Proliferation of religious associations and local incumbency advantage: evidence from municipal elections in Turkey

For two decades, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey sustained its electoral performance at the local level. We offer and test a new mechanism that contributed to the party's success in municipal elections. We argue that patronage links with religious civil society served as an important instrument of building and sustaining local incumbency advantage. Employing a close-election regression discontinuity design, we address two questions: To what extent did religious associations proliferate in AKP-controlled municipalities? Was this civil society penetration instrumental for the party’s electoral success? Employing a close-election regression discontinuity design (RDD), we show that in districts with a small-margin AKP victory in the 2014 elections, the number of religious associations in 2016 were significantly higher than in districts where AKP lost narrowly. We also find that the AKP incumbency in 2014 in closely contested districts increased the party’s vote share in the next local elections. Our results empirically demonstrate a new channel of local incumbency advantage. Moreover, we highlight the role of civil society as an agent of clientelistic exchange in competitive authoritarian regimes.