Cem Başlevent

Following a brief summary of macroeconomic developments since 2001 and a review of the economic voting literature in the Turkish context, we examine the effect of economic evaluations on the likelihood of Turkish voters to opt for the currently-ruling Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP). In addition to several socio-demographic characteristics and religiosity, our empirical model – estimated using micro data from a 2014 electoral tendency survey – includes both retrospective and prospective economic voting variables. Binary logit estimates provide strong evidence in favour of the idea that perceptions and expectations regarding the economy have a considerable impact on the party choice, especially when the voter holds the government responsible for the recent changes in economic conditions. Our findings also suggest that as long as the proportion of voters who are satisfied with their economic conditions is reasonably large, the AKP will remain at the centre stage of Turkish politics for at least another term.

Using data from the fourth round of the European Social Survey, we investigate the determinants of the individual union membership decision, focusing on the role of dispositional—as opposed to situational—factors. We argue that the battery of items in Schwartz's (1992) theory of basic personal values is relevant in the context of unionism and can be used to test the validity of certain elements of existing theories. We further claim that the use of basic values in this context is an effective way of operationalizing the role of societal interests embedded in the rational choice explanations for union membership. The econometric work—which features a three-way outcome variable identifying current, former and never-members—reveals that, along with socio-demographic, ideological, firm-level and sectoral characteristics, basic values are closely related to union membership status. While higher self-transcendence and conservation scores are associated with a greater likelihood of being a current member, higher openness-to-change and self-enhancement scores have the opposite effect.

The purpose of this study is to re-examine the factors that shape party preferences in Turkey by estimating an individual vote intention function. The economic variables in the empirical model are items that can be used to test the conventional `economic voting' hypotheses, i.e. whether individuals' economic evaluations about the past or the near future affect their party choice. In an earlier article, based on data from 2002, evidence was found in favour of these hypotheses. Those who had been affected adversely by the economic crisis of 2001 were found to be very unlikely to vote for the incumbent parties of the time. In the present article, we focus on comparing the characteristics of the intended voters of the currently ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) with those of other parties. According to multinomial logit estimates, those who make the more optimistic evaluations about the state of the economy are more likely to vote for the AKP. There is also an obvious increase in the number of AKP voters who support Turkey's European Union membership.

The purpose of this note is to clarify what is meant by the ‘proportionate contribution’ of an income source to total inequality when the contributions of income sources are examined contemporaneously as opposed to simply measuring the impact of the addition (or exclusion) of an income source. It is shown that the proportionate contribution figures that come out of decomposition by factor components analyses need to be interpreted with caution. They may be misleading if one ignores the fact that those figures depend on the shares of the factors in total income. Another problem could be that the equalizing effect of a relatively more equally distributed factor is overlooked in the interest of treating the factors simultaneously.