It's Complicated… Role of Cross-Ethnic Coalitions in Regime Durability in Turkey and North Macedonia

Why some autocrats stay in power while others lose? In the early 2000s, democratic transition swept the countries from Southeastern Europe with aspiring economic reformers obtaining power on the promises of swift democratic consolidation and a way forward based on Western European liberal norms and values. Fast-forward fifteen years later, and the region is plagued with systemic corruption, weak institutional capacities, extensive networks of party patronage, (complete) absence of rule law, and reignition of "dormant" ethnic tensions. Two prominent embodiments of the protracted uncertainties in the region are Erdogan's Turkey and Gruevski's North Macedonia. Ascending to power on the grounds of good relations with the EU, promise to reconcile ethnic tensions and open the road for sustainable economic reforms that will bring growth, soon it became clear that these countries were on entirely different trajectories from the promised ones. The two (semi-)autocrats managed to consolidate their power and craftily enter into calculated coalitions with the dominant ethnic parties from the two countries. In the case of Turkey, an informal coalition with the pro-Kurdish party HDP (BDP until 2014) and in the case of North Macedonia with the ever-present Albanian ethnic party DUI. The longevity of their rule can partially be explained by their grip or power-sharing consensus with their junior partner to capture domestic institutions and impose their personalistic agenda. Nevertheless, severe and prolonged political and ethnic scandals (coupled with worsening economic conditions) put these coalitions on the line and with that jeopardized the rule of Erdogan and Gruevski. While still from a position of power, Erdogan was able to replace its junior partner with another party, Turkish nationalist MHP, and hence remain in power, his counterpart in North Macedonia, Gruevski, after an ethnic-laden campaign was not able to form a new coalition. Unlike the previous literature which focused on how religion and populism sustained public support in N. Macedonia and Turkey (Yabanci and Taleski 2018), we suggest focusing on the role of institutions, namely formal and informal coalitions with ethnic parties, to understand the survival and collapse of autocracies in Southeastern Europe. The proposed article will investigate the role played by junior partner coalitions (ethnic parties) in order to better understand why some autocrats lose power while others keep hold of it. The article will investigate the change and continuity of rulers in Turkey and North Macedonia by using the Method of Difference with process tracing. We claim that in the early 2000s, the countries shared many comparable characteristics, and the divergent trajectories can be best explained with detailed qualitative analysis. In addition, we will use data from parliamentary proceedings to understand voting patterns for the coalition partners, in order to establish when their agendas began to conflict as well as EU Progress Reports that assess the readiness and established progress of these countries.