Framing, Clientelism, and Blame Attribution for Turkey’s Inflation Crisis

• In Event: Preferences in Development: Aid, Immigration, and Clientelism

Abstract

Conventional wisdom holds that the political fortunes of leaders in electoral autocracies are tied to their ability to preserve their images as competent stewards of the economy. In the face of episodes of macroeconomic instability – such as when consumer prices dramatically spike – the electoral support base for semi-authoritarian governments should erode, as voters punish the government for its economic mismanagement. But regime supporters may reassign the bulk of the blame for bad economic times away from the government and toward outside actors and subversive domestic forces. Leaders can amplify motivated partisan reasoning by muddying the waters through their public rhetoric. They can reframe the responsibility for dismal economic performance by assigning blame to others (such as disliked outside actors) for the price spikes. Electoral authoritarians can also dole out clientelist benefits to insulate the members of their support base from the most severe consequences of inflation crises. We draw on original survey evidence from Turkey to test the effects of different blame-attribution framings (based on exhaustive text-based analysis of the discourse around economic issues disseminated by Turkish politicians) on citizens’ political and economic preferences. We present new evidence from a survey of more than 2,000 Turkish citizens fielded before the country’s 2023 Presidential run-off election and a survey experiment with a similarly large sample fielded after the election. We use the surveys to detect the causal effects of exposure to different rhetorical frames and access to AKP-affiliated clientelist social programs on attitudes toward the Erdogan government, political institutions, and the management of the Turkish economy.

Authors

• Andres Schelp, Northwestern University

• Busra Soylemez-Karakoc, Koc University

• Stephen Craig Nelson, Northwestern University