ABSTRACT
socioeconomic, political, and demographic factors into the picture. Specifically, the chapter investigates the role of ideology, pork barrel politics, economic voting, demographics, and political institutions in the AKP’s rising hegemony based on an original province-level dataset with additional measures about hegemony building. The province-level dataset covers the 3 national elections in which the AKP competed (i.e. 2002, 2007, and 2011 elections) during its rise to hegemonic status in Turkish politics and sheds light on the multiple mechanisms, through which the AKP has succeeded to build its hegemony. Long-term analysis of the AKP’s electoral performance as well as new measures of the AKP’s hegemonic status indicate that better educational attainment, higher levels of unemployment, higher percentages of population out of social security, and positive figures of net migration negatively predict the AKP hegemony. On the other hand, religiosity, provision of better basic infrastructure services, higher median age, higher urbanization, and electoral disproportionality are positively correlated with the AKP’s hegemonic status.
