What is it about?
How civil society organizations (CSOs) affect political candidate recruitment. This paper shows that CSOs can play a direct role in elections by promoting new candidates. CSOs that represent material interests, such as resource-rich business associations and vote-rich identity groups, have significant influence over parties when selecting candidates. Issue-oriented CSOs have less impact.
Featured Image
Why is it important?
This article shows that civil society organizations have a direct impact on elections. They are not just arenas of civic participation. They negotiate with parties, enable clientelist bargains, and promote new politicians. Their role in democratic politics is more direct and potentially influential than previously thought.
Perspectives
This article won the 2016 Frank Cass Award for Best Article by a Young Scholar published in Democratization. I think it does a good job of showing how civil society organizations can be just as political as parties, and engage in clientelist bargains while promoting individual politicians. It also provides some new insights on local politics in Turkey, especially in the industrial periphery of Istanbul.
Feryaz Ocakli
Skidmore College
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Political entrepreneurs, clientelism, and civil society: supply-side politics in Turkey, Democratization, March 2015, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/13510347.2015.1013467.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
