When Clientelism is in Crisis: Brokers of JDP during 2014 and 2019 Local Elections in Türkiye
When Clientelism is in Crisis: Brokers of JDP during 2014 and 2019 Local Elections in Türkiye

Summary/Abstract: Clientelism is an exchange relationship that includes sources of patrons and services of clients. In the political dimension, this relationship’s basic characteristic involves political support from citizens and the redistribution of resources, mostly public resources, by party elites. Hypothetically, control of public resources is subject to state regulation within an institutional framework. In some countries, like Türkiye, the state and government, state elites, and party elites are intertwined. This structure has its own roots in the peculiarities of Turkish political history. These peculiarities make clientelistic relations embedded in daily life. These conditions and peculiarities make brokers, who bridge state elites and resources with citizens, significant actors in Turkish political history. In this study, I analyze the effect of brokers in politics at a local scale by examining their agency during the 2014 and 2019 local elections in Artvin, a province of Türkiye. The question posed is whether the efficiency of brokers influences local election outcomes.

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