Containing the opposition : selective representation in Jordan and Turkey

How does elite manipulation of election mechanisms affect the representation of political regime opponents? While the spread of elections has reached all the continents, the number of actual democracies has not increased at a comparable rate. If anything, observers have learned that the presence of elections in a country does not necessarily mean that it is also a democracy. This thesis addresses an underexplored topic in the study of electoral politics: the manipulation of election systems in order to achieve selective representation. I focus on the experience of opposition parties in two cases, Jordan and Turkey, an autocracy and a democracy, to analyze the impact of engineered election mechanisms on their representation. I contend that parties in power exploit the rules of the electoral game to contain their opposition. This is done by different mechanisms, depending on the makeup of the country and the options available to the manipulators. Mechanisms of electoral systems are used to reduce the representation of groups that are considered a threat, and to amplify the representation of those groups that the regime would like to strengthen. Analyzing the effect of malapportioned seats and the use of a single non-transferable voting system in Jordan on the Islamic Action Front Party (IAF), the main political rival to traditional tribal politicians, I expose the power of these targeted electoral mechanisms for control. Examining how the 10% national election threshold in Turkey affects representation of the Islamist political parties in the Grand National Assembly uncovers the distorting effect of this universal mechanism on representation.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Political Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2009

Author dc:creator

• Wakeman, Raffaela Lisette

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Orit Kedar.

• Political Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/53083

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/53083