Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development party (AKP) won the presidential election in Turkey on Sunday. Erdogan – serving as President or as Prime Minister of Türkiye for the past 20 years – has just been given another five-year term by Türkiye’s voters despite actively undermining the country’s democratic institutions, reducing the accountability of government to voters, and weakening checks and balances, especially through the judiciary. Though this was his closest election so far, he still emerged as the popular choice of Turkish voters.
The Turkish election has demonstrated patterns seen among voters and authoritarian leaders elsewhere. Lula de Silva won the Brazilian presidential election by a very small margin in Oct 2022, and his opponent, outgoing President Bolsonaro, widely seen as another authoritarian leader, clocked almost half of all Brazilian votes (50.9 and 49.1 percent respectively in the run-off election). Prime Minister Modi in India oversaw India’s downgrading from a robust democracy to an electoral autocracy by all major democracy indices, and yet the general sense is that his party will likely win the election in 2024. Why do voters vote for authoritarian leaders, when, by definition, authoritarian voters aim to disempower those voting for them?
What voters value
Some voters value politicians that deliver on improved infrastructure and service delivery, with which Erdogan is credited. Other voters value a turn towards more conservative and religious values when they feel society might be heading in a direction with which they are uncomfortable. Erdogan has also done that with a shift from the secularism of Ataturk towards more Islamic values. But there are also other factors that explain the electoral popularity of authoritarian leaders.
One of the most popular explanations has to do with the economy. Modernisation theory-based explanations of democratisation tell us that as incomes improved, people wanted a seat at the decision-making table through more representation and better participation and accountability. It is possible that the opposite is also true. As people’s real incomes decline, they may look to more authoritarian leaders for more decisive (rather than more inclusive) solutions and policymaking. This is the explanation that connects the last 13-14 years of democratic backsliding to the impact of the 2008 financial crisis. We are once again in a cost-of-living crisis, and Türkiye has hyperinflation, a devaluing currency, and low foreign reserves. Erdogan’s policies have contributed directly to this economic crisis, and yet, media coverage of voter reactions suggests that people still see him as the leader that will pull them out of the crisis.
Votes determined by insecurity
This is connected to another explanation that I would like to advance – that voting decisions are determined not by inequality but by insecurity. As living conditions worsen for voters, they turn to ‘strongman’ leaders for answers, even when these leaders may be responsible for the damaging policies. Instead, the blame falls on ‘others’, most usually immigrants and minorities, often blamed by leaders themselves for a lack of jobs, declining incomes, rising prices, and increasing inequality. Economic inequality becomes closely enmeshed with socio-economic insecurity, with increasing suspicion of ethnic, religious, or sexual groups that are seen as different.
The autocratising politician can use this to project themselves as the leader with the guts to take decisive and often cruel action. In contrast, more inclusive and softer political rhetoric, from more liberal political opponents can play badly among some sections of the public, and authoritarians can use that to their advantage to win tight contests. This has played out by the book in Türkiye – Erdogan has consistently vilified and promised to take action against Türkiye’s over four million Syrian and Afghan refugees, its Kurdish minority, and LGBTQI+ groups. But more striking was his liberal opponent, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, taking a hardline nationalist turn against immigrants after the first round of the election concluded with a larger than expected margin in favour of Erdogan (49 to 45 percent). Autocratisation may be led as much by authoritarian leaders as it is by the preferences, fears, and discontent of voters.
Understanding deeper causes
That leaves us with the question of why such nativism is the preference of a good number of voters in autocratising, and other, countries? Part of this, as explained above, is because politicians weaponise fear for political gain. In this they are aided by mainstream media – this is true of both Erdogan in Turkey and Modi in India, who both control influential media houses and the narrative put out through these. But what makes voters susceptible to these narratives? Some of it, as above, may be because of recent economic insecurity, but a good part may be the result of deeper causes.
IDS research has recorded closing civic spaces over the decade of democratic backsliding and over the pandemic (What Does Closing Civic Space Mean for Development?, Repertoires of the Possible: Citizen Action in Challenging Settings, Navigating Civic Space, and The Implications of Civic Space for the Sustainable Development Goals), and annual V-Dem democracy reports have established that of the two main aggregate measures of democracy – contestation and liberalisation – it is on the latter, on civil liberties, that the world is regressing more. Leaders are clamping down both on civil society organisations and free expression and this is creating shrinking effects on spaces for engagement and collectivisation.
Increasing polarisation
But it may go even deeper. In the Crisis of Democracy (2019), for example, Przeworski implicates the capitalist logic of Thatcherism and Reaganism for pulling apart development policies that centred on unions and social protection. The unravelling of developmental mechanisms that rested on collectivisation and state-led safety nets have led to a polarisation centred around inequality, but with a twist.
Citizens have drawn apart to different ends of a narrative and closed ranks there not around class-based concerns, but around social media aided discontents that look for ‘others’ to blame for their disenfranchisement and increasingly more difficult lives. Left-leaning and liberal politicians that directed money to the very poor, ethnic and sexual minorities, immigrants, and even women’s causes in some cases, came to be viewed as part of the problem.
More and more we have heard voters say they voted for the authoritarian ‘strongman’ because there was no alternative, in Turkey, India, Brazil, and beyond. But there was an alternative candidate and a strong alternative narrative. Why is this not visible? Because polarisation empties out the opposing narrative and makes it non-existent. To make these narratives visible as viable options, we need to deal with the issues that polarise. The answers lie in economic security, collectivisation, and organising across divides.
