The Impact of Justice and Development Party’s Governance Method on Turkey’s Democratization Process

Over the past century, Turkey has experienced various and dissimilar governance methods, such as constitutional, single-party, multi-party, fiduciary, participatory liberalism, conservative liberalism, delegative and quasi-authoritarian, each of which has influenced democratization process in either positive or negative way (history). This issue raises numerous doubts about the why and how of the impact of governance method on democratization process (problem/ issue), a subject that has not received adequate attention by researchers (background) so far. The main question in this study involves the explanation and elaboration of such positive or negative effects (question). This is fulfilled via process tracing method, expression of the causal mechanism (mechanism finding), and the use of library and digital resources (methodology). Justice and Development Party, as the leading sovereignty of Turkey for the last two decades, has employed three governance methods of “conservative liberalism”, “delegative” and “quasi-authoritarian” with positive, positive-negative and negative impacts, respectively on democratization process. The main finding of this study, therefore, is that the type of governance method can act as either a barrier or a facilitator on the path to democratization process.