Endorsing Takeover: Elite Support for Regime Personalization in Turkey

Why do some regime elites endorse incumbents’ moves to dismantle executive constraints, even at the risk of their own marginalization? This article develops a novel theory of elite endorsement for incumbent takeovers. We argue that elites’ incentives to provide endorsements depend on their positions within the regime hierarchy. Central elites, who benefit most from the existing power-sharing arrangement, risk losing influence and autonomy if the leader personalizes power. In contrast, peripheral elites stand to gain from the disruption of established hierarchies and face greater risks if perceived as disloyal, giving them stronger motivations to endorse the incumbent. We analyze an original corpus of parliamentary speeches by ruling-party legislators in Turkey and apply instruction-tuned large language models to derive individual-level estimates of endorsement. We show that peripheral elites more visibly align with the leader, and those who endorse more forcefully are more likely to be retained in the coalition and promoted post-takeover. Our findings have important implications for the literature on democratic breakdown and regime personalization.