Suchergebnisse

Mehmet Ugur analyses and discusses the numerous disappointments that mark Turkey's attempts to join the European Union. In light of successive attempts to join, the author reveals the extent to which success has eluded the nation since World War 2 ended.

The Turkish ruling elite, led by the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its chief Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has been consolidating the most oppressive regime that Europe has witnessed since World War II. The consolidation has unfolded under the gaze of European governments and institutions. To make the case for a radical change in the policy stance, I locate the failure of the European elites to take a credible stance against rising authoritarianism within the corrosive nature of the neo-liberal world order. Then I highlight the gross violations that the Turkish regime has committed domestically and against its neighbours. Finally, I distil a number of policy implications that require urgent action on the part of European governments and institutions, indicating that the European governments and institutions are likely to act only if the European civil society act as a last line of defence in support of human rights, democracy and accountability in Europe and beyond.

In this lecture, I review the theoretical origins of the empirical growth models. I begin with the Solow and AK models informed by neoclassical theory. I demonstrate that both models do not make an explicit distinction between capital accumulation and technological progress. They just lump together the physical and human capital. Then I discuss the Schumpeterian growth models with creative destruction and institutions (particularly democracy as a meta-institution). I demonstrate that the Schumpeterian models can address a wider range of questions – particularly those that cannot be addressed satisfactorily by neoclassical models. I conclude by arguing for innovations in growth modeling – particularly for innovations that involve explicit incorporation of product-market competition and non-linearities in the relationship between innovation and growth.

Lack of academic freedom has always been a hallmark of the Turkish higher education system. Any de facto respect for it has been wrenched from the Turkish state apparatus (including the government, the military and the YÖK) as a result of resistance by academics and students alike. A salient fact about Turkish higher education is that universities that have toed the government line have remained poor performers, whereas those where staff and students showed resistance to state intrusion have done better in terms of research quality, graduate employability and international recognition. Nevertheless, successive AKP governments since 2003, with Erdoğan as prime minister or president, have been determined to maintain the long-standing state tutelage over Turkey's higher education system. The expected prize is the production of graduates disposed to submit to authority – particularly state authority – without much questioning.

There is a wide range of reasoned arguments (Jonathan Matusitz, Terrorism and Communications, Sage, 2013) on why terrorism occurs and each implies different policies for combating it. The terrorist attacks over the last decade call for new thinking though and here the public is ahead of political scientists and policy-makers. Although united in their abhorrence of terrorist attacks of all types, ordinary people are also asking serious questions about the link between the increased security threat faced by their countries and the explicit or tacit support that their governments have provided to terrorist groups, including finance, training and arming. They are also asking questions about their governments' continued strategic partnerships with countries such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey, where the governments have been supporting various terrorist groups in Syria to achieve foreign policy objectives. This is a new phenomenon that coincided with military interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria.

The results of the snap elections in Turkey have taken everybody by surprise. This is not because observers with a critical eye have failed to read the script correctly. Rather, it is because of the extent to which state-sponsored terror has proved effective in cajoling the electorate in Turkey to give their oppressors a mandate to rule in return for a 'breathing space'. At the end, the 'us or hell' threat has worked because the 'surprised' observers have failed to react in time to the ruthless elimination of institutional checks and balances by the ruling AKP and its president.

A large body of work within the Europeanization and conditionality literature has examined the European Union's effect on governance quality in Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs). This article aims to contribute to existing work by addressing two questions. First, was the European Union's accession conditionality conducive to better governance in CEECs or was it designed to pick up already committed reformers? Secondly, during which period was the European Union more influential on governance quality in CEECs: accession or membership? To address these questions, we propose a simple model of moral hazard and adverse selection, and draw on survey-based governance quality data to test its predictions. We report that the European Union has offered candidate status to countries that already had better governance quality relative to their peers before 1997. Nonetheless, EU conditionality also had some positive effects on CEEC governance during the accession period, but this effect tended to disappear during the membership period. On the basis of these findings, we argue that the European Union's impact on governance quality in CEECs has to be examined in conjunction with path dependence, and therefore, the perceived risk of "backsliding" requires more detailed analysis. Adapted from the source document.