Why Do Voters Care About Formal Institutions in Nondemocratic Systems? The Local Elections in Turkey

The literature that studies formal political institutions in nondemocratic regimes initially focused on the role of legislatures and other power sharing mechanisms. Then, the analysis expanded to include political parties, federalism and even courts. However, given the dominance of elites in the politics of nondemocratic regimes, most of the research so far tried to shed light on the incentives of rulers for introducing these institutions that we associate with democratic regimes, especially those related to elections and power sharing (Lagace and Gandhi 2015). In competitive authoritarian regimes, however, some of these institutions exist, but deteriorate over time. In such a context, what are the perceptions of citizens regarding the role of these institutions? Given the inability of the rulers to commit to noninterference, do citizens expect formal political institutions to make a difference in policy choice and outcomes? Empirically we explore this question with a survey experiment from the pre-election survey of June 2019 repeat elections for the mayor’s position in Istanbul. Focusing on the local government in a centralized system offers an opportunity to investigate the role of institutions in a highly unlikely setting. We find that policy expectations of incumbent party (AKP) supporters change when a cue makes them consider which party gained the majority in the municipal council as a result of the March 2019 local elections. We discuss various possible mechanisms for this finding, including the possibility that supporters of the incumbents in competitive authoritarian regimes have a biased, positive evaluation of the political system in terms of its democratic credentials.