesto documents praise democratic political system across the successive eighteen general elections in the modern Turkish political history. It revealed the changes in both public and party support for four alternative regimes across years in modern Turkish history. This research analyzed the World Values Survey and the Manifesto Project data using quantitative research methods. It has achieved four main findings. First, voters are more stable than their parties across time in terms of pro-democracy. Second, democracy clearly emerges as the strongest alternative among the four alternative regimes for all the three electorates. Third, supporting democracy and rejecting its three alternatives occupy different places in the minds of the three party electorates. Fourth, changes in the three political parties’ pro-democracy as identified in their manifesto documents are not always parallel with changes in those of their voters.
TWO DIMENSIONS OF INTERPERSONAL TOLERANCE: THEIR PREVALENCE AND ETIOLOGY IN WORLD CIVILIZATIONS
(Rasim Özgür Dönmez, 2019) İnan, Murat; 0000-0001-7554-6217; AGÜ, İnsan ve Toplum Bilimleri Fakültesi, Siyaset Bilimi ve Uluslararası İlişkiler Bölümü; İnan, Murat
This research provides three additional insights into the concept of tolerance. First, it provides empirical insights to the previous research, distinguishing between two dimensions of tolerance; political tolerance and social tolerance. Second, it investigates the extent these two dimensions of tolerance prevail in different civilizations in the world. Third, it shows how etiology of tolerance differs across civilizations. In short, this research shows that tolerance of national and religious groups differs from tolerance of social groups in both kind and degree and investigates to what extent the prevalence and etiology of these two dimensions of tolerance differ across civilizations. In this research time series evidence from subsequent rounds of the World Values Survey (WVS) for over seventy countries are analysed using Ordered Probit models.