Bureaucratic-Authoritarianism

An application to post-1980 coup Turkey

Abstract

This article provides an application of O’Donnell’s bureaucratic-authoritarianism theory in Turkish context though a survey of political unrest of 1970s and 1980 military coup. The theory is reappropriated through formal modelling in order to amend its previous weakness. Although BA theory is strong in explaining the destabilizing effect of modernity in late-developers, it lacks an actor level analysis. Thus, this paper takes political parties as active agents which instrumentalizes political violence and considers military as an institution bearing private interests. The formal design constitutes a break from traditional BA model and yields a “paralysis” equilibrium which is supported by historical account. Thus, the convergences and divergences between Turkish and Latin American context, reveals the need of recontextualization and reappropriation of BA theory, especially through inclusion of an agency-level analysis.