CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2025
| Author | Yavuz, Mehmet |
|---|---|
| Title | Ideology as a Legitimation Tool for Authoritarian Regimes |
| Summary | In this dissertation, I examine the role of ideology in authoritarian regimes, focusing on how autocrats’ use of ideological legitimation claims and policies influence regime stability, adapt during crises, and shape public support. The three empirical papers collectively contribute to understanding the broader significance of ideologies—such as nationalism, communism, and politicized religion—in contemporary autocratic politics. With this dissertation, I demonstrate that ideologies are consequential for the stability and dynamism of autocracies. In Paper 1, I analyze whether authoritarian regimes that rely heavily on ideological claims are more likely to survive. While existing research highlights variations in how autocracies use ideologies like socialism or nationalism, little evidence links ideological reliance to regime stability. I combine data from the Varieties of Democracy Institute’s Regime Legitimation Expert Survey with coding of regime survival and collapses from 1900 to 2023 (n = 8,727) to address this gap. Using two-way fixed effect models, I show that regimes more reliant on ideological claims are more likely to survive and tend to be more repressive. I propose that these effects occur through five theoretical mechanisms—antagonism, legitimacy substitution, indoctrination, marginalization, and elite incentivization. The findings suggest that ideological claims are not merely rhetorical but play a crucial role in stabilizing authoritarian regimes. In Paper 2, I investigate how crises impact the intensity and usage of ideological claims in authoritarian regimes. While much has been written about the importance of ideological legitimation for authoritarian consolidation, less attention has been paid to how regimes adjust their ideological claims during and after crises. I focus on the competitive authoritarian regime of Turkey before and after the July 2016 coup attempt. I assess the changes in the ideological claims of the regime, leveraging a novel dataset of President Erdoğan’s speeches (2014-2021, n = 1,181), and I use word embeddings, dictionary-based measures, and topic modeling in combination with an interrupted time series analysis. The results show that the coup attempt led to a short-term increase in ideological intensity and a long-term shift in how regime outsiders were framed in Erdoğan’s speeches. These findings suggest that crises reshape ideological claims, making them more salient and adaptable tools for regime survival. In Paper 3, I explore how religious legitimation strategies affect public support in authoritarian regimes. Despite extensive research on how autocrats use religion for ideological legitimation, little is known about its effects on citizens’ attitudes. I argue that religious legitimation increases regime support among citizens whose political views are shaped by religious beliefs, while having no effect on those without a religious ideology. Focusing on the case of Turkey, I use repeated cross-sectional survey data (2013-2021, n = 7,175) and examine two key events in July 2020: the conversion of Hagia Sophia into a mosque and the regime-driven public debate on withdrawing from the Istanbul Convention. The findings indicate that religious legitimation significantly boosted support for the ruling AKP among both religious and non-religious conservatives. |
| Supervisor | Littvay, Levente |
| Department | Political Science PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2025/yavuz_mehmet.pdf |
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