The Political Incorporation of Anti-System Religious Parties: the Case of Turkish Political Islam (1994–2011)

When and how do anti-system religious parties become incorporated into the political system of their countries? In recent decades, social scientists have sought answers to this question within the framework of the moderation literature. While moderation theory identifies key factors that influence party leaders’ willingness to seek political incorporation, it is less successful in explaining the contingent outcome of the incorporation process. This article develops an alternative analytical framework for the study of political incorporation grounded in social performance theory. Through a case study of Islamic parties in Turkey between 1994 and 2011, the author demonstrates that political incorporation is as much a function of successful cultural performances on the public stage as the right alignment of institutional incentives and sanctions. As a result of the Justice and Development Party leaders’ successful projection of a mainstream political identity between 2002 and 2011, secularist state elites in Turkey failed to establish legitimate grounds for a political intervention, which in turn provided the party with the time and opportunity to remove the institutional barriers to its incorporation.     

Risk-taking behavior and academic self-efficacy as variables accounting for problematic internet use in adolescent university students

Objective

This study investigated the relationship between risk-taking behavior and academic self-efficacy and problematic internet use in adolescent university students and whether problematic internet use varies according to the variables of gender, possession of a computer and living with the family.

Methods

The study was performed with 556 students from the Karadeniz Technical University Fatih Faculty of Education in Turkey. The Problematic Internet Use Scale, the Adolescent Risk-Taking Questionnaire, the Academic Self-Efficacy Scale and Personal Information Collection Form were used in the collection of data.

Results

Pearson correlation analysis revealed a significant positive correlation between problematic internet use and risk-taking behavior (r = .37, p < .01) and a significant negative correlation between problematic internet use and academic self-efficacy (r = − .12, p < .05). Multiple regression analysis revealed that risk-taking behavior and academic self-efficacy accounted for 14% of total problematic internet use variance (F_(2,553) = 46.11, p < .05). The individual contribution to the model of risk-taking (β = .37) and academic self-efficacy (β = − .09) is significant. Our results also showed that university adolescents' problematic internet use scores vary by gender (t = − 4.90, p < .05) and possession or otherwise of a computer (t = 3.10, p < .05), but not on the basis of whether they live with their families (t = − .13, p > .05).

Conclusions

Risk-taking behavior and academic self-efficacy emerged as significant predictors of problematic internet use.     

Income Inequality and Economic Convergence in Turkey

Even though the convergence of regional per capita incomes has been a highly debated issue internationally, empirical evidence regarding Turkey is both limited and contradictory. This paper is an attempt to investigate regional income inequality and convergence dynamics in Turkish gross domestic product. First, the Theil coefficient of concentration index has been employed in order to analyze the dispersion aspects of the convergence process which shows a procyclical character. Then, we investigate the convergence dynamics, taking regional interdependencies into account. Empirical results indicate that there is convergence at the national level. Moreover, the spatial error model is preferred by the model selection criteria, indicating that the typical least-squares regional convergence model is misspecified.     

Harnessing the Potential of Google Searches for Understanding Dynamics of Intimate Partner Violence Before and After the COVID-19 Outbreak

European Journal of Population - Most social phenomena are inherently complex and hard to measure, often due to under-reporting, stigma, social desirability bias, and rapidly changing external...     

Inflation targeting and the exchange rate: Does it matter in Turkey?

This paper investigates the monetary policy reaction functions of the Central Bank of Republic of Turkey (CBRT) over the periods 1987:01–2001:12 and 2002:01–2009:05. We specifically attempt to shed light on question to what extent exchange rate developments still continue to influence monetary policy, even under inflation targeting. This study seeks to investigate how the monetary policy responded to the exchange rate shocks before and after adoption of inflation targeting regime. How large the effect of exchange rate shocks is accounted for in forecast error variances decompositions for monetary policy as compared to other shocks? Using the VAR model, this study shows that there has been strong pass-through during whole period. Moreover, in the postcrisis period, exchange rate has been the main reaction variable for the CBRT.     

The Diverging Logics of Integration Policy Making at National and City Level

This paper examines the institutional logics of migration policy making at local city level, comparing four Danish municipal approaches. Using a theoretical framework on political opportunity structures, policy frames, and institutional logics, the paper argues that divergences between national and local level can be explained not only as an unsuccessful transposition of nationally formulated policies, but also as an outcome of divergence in alternative and competing policy frames, political rationales, and institutional logics. Investigating factors such as size, economy, and organizational structure, the paper offers three interrelated explanations for divergences between national and local level and between different local approaches. The paper argues that the difference in national and local level political opportunity structures makes a difference; that ideas diffused from outside the national context can inform local‐level policy making; and that policies are situated within and adjusted to the broader cultural economy and city branding as part of competition between cities.     

A revealed preference analysis of solutions to simple allocation problems

We interpret solution rules on a class of simple allocation problems as data on the choices of a policy maker. We analyze conditions under which the policy maker’s choices are (i) rational (ii) transitive-rational, and (iii) representable; that is, they coincide with maximization of a (i) binary relation, (ii) transitive binary relation, and (iii) numerical function on the allocation space. Our main results are as follows: (i) a well-known property, contraction independence (a.k.a. IIA) is equivalent to rationality; (ii) every contraction independent and other-c monotonic rule is transitive-rational; and (iii) every contraction independent and other-c monotonic rule, if additionally continuous, can be represented by a numerical function.     

Testing for a unit root in a stationary ESTAR process

This article develops a statistic for testing the null of a linear unit root process against the alternative of a stationary exponential smooth transition autoregressive model. The asymptotic distribution of the test is shown to be nonstandard but nuisance parameter-free and hence critical values are obtained by simulations. Simulations show that the proposed statistic has considerable power under various data generating scenarios. Applications to real exchange rates also illustrate the ability of our test to reject null of unit root when some of the alternative tests do not.     

Allocating multiple estates among agents with single-peaked preferences

We consider the problem of allocating multiple social endowments (estates) of a perfectly divisible commodity among a group of agents with single-peaked preferences when each agent’s share can come from at most one estate. We inquire if well-known single-estate rules, such as the Uniform rule, the Proportional rule or the fixed-path rules can be coupled with a matching rule so as to achieve efficiency in the multi-estate level. On the class of problems where all agents have symmetric preferences, any efficient single-estate rule can be extended to an efficient multi-estate rule. If we allow asymmetric preferences however, this is no more the case. For nondictatorial single-estate rules that satisfy efficiency, strategy proofness, consistency, and resource monotonicity, an efficient extension to multiple estates is impossible. A similar impossibility also holds for single-estate rules that satisfy efficiency, peak-only, and a weak fairness property. We would like to express our gratitude to Bhaskar Dutta, Semih Koray, Hervé Moulin, and Yuntong Wang as well as an associate editor and two anonymous referees of this journal for detailed comments and suggestions. We also thank the seminar participants at Bilkent University, Indian Statistical Institute, Bilgi University, University of Warwick, ASSET 2003, and BWED XXVI.