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RE-SEGMENTING OPPOSITION VOTES IN TURKEY USING A RELATIONAL APPROACH: THE BOXER, THE PRAGMATIST, AND THE VISIONARY

Year 2021, , 96 - 132, 24.04.2021
https://doi.org/10.18490/sosars.927221

Abstract

This paper studies voting from a relational approach and builds a new model for voter segmentation using qualitative data from Turkey. To operationalize a relational approach in the field, I employed ‘switch interviews’ with 15 participants recruited from a randomly sampled national poll (March 2020), who in common opted for one of the recently founded parties in Turkey when asked “who they would vote for if there was an election tomorrow”. In this new model, the object of inquiry for voter segmentation is neither broad structural traits a voter has (ethnicity, religion, ideology, sexuality, etc) nor atomistic calculations. Instead, it is the actual needs and concerns voters are trying to meet in a system of relations. Drawing from these needs, I identify three relational voter profiles: the Boxer, the Pragmatist and the Visionary. These new relational segments help us better understand the causal drivers for support to the new parties in Turkey and give us clues into the future political debates and shifts in the country. The aim here is not to narrow voter segmentation to a single right approach. Nor the study claims to uncover all opinions /needs of the opposition electors who lean towards the new parties; it certainly does not claim to have scanned all opposition voters in Turkey. Rather, the paper aims to push the boundaries of the existing models by adopting a relational thinking and a new tool, switch interviewing, and build a new model for voter segmentation. Such a push is mandated in part by the changing nature of political engagement and citizenship. The paper makes two original contributions. It proposes a new model for voter segmentation using a relational approach and introduces a new methodological tool, switch interviews, to qualitative research.

References

  • Abbott, A. (1995). Things of boundaries. Social research, 857-882.
  • Abbott, O. (2020). The Self, Relational Sociology, and Morality in Practice. Springer International Publishing.
  • Antunes, R. (2010). Theoretical models of voting behaviour. Exedra, 4, 145-170.
  • Bourdieu, P., & Wacquant, L. J. (1992). An invitation to reflexive sociology. University of Chicago press.
  • Becker, H. (1966). Introduction. In C. Shaw, The Jack Roller. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  • Boudon, R. (1998). Limitations of rational choice theory. American Journal of Sociology, 104(3), 817-828.
  • Campbell, Angus, Converse, Philip E., Miller, Warren E. and Stokes, Donald E. (1960) The American Voter, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
  • Christensen, C. M., Ojomo, E., & Dillon, K. (2019). The prosperity paradox: How innovation can lift nations out of poverty. HarperCollins.
  • Christensen, C., Day, L. E. (2016). Integrating around the job to be done. Harvard Business School
  • Cobern, W. W., & Adams, B. A. (2020). When interviewing: how many is enough?. International Journal of Assessment Tools in Education, 7(1), 73-79.
  • Coleman, J. S. (1986). Interests and Collective Action: Studies in Rationality and Social Change. Cambridge University Press
  • Creswell, J. W. (1998). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five traditions. Sage.
  • Crossley, N. (2011) Towards Relational Sociology (London: Routledge).
  • Dalton, Russell, J. (2000) The decline of party identifications. In Dalton, Russell J. and Wattenberg, Martin, P. (Eds.), Parties without Partisans. Political Change in Advanced Industrial Democracies, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • della Porta, D. (2018). Radicalization: A relational perspective. Annual Review of Political Science, 21, 461-474.
  • Dépelteau, F. (2008). Relational thinking: A critique of co-deterministic theories of structure and agency. Sociological theory, 26(1), 51-73.
  • Desmond, M. (2014). Relational ethnography. Theory and society, 43(5), 547-579.
  • Donati, P. (2011) Relational Sociology. A New Paradigm for the Social Sciences (London: Routledge). Downs, A. (1957). An economic theory of political action in a democracy. Journal of political economy, 65(2), 135-150.
  • Elff, M. and Roßteutscher,S. (2016). Religion. In Arzheimer, K., Evans, J., & Lewis-Beck, M. S. (Eds.), The Sage handbook of electoral behaviour. Sage.
  • Elias, N. (1978). What is sociology?. Columbia University Press.
  • Elster, J. (1989). Nuts and bolts for the social sciences. Cambridge University Press.
  • Erikson, R. S. (2004, July). Macro vs. micro-level perspectives on economic voting: is the micro-level evidence endogenously induced?. In Political Methodology Meetings, Stanford University.
  • Emirbayer, M. (1997). Manifesto for a relational sociology. American journal of sociology, 103(2), 281-317.
  • Feldman, S., & Johnston, C. (2014). Understanding the determinants of political ideology: Implications of structural complexity. Political Psychology, 35(3), 337-358.
  • Fowler, C. (2013). The Emergent Past: A relational realist archaeology of Early Bronze Age mortuary practices. Oxford University Press.
  • Fuchs, S. (2009). Against essentialism: A theory of culture and society. Harvard University Press.
  • Glaser, B. G. & Strauss, A. L. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research. Piscataway, New Jersey: Transaction.
  • Gidengil, E., & Karakoç, E. (2016). Which matters more in the electoral success of Islamist (successor) parties–religion or performance? The Turkish case. Party Politics, 22(3), 325-338.
  • Grady, M.P. (1998). Qualitative and Action Research: A Practitioner Handbook. Bloomington: Phi Delta Kappa Educational Foundation
  • Green, D. P., & Baltes, S. (2016). Party identification: Meaning and measurement. In Arzheimer, K., Evans, J., & Lewis-Beck, M. S. (Eds.), The Sage handbook of electoral behaviour. Sage.
  • Gupta, A. (2012). Red tape: bureaucracy, structural violence, and poverty in India. Durham: Duke University Press.
  • Horn, M. B., & Moesta, B. (2019). Choosing college: How to make better learning decisions throughout your life. John Wiley & Sons.
  • Kasapoglu, A. (2019). A Road Map for Applying Relational Sociology. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 6(1), 448-488.
  • King, A. (2004). The Structure of Social Theory (1st ed.). London: Routledge.
  • Kinder, D. R., & Kalmoe, N. P. (2017). Neither liberal nor conservative: Ideological innocence in the American public. University of Chicago Press.
  • Kurzman, C., & Naqvi, I. (2010). Do Muslims Vote Islamic?. Journal of Democracy, 21(2), 50-63.
  • Lazarsfeld, P. F., Berelson, B., & Gaudet, H. (1968). The people's choice.
  • Lipset, S. & Rokkan, S. (1967). Cleavage structures, party systems, and voter alignments: an introduction. In S. Lipset & S. Rokkan, (Eds.), Party systems and voter alignments: cross national perspectives (pp. 1-64). New York: Free Press.
  • List, C., & Spiekermann, K. (2013). Methodological individualism and holism in political science: A reconciliation. American Political Science Review, 629-643.
  • Lupton R., IEnders, A. And Jacob, W. (2012) Ideology and Core Values. In Arzheimer, K., Evans, J., & Lewis-Beck, M. S. (Eds.), The Sage handbook of electoral behavior. Sage.
  • Mardin, Ş. (1973). Center-periphery relations: A key to Turkish politics?. Daedalus, 169-190.
  • Marcus, G. E. (1998). Ethnography through thick and thin. Princeton University Press.
  • McGann, A. (2016). Voting choice and rational choice. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics.
  • McClurg, S. D., & Young, J. K. (2011). Editors' introduction: A relational political science. PS: Political Science and Politics, 39-43.
  • Miller, W. E., Shanks, J. M., & Shapiro, R. Y. (1996). The new American voter.
  • Morse, J. M. (1994). Designing funded qualitative research. In Denizin, N. K. & Lincoln, Y. (Eds.) Handbook of qualitative research (2nd Ed). Sage.
  • Morse, J., (1995) The Significance of Saturation. Qualitative Health Research, 5(2): 147-149.
  • Öniş, Z. (2007). Conservative globalists versus defensive nationalists: political parties and paradoxes of Europeanization in Turkey. Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans, 9(3), 247-261.
  • Pickard, S. (2019). Politics, protest and young people: Political participation and dissent in 21st century Britain. Springer.
  • Powell, C., & Dépelteau, F. (2013). Introduction. Powell, C., Dépelteau, F. (Eds.). Conceptualizing relational sociology: Ontological and theoretical issues. Springer.
  • Sandelowski M. (2008). Theoretical saturation. In: Given LM (Eds). The SAGE Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods. Sage, 875–876. Sokhey, A. E., & Djupe, P. A. (2011). Interpersonal networks and democratic politics. PS: Political Science and Politics, 44(1), 55-59.
  • Somers, M. R., & Gibson, G. D. (1994). Reclaiming the epistemological other: narrative and the social constitution of identity. In C Calhoun (Ed.), Social Theory and the Politics of Identity, edited by. Oxford: Blackwell. (37–99)
  • Somers, M. R., (1998). ‘We’re no angels’: realism, rational choice, and relationality in social science. American Journal of Sociology, 104, 722–784.
  • Tekin Babuç, (Z) & Müjdat, (A). A relational sociological analysis of syrian students’ experiences in Osmaniye province on integration to higher education process. International Journal of Eurasia Social Sciences Vol: 10, Issue: 37, pp. (833-848).
  • TRSputniknews (2019, July 15) Kararsız seçmen yüzde 40'a çıktı. TRsputniknews.com https://sptnkne.ws/6Yfq (last accessed January 2021)
  • Townsend, K. (2013). Saturation and run off: How many interviews are required in qualitative research. In ANZAM Conference 2013.
  • Treier, S., & Hillygus, D. S. (2009). The nature of political ideology in the contemporary electorate. Public Opinion Quarterly, 73(4), 679-703.
  • Tsing, A. (2005). Friction: an ethnography of global connection. Princeton: Princeton University Press
  • Van der Brug, W., & Berkhout, J. (2015). The effect of associative issue ownership on parties’ presence in the news media. West European Politics, 38(4), 869-887.
  • Von Schoultz, Å. (2017). Party systems and voter alignments. In Arzheimer, K., Evans, J., & Lewis-Beck, M. S. (Eds.). The Sage handbook of electoral behaviour. Sage.
  • Zielinski, J. (2002). Translating social cleavages into party systems: The significance of new democracies. World Politics, 184-211.
Year 2021, , 96 - 132, 24.04.2021
https://doi.org/10.18490/sosars.927221

Abstract

References

  • Abbott, A. (1995). Things of boundaries. Social research, 857-882.
  • Abbott, O. (2020). The Self, Relational Sociology, and Morality in Practice. Springer International Publishing.
  • Antunes, R. (2010). Theoretical models of voting behaviour. Exedra, 4, 145-170.
  • Bourdieu, P., & Wacquant, L. J. (1992). An invitation to reflexive sociology. University of Chicago press.
  • Becker, H. (1966). Introduction. In C. Shaw, The Jack Roller. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  • Boudon, R. (1998). Limitations of rational choice theory. American Journal of Sociology, 104(3), 817-828.
  • Campbell, Angus, Converse, Philip E., Miller, Warren E. and Stokes, Donald E. (1960) The American Voter, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
  • Christensen, C. M., Ojomo, E., & Dillon, K. (2019). The prosperity paradox: How innovation can lift nations out of poverty. HarperCollins.
  • Christensen, C., Day, L. E. (2016). Integrating around the job to be done. Harvard Business School
  • Cobern, W. W., & Adams, B. A. (2020). When interviewing: how many is enough?. International Journal of Assessment Tools in Education, 7(1), 73-79.
  • Coleman, J. S. (1986). Interests and Collective Action: Studies in Rationality and Social Change. Cambridge University Press
  • Creswell, J. W. (1998). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five traditions. Sage.
  • Crossley, N. (2011) Towards Relational Sociology (London: Routledge).
  • Dalton, Russell, J. (2000) The decline of party identifications. In Dalton, Russell J. and Wattenberg, Martin, P. (Eds.), Parties without Partisans. Political Change in Advanced Industrial Democracies, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • della Porta, D. (2018). Radicalization: A relational perspective. Annual Review of Political Science, 21, 461-474.
  • Dépelteau, F. (2008). Relational thinking: A critique of co-deterministic theories of structure and agency. Sociological theory, 26(1), 51-73.
  • Desmond, M. (2014). Relational ethnography. Theory and society, 43(5), 547-579.
  • Donati, P. (2011) Relational Sociology. A New Paradigm for the Social Sciences (London: Routledge). Downs, A. (1957). An economic theory of political action in a democracy. Journal of political economy, 65(2), 135-150.
  • Elff, M. and Roßteutscher,S. (2016). Religion. In Arzheimer, K., Evans, J., & Lewis-Beck, M. S. (Eds.), The Sage handbook of electoral behaviour. Sage.
  • Elias, N. (1978). What is sociology?. Columbia University Press.
  • Elster, J. (1989). Nuts and bolts for the social sciences. Cambridge University Press.
  • Erikson, R. S. (2004, July). Macro vs. micro-level perspectives on economic voting: is the micro-level evidence endogenously induced?. In Political Methodology Meetings, Stanford University.
  • Emirbayer, M. (1997). Manifesto for a relational sociology. American journal of sociology, 103(2), 281-317.
  • Feldman, S., & Johnston, C. (2014). Understanding the determinants of political ideology: Implications of structural complexity. Political Psychology, 35(3), 337-358.
  • Fowler, C. (2013). The Emergent Past: A relational realist archaeology of Early Bronze Age mortuary practices. Oxford University Press.
  • Fuchs, S. (2009). Against essentialism: A theory of culture and society. Harvard University Press.
  • Glaser, B. G. & Strauss, A. L. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research. Piscataway, New Jersey: Transaction.
  • Gidengil, E., & Karakoç, E. (2016). Which matters more in the electoral success of Islamist (successor) parties–religion or performance? The Turkish case. Party Politics, 22(3), 325-338.
  • Grady, M.P. (1998). Qualitative and Action Research: A Practitioner Handbook. Bloomington: Phi Delta Kappa Educational Foundation
  • Green, D. P., & Baltes, S. (2016). Party identification: Meaning and measurement. In Arzheimer, K., Evans, J., & Lewis-Beck, M. S. (Eds.), The Sage handbook of electoral behaviour. Sage.
  • Gupta, A. (2012). Red tape: bureaucracy, structural violence, and poverty in India. Durham: Duke University Press.
  • Horn, M. B., & Moesta, B. (2019). Choosing college: How to make better learning decisions throughout your life. John Wiley & Sons.
  • Kasapoglu, A. (2019). A Road Map for Applying Relational Sociology. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 6(1), 448-488.
  • King, A. (2004). The Structure of Social Theory (1st ed.). London: Routledge.
  • Kinder, D. R., & Kalmoe, N. P. (2017). Neither liberal nor conservative: Ideological innocence in the American public. University of Chicago Press.
  • Kurzman, C., & Naqvi, I. (2010). Do Muslims Vote Islamic?. Journal of Democracy, 21(2), 50-63.
  • Lazarsfeld, P. F., Berelson, B., & Gaudet, H. (1968). The people's choice.
  • Lipset, S. & Rokkan, S. (1967). Cleavage structures, party systems, and voter alignments: an introduction. In S. Lipset & S. Rokkan, (Eds.), Party systems and voter alignments: cross national perspectives (pp. 1-64). New York: Free Press.
  • List, C., & Spiekermann, K. (2013). Methodological individualism and holism in political science: A reconciliation. American Political Science Review, 629-643.
  • Lupton R., IEnders, A. And Jacob, W. (2012) Ideology and Core Values. In Arzheimer, K., Evans, J., & Lewis-Beck, M. S. (Eds.), The Sage handbook of electoral behavior. Sage.
  • Mardin, Ş. (1973). Center-periphery relations: A key to Turkish politics?. Daedalus, 169-190.
  • Marcus, G. E. (1998). Ethnography through thick and thin. Princeton University Press.
  • McGann, A. (2016). Voting choice and rational choice. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics.
  • McClurg, S. D., & Young, J. K. (2011). Editors' introduction: A relational political science. PS: Political Science and Politics, 39-43.
  • Miller, W. E., Shanks, J. M., & Shapiro, R. Y. (1996). The new American voter.
  • Morse, J. M. (1994). Designing funded qualitative research. In Denizin, N. K. & Lincoln, Y. (Eds.) Handbook of qualitative research (2nd Ed). Sage.
  • Morse, J., (1995) The Significance of Saturation. Qualitative Health Research, 5(2): 147-149.
  • Öniş, Z. (2007). Conservative globalists versus defensive nationalists: political parties and paradoxes of Europeanization in Turkey. Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans, 9(3), 247-261.
  • Pickard, S. (2019). Politics, protest and young people: Political participation and dissent in 21st century Britain. Springer.
  • Powell, C., & Dépelteau, F. (2013). Introduction. Powell, C., Dépelteau, F. (Eds.). Conceptualizing relational sociology: Ontological and theoretical issues. Springer.
  • Sandelowski M. (2008). Theoretical saturation. In: Given LM (Eds). The SAGE Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods. Sage, 875–876. Sokhey, A. E., & Djupe, P. A. (2011). Interpersonal networks and democratic politics. PS: Political Science and Politics, 44(1), 55-59.
  • Somers, M. R., & Gibson, G. D. (1994). Reclaiming the epistemological other: narrative and the social constitution of identity. In C Calhoun (Ed.), Social Theory and the Politics of Identity, edited by. Oxford: Blackwell. (37–99)
  • Somers, M. R., (1998). ‘We’re no angels’: realism, rational choice, and relationality in social science. American Journal of Sociology, 104, 722–784.
  • Tekin Babuç, (Z) & Müjdat, (A). A relational sociological analysis of syrian students’ experiences in Osmaniye province on integration to higher education process. International Journal of Eurasia Social Sciences Vol: 10, Issue: 37, pp. (833-848).
  • TRSputniknews (2019, July 15) Kararsız seçmen yüzde 40'a çıktı. TRsputniknews.com https://sptnkne.ws/6Yfq (last accessed January 2021)
  • Townsend, K. (2013). Saturation and run off: How many interviews are required in qualitative research. In ANZAM Conference 2013.
  • Treier, S., & Hillygus, D. S. (2009). The nature of political ideology in the contemporary electorate. Public Opinion Quarterly, 73(4), 679-703.
  • Tsing, A. (2005). Friction: an ethnography of global connection. Princeton: Princeton University Press
  • Van der Brug, W., & Berkhout, J. (2015). The effect of associative issue ownership on parties’ presence in the news media. West European Politics, 38(4), 869-887.
  • Von Schoultz, Å. (2017). Party systems and voter alignments. In Arzheimer, K., Evans, J., & Lewis-Beck, M. S. (Eds.). The Sage handbook of electoral behaviour. Sage.
  • Zielinski, J. (2002). Translating social cleavages into party systems: The significance of new democracies. World Politics, 184-211.
There are 61 citations in total.

Details

Primary Language Turkish
Journal Section Articles
Authors

Neslihan Çevik This is me

Publication Date April 24, 2021
Submission Date January 15, 2021
Published in Issue Year 2021

Cite

APA Çevik, N. (2021). RE-SEGMENTING OPPOSITION VOTES IN TURKEY USING A RELATIONAL APPROACH: THE BOXER, THE PRAGMATIST, AND THE VISIONARY. Sosyoloji Araştırmaları Dergisi, 24(2), 96-132. https://doi.org/10.18490/sosars.927221

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Sosyoloji Araştırmaları Dergisi / Journal of Sociological Research

SAD / JSR