Party Institutionalization and Organizational Problems: The Case of Turkey

The theoretical framework on party organizations that was developed by Angelo Panebianco (1988) has been a crucial tool for scholars and researchers analyzing political parties. His core arguments have focused on understanding the stages of party development, from its foundation to maturation, and he constructed a model of party “institutionalization”. This paper develops this framework further by discussing how an alternative model has emerged, suggesting that the two main dimensions of party institutionalization (named “autonomy” and “systemness” by Panebianco) are not always positively correlated in relation to each other. Coined the “trade-off” model, it represents a dilemma of leadership where one dimension needs to be traded-off in order to enhance the other. This seems to take place, especially, in parties that may have radically motivated activists or followers at grassroots level. The ideological gap that occurs between the leaders and the activists intensifies this dilemma. The strategic difficulties that stem from it, also affect the “professionalization” of parties and their long-term survivability. Applied to the case of the current Turkish government, the AKP (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi), this paper seeks to show the tensions along the two dimensions of the “trade-off” model, examining internal organizational conflicts within the party and its environment, and the transformation of its ideology. The methodological approach makes use of primary and secondary sources relating to theoretical works on political parties and the Turkish party system; and empirical data relating to the Turkish case.