Constructing Democracy in Southern Europe: A Comparative Analysis of Italy, Spain and Turkey by Lauren M. McLaren

Author:Lauren M. McLaren [McLaren, Lauren M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: European, Democracy, Political Ideologies, Political Science, World, General
ISBN: 9781134071869
Google: U7xwaYoK7UsC
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2008-04-08T07:42:46+00:00

The power of ordinary members of parliament is quite limited because parliament is organized around party groups (in terms of the amount of floor time given). Individual members of parliament have the power to initiate legislation, but private member bills are not nearly as successful as government bills becoming law. In addition, governments starting in the 1980s increasingly began to use decree laws; note, however, that governments do not appear to be overwhelmingly successful in getting these transposed into permanent law.

There are other problems that have served to reduce the power and professionalism of the Turkish parliament. First, recall that most politicians who had participated in the pre-1980-coup regime were banned from participating in politics during the first few post-coup elections. This meant that those coming into the legislature had no experience at writing laws, nor were there older MPs who could help to socialize the younger ones. The same problem has occurred after recent parliamentary elections, as many members of parliament from the governing party have had very little prior experience legislating. Such inexperience means ordinary members of parliament are dependent on government and party leaders for information and support. In addition, although Turkey experienced asymmetrical bicameralism under the 1960 constitution, with an appointed Senate and a popularly elected Chamber of Deputies, the country has had a unicameral legislature since 1982, thus reducing the potential power of the legislature as a whole. Moreover, despite the strength of party leaders, parties in parliament at times do not behave coherently and there is considerable switching from one party to another (see Turan 1985; Kalaycıolu 1988, 1990).

Thus, parliament clearly has not served as a central place for conflict resolution and consensus building in Turkey. Given the conflictive behaviour of backbench members of parliament, it is not surprising to find that governments themselves have also taken a conflict-dominated approach to governance. In the first ten years of multiparty politics (during 1950–60), one party – the Democratic Party – held an overwhelming majority of seats in the parliament. The only other party with seats in parliament at the time was the Republican People’s Party, the successor to the party founded by Mustafa Kemal. As discussed in Chapter 6, the Democratic Party was generally established to oppose the Republican People’s Party and most of its rhetoric and policies did just this – the party was opposed to the extreme secularism of the RPP and claimed to also oppose the policy of strong state-led economic development (although in practice, the DP did little to change this policy). Thus, it is not surprising that the DP was far from conciliatory toward the RPP and indeed took repressive measures against the latter, eventually provoking a military coup.

It was after the 1960 coup and the introduction of a PR electoral system that Turkey first experienced the need for coalition governments. As in Italy, these coalitions tended to be extremely unstable. Unlike the case of Italy, however, the government leaders and coalition formulas were not stable, nor was there any

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