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Authors:

Ali Çarkoğlu, Koç University, acarkoglu@ku.edu.tr

Andre Krouwel, andre@kieskompas.nl

Kerem Yıldırım, Koç University, kyildirim@ku.edu.tr

Post-Arab Spring Elections: A Comparison of Voting Advice

Application Results

Abstract:

The Arab Spring protests shook several Middle Eastern countries and authoritarian

leaders of both Tunisia and Egypt were toppled as a result. Relatively competitive elections

that followed in both countries were both surprising as well as being revealing of the ensuing

new regimes and developing political dynamics in these countries. This paper aims at

enlightening the nature of political cleavages that have influenced the outcome of the post-

Arab Spring elections in five countries. We developed voting advice applications (VAAs) for

parliamentary elections in Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Turkey and Israel as well as for the

presidential elections in Egypt to tap into voter opinions. Users of VAA’s help us to profile

voters and assess the nature of political cleavages and voters’ preferences in the critical

post-Arab Spring elections. Obviously, VAAs do not extract representative samples of the

population, but they do provide us with important clues about the level and impact of

political activism within five different Middle Eastern societies, at least among the politically

active, well-educated and younger sections of the society. By aligning voter opinions to

deeper-lying cleavage dimensions – socially conservative versus progressive and economic

left versus right – we try to explain party/candidate choice in post autocratic political

structures. We not only find different cleavage patterns emerge in all five countries, which is

not surprising considering the historical differences in the issue agendas, party systems as

well as socio-economic characteristics, but also diagnose reflections of party system maturity

as opposed to unsettled fluidities. Our research design allows us to compare the Moroccan

elections under a consolidated authoritarian regime, with the cases of Tunisia and Egypt that

represent cases of (partly) successful weakening and replacement of ruling elites as well as

the Turkish and Israeli cases which are the two most mature democratic countries in the

region. In this respect, our findings indicate that these five Middle Eastern countries have

different levels of party responsiveness towards voters’ preferences. Not surprisingly the

Moroccan case reflects the least mature cleavage structure that reflects expected

responsiveness of the voters towards party positions. The Egyptian and Tunisian cases also

do not correspond to a socially embedded, responsive party system compared with the Israeli

and Turkish cases.

Keywords: Voting Advice Applications (VAAs), Electoral Responsiveness, Arab

Spring, Policy Congruence, Democratization, the Middle East

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Introduction

Tunisian and Egyptian autocratic regimes were toppled in early 2011 as a result of

mass revolts that shaped the so-called Arab Spring. As a consequence of the Arab Spring

movement, founding elections were held in these two countries. In Tunisia, a constituent

assembly was elected whereas in Egypt, a government responsible for writing a new

constitution was formed as a result of the parliamentary elections. All in all, transition to a

more democratic regime type was on its way in these two countries. However, transitioning

regimes are exposed to reversals and serious setbacks in democratization efforts. Given the

lack of consolidated and institutionalized formal opposition parties in these two countries

(Langohr, 2004), the reversals that followed were not surprising. As we will exemplify the

unsettled nature of political landscape and unconsolidated nature of political cleavages were

clearly reflected in our findings from the Voting Advice Applications (VAAs). Reversals and

political crises abound in the two countries. In Egypt, Morsi’s elected regime was toppled by

a military intervention while in Tunisia, unrest and governmental crisis goes on as two high

profile politicians from the leftist secular opposition were assassinated.

Many different causes of such political crises can be diagnosed. Our objective here

will not be to entangle all the socio-political causes that underlie the historical roots of the

resulting anti-democratic tendencies that followed the Arab Spring. In order to provide a

comparative grounding to all efforts to answer this question, this paper will contrast these two

transitioning cases with the more settled democracies of Israel and Turkey as well as with the

vigilant autocracy of Morocco. Our comparative study and findings thereof suggests a simple

explanatory framework for the problems that are prevalent in the transition period or the

“boiling hot summer” that pursued the Arab Spring. A critical explanatory variable is shaped

by political parties’ electoral responsiveness. By comparing two relatively stable and

consolidated electoral democracies of the region, Turkey and Israel with the transitioning

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cases, we show that the post-Arab Spring elections in Tunisia and Egypt reflect serious

setbacks and limitation in regards to responsiveness and policy congruence in the emerging

party systems. In addition to this comparison, including Morocco into this paper increases the

comparative leverage, as Morocco provides a case of a monarchical and non-democratic

regime with a sui generis party system.

Our comparative strategy also incorporates a methodological innovation by utilizing

and benefiting from VAAs as itsdata source. VAAs may have limitations in inference based

on a representative sample. However, their substantive utilization in different areas such as

spatial voting models and party mapping research may disclose new methodological

opportunities and challenges and thus contribute to the development of research that use

VAAs. Despite its limitations VAAs allow us to gather an admittedly unrepresentative but

quite large samples of respondents in all five countries that clearly reflect the spatial

cleavages in the regional democracies. We thus aim to illustrate the extent to which the

spatial political map for these five countries capture the political cleavages that shape

political competition in these systems. Our analyses suggest that the ability of the political

space that emerges from the VAAs capture the foundations of the party systems as a

mechanism of representation and resolution of underlying cleavages in the respective party

systems.

Cleavages and Electoral Responsiveness in the Middle East

Electoral responsiveness is the political parties’ ability to understand and react to the

voters’ preferences. Parties have varying levels of electoral responsiveness based on the party

elite’s ability to interpret mass policy preferences. Also, the literature based on Miller and

Stokes (1963) suggests that the parties’ capacity to provide voters with desired policy

outcomes for all voters determine their electoral responsiveness. For instance, Ho et. al.

(2013) argue that the salience given by the political parties to valence issues renders the case

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of Taiwan democratization a success story. According to this argument, Taiwan could not

institutionalize its electoral system in a democratic regime without provision of necessary

incentives to the larger public. However, elite capacity and valence issues are not the only

two explanations for differing levels of electoral responsiveness. Dixit and Londregan (1996)

as well as Cox and McCubbins (1986) have suggested two competing models for explaining

selective distribution of incentives. Both of these models suggest that patronage and capacity

to deliver incentives to a limited number of voters may also play an important role in

determining the level electoral responsiveness. Club goods and patronage ties may decrease

electoral responsiveness as clientelistic parties may find it hard to reach out to a larger

constituency (Piattoni, 2011).

All of these three explanations suggest that parties respond to the voters’ preferences

if the party system and distribution mechanisms are institutionalized. For instance, political

systems which lack established opposition parties may find it difficult to provide different

elite groups with means to evaluate the voters’ preferences and respond accordingly.

Similarly, institutions may influence two things in a related manner. First of all, existing

institutions may influence party systems and thus shape the convergence between voter

preferences and party agendas. Secondly, they can also influence the policymaking processes,

determining how the voters’ preferences are translated into policy outcomes (Dalton, 2011).

The impact of consolidated institutions has been an important topic for research in advanced

democracies. For instance, early findings indicate that the voters in more proportional

electoral systems are more satisfied with democracy (Anderson, 1998; Lijphart, 1999; Norris

1999). Additionally, electoral responsiveness comes in two versions. There can be

majoritarian or proportional mechanisms to establish congruence between parties and voter

preferences. However, both election systems require a level of institutionalization in order to

function properly. Without such functions, democratic systems cannot foster electorally

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responsive outcomes, which produce governments that reflect the voters’ policy preferences

(Blais & Bodet, 2006; Powell, 2013). Previous research in this area suggests that the

congruence between political responsiveness and the electorate’s reaction to this

responsiveness relates to the larger system efficiency in democratic regimes (Costello,

Thomassen, & Rosema, 2012; Soroka & Wleizen, 2004). However, most of the empirical

research on this topic is based on advanced industrial democracies of Europe and Northern

America.

A central concern of electoral responsiveness relates to issue voting. Downs (1957)

has argued that the voters choose the party that is closest to them in the left-right cleavage.

Unlike some contenders (such as McAllister, 2007; Karvonen, 2010) models based on

Downsian issue-based voting minimize the impact of the political leaders and charismatic

figures. Against these spatial voting models, some have argued that rather than the distance

between voters and parties in a given issue, the direction of (dis)agreement is more critical

(Rabinowitz & Macdonald, 1989). In any case, when trying to account for the party choice,

both theories focus on preferences of the voters. In the Downsian case, self-placement of the

voter himself as well as the alternative parties along a single dimension in electoral surveys

suggests a distance whereas in the contending theoretical account, the distance is not as

important as the direction of agreement/disagreement between the voter and the parties.

Based on these two theoretical accounts which focus on voters’ policy preferences, this paper

also deals with issue voting and considers the role of such models for the Middle Eastern

cases in a comparative manner.

Middle Eastern cases are understudied with regards to the impact of institutionalized

parties, issue based voting, social cleavages and responsiveness. This is not unexpected given

that the region is considered as one of the least democratic regions in the world. The two

exceptional Middle Eastern cases are Israel and Turkey with their relatively higher levels of

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democratic consolidation. Deegan-Krause (2007) indicates that only Turkey and Israel were

able to produce competitive party systems and therefore, studying cleavage structures in the

Middle East usually focus only on these two cases. According to this line of research, both

countries are moving towards a full convergence of social cleavages with the structural and

institutional elements of vote choice. For instance, Shamir and Arian (1999) argue that

identity issues are becoming more prevalent for defining the Israeli vote. This also causes a

mixture between policy preferences and party support while fortifying the existing cleavages.

A similar phenomenon appears in Turkey as well. Hazama (2003) has argued that the

“social cleavages and the party system in Turkey seem to be heading for convergence”.

Similarly, Çarkoğlu and Hinich’s spatial analysis reveals the importance of two cleavages in

the country. Their findings indicate that two dimensions; one based on secularism vs.

Islamism and a second on the Turkish nationalism vs. the Kurdish identity, capture the

essence of Turkish political space. They conclude that “the Turkish case is yet another

evidence of the low dimensional nature of ideological spaces in modern democracies”

(Çarkoğlu & Hinich, 2006).

The Israeli and Turkish cases suggestthat the most democratic countries in the Middle

East are experiencing a convergence between party platforms and cleavages. In other words,

there is a functioning interaction between parties and the voters. As social cleavages

consolidate, institutionalized and formally recognized parties are able to recognize these

cleavages and act in accordance to these division lines. Although the Turkish case has

experienced several disruptions and reversals in repeated military coups such as the 1980

military intervention, the political system was able to conserve its competitive electoral

structure, albeit with a current predominant party.1 A similar regime, an even more stable and

durable one, exists in Israel. Israel was able to be the most resilient democratic regime in the

1 See Hale (1993) on Turkish military regimes. For discussions of more recent interventions, see

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region according to the most recent Polity 4 report even in the face of the colossal security

issues which may create serious setbacks and impediments for the Israeli democracy.

Therefore, our expectation is that these two countries are home to the most responsive

political parties in the region.

On the other side of the spectrum, we were able to conduct a VAA in Morocco, which

is a monarchy with serious setbacks and limitations in regards to democratic elections.

According to Tessler and Gao (2005), Moroccan public was one of the most supportive

countries in the Arab World towards democracy. In fact, country has witnessed a controlled

opening and political reform in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s and it has established an

electoral system in which Islamist Justice and Development Party (JDP) was integrated into

the party system. However, by the means of gerrymandering the Berber-majority electoral

districts, encouraging intra-party splits in the opposition and integrating the new generations

of political and economic elites into the monarchical system, the kingdom was able to shield

itself from any electoral, oppositional challenge. According to Sater (2009), King

Mohammad VI was unable to initiate democratization despite the initial expectations.

Although mass protests and upheavals against the regime during the Arab Spring threatened

the status quo, the king was able to control the political crisis by holding early parliamentary

elections and initiating a constitutional reform. But these two actions did not change the fact

that the Moroccan political parties are hindered from responding fully to the voters’

preferences as the Kingdom limits the party platforms and their electoral campaigns. Up until

recently, before Mohammad VI promised these political reforms, the king was able to appoint

and dismiss all of the relevant political figures. Even if the cabinet and the parliament gained

some clout vis-à-vis the king, these reforms did not have any impact on the fact that parties

are incorporated into the monarchy. In other words, political parties in the country are still

relying on the king’s political power and his personal discretion. Even if the politically

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relevant political parties are relatively older compared with the post-Arab Spring Tunisia and

Egypt, the fact that the party elites are incorporated into the monarchy is an important deficit

for electoral responsiveness. For instance, right after the 2007 legislative elections, the king’s

close friend Fouad Ali El Himma established Authenticity and Modernity Party (AMP),

successfully integrating independent MPs and political notables into the monarchy’s political

agenda (Liddell, 2010). Also, Morocco lacks clear-cut cleavages compared to the Turkish and

Israeli cases, besides the role of Islamism in the country. These two issues, namely the

incorporation of parties to the monarchy and lack of well-established political cleavages,

create serious deficits for the electoral responsiveness in Morocco (Amghar, 2007).

Despite revolutionary changes within the Arab Spring movement the Tunisian and

Egyptian cases have not yet completed their transition periods. Three post-Arab Spring

elections were held in these two countries, namely Tunisian constituent assembly elections

and Egyptian legislative and presidential elections. Most of the political parties were

established or legally recognized after respective revolutions in the two countries. It is

already well-established in the relevant literature that the Muslim Brotherhood as well as

other Islamist movements have an enormous social network for responding to the material

and service needs of their constituents (Brocker & Künkler, 2013; Clark, 2004; Diamond,

2010). Institutionalization of the incentive provision mechanisms through vast social

networks gave the Muslim Brotherhood and its political party, Freedom and Justice Party

(FJP) an advantage in Egypt. FJP was able to benefit from its networks and its experience in

formally/informally contesting the Mubarak regime. Similarly, al-Wafd party (the oldest

political party in Egypt) had an aggressive electoral campaign, reaching out to voters through

television and other media. However, neither the Islamist nor the secular fronts were able to

present a substantiated electoral platform. According to Hassan, party manifestos “addressed

Egypt’s most pressing problems like unemployment, education and healthcare with extremely

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general phrases and promises of increased spending without specifying how the suggested

measures will be financed” (Hassan, 2013). Indeed, ideological divisions and polarization

between Islamists and secularists obscured substantive policy preferences.

In Tunisia, a similar campaign period is observed. The country also witnessed an

autocratic regime under Ben Ali, similar to Mubarak’s Egypt. After Bourgiba was declared

unfit for presidency, Ben Ali was appointed in his place in 1987. Early on in his term, he

initiated reforms by legalizing previously banned political parties and releasing some Islamist

political prisoners. However, “…by the early 1990s, Ben Ali was practicing the full

Bourguiba, cult and all…” (Henry, 2004). But, Tunisia remained as one of the most likely

candidates to experience a liberalizing transition according to Noland’s spatial and socio-

demographic models (2005). This likelihood was realized in early 2011 and Ben Ali was

forced to leave his office. The first free and fair elections to determine the seat distribution of

the constituent assembly was held in late 2011, approximately nine months after Ben Ali’s

government was ousted. Most of the political parties were founded or recognized after the

revolution, except from secular leftist Democratic Forum for Labour (DFL) and Liberties and

Progressive Democratic Party (LPDP). This did not prevent Ennahda from becoming the first

party in the elections. They were able to win 89 seats out of 217. Yet, the political

developments after the elections were not signs of a successful democratic transition. As

expected in the aftermath of founding elections during periods of transition, Tunisia

experienced serious turmoil and political impasses similar to the situation in Egypt. These

political crises in both countries indicate that they may not be considered as full democracies.

In all of the five cases, one can argue that the parties are not historically bound and

institutionalized relative to the advanced industrial countries. However, as the Turkish and

Israeli democracies as well as several Islamist parties in other three countries suggest, there is

variation across our cases in respect to party institutionalization. However, given that the

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Turkish and Israeli cases have a history of democratic electoral experiences, our argument is

that the Egyptian and Tunisian cases will resemble Morocco in respect to the electoral

responsiveness and the level of social embeddedness of political parties in the post-Arab

Spring elections.

Method and Data

In order to measure convergence between parties and their likely voters, we have

devised six VAAs in our five cases. In these six applications, a question taps into the

propensity to vote for a given party (PTV). This question asks how likely the respondent is to

vote for each political party. Answer categories range from 0 (not likely at all) to 10 (very

likely to vote for the party). This PTV question is asked for each relevant party. Respondents

who have selected high levels of PTV for a certain party do not necessarily have to vote for

that party. However, PTV is a good indicator of how voters judge different parties. In cases

of advanced and institutionalized democracies, high levels of PTV imply congruence

between the party and the voter (van Dijk, Krouwel & Boiten, 2013). However, this may not

be the case in transitioning countries. We have also measured the Euclidean distance between

the voter and four largest political parties in each country for two main political dimensions.

This distance is based on 30 predetermined policy preference questions that are relevant for

the electoral campaign in a given country. These questions tap into both the economic left-

right and the social change vs. conservatism cleavages. Answers for the parties were

determined from their election manifestos and the measurement was based on the spatial

distance of the respondent from political parties. Thanks to these two operationalizations, we

were able to calculate the average distance between the voter and four largest parties for each

order of the PTV question. Very much in line with the Downsian spatial voting framework

this calculation should suggest a negative correlation between the respondent's likelihood to

vote for a certain party and his/her distance to that party. In other words, the higher the

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likelihood of a respondent to judge a party positively as a high PTV score, the lower the

respondent’s distance to that party should be in the spatial plane where we measure the policy

preferences in two dimensions.

[INSERT TABLE 1 HERE]

We have selected the four largest parties in our five cases (see Table 1). The total

share of the electorate as represented by these four parties that we included in our analyses

differed across cases. This variance clearly suggests different effective number of parties

(ENP) across these party systems. The highest vote share we had across our cases was the

2011 Turkish general elections in which the parties had a share of 95.39% of the total votes

whereas the lowest was 2013 Israeli elections with 49.06% of the total votes. In fact,

calculations of ENP according to Laakso and Taagepera’s (1979) formula indicate that

Turkey had the lowest value of ENP with 2.96 parties while Israel had the largest ENP with

8.68 parties. See Table 1 for details of the selected parties across cases.

We have used six VAAs across five Middle Eastern countries during the post-Arab

Spring period. As mentioned above, Tunisian and Egyptian cases represent countries where

the Arab Spring protests have erupted and changed the political system considerably. For the

Egyptian case, we were able to analyze both the parliamentary and presidential elections and

their respective VAAs. Turkish and Israeli cases are the two most stable countries in the

region where a relatively institutionalized and functioning political system exist. On the other

hand, Morocco is an Islamic monarchy, ruled by King Mohammed VI. Our ensuing analyses

help us identify the extent to which spatial voting models apply to different types of elections

and in our case illustrate how we can compare different types of elections with each other.

More specifically we identify to what extent similar levels of electoral responsiveness exist in

Egypt, independent of the nature and type of compared elections.

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To use these six VAAs for relevant statistical analyses efficiently, we have conducted

a logic check and removed those respondents who were not located within the country or

those who did not use the VAA in their native language (Arabic, Hebrew or Turkish for

respective countries). After doing necessary logical checks and removing a portion of the

respondents (25% of respondents on average), we still had a considerable number of

respondents. In order to complete the VAA, respondents had to finish all the necessary 30

questions asked to measure the policy preferences, which were then used to measure the

distance between parties and the respondent himself. However, respondents were free not to

answer the PTV questions about the four largest parties. Therefore, the final data sets were

comprised of those respondents who answered the issue questions together with the PTV

questions in their respective three native languages within the geographical boundaries of

each one of the five countries.

Summary statistics (Table 2) indicate that there was a considerable amount of

variance between countries in respect to the number of respondents. The highest number of

respondents was in Israel with 85,727 respondents who fit the criteria of the logic check.

Israeli VAA is followed by the Egyptian presidential election with 63,820 respondents.

Given the limits of online sampling techniques, one methodological criticism against

conducting research with VAA data can be about sampling and representativeness. Such a

criticism should be well taken, and it is possible that VAA samples may never claim

representativeness. But still, such applications enable researchers to get a grasp of the

situation without representing the whole population. Datasets collected online generally

suffer from problems of under-coverage and self-selection that can potentially bias estimates

(Bethlehem, 2010; Hooghe and Teepe, 2007). Yet, there are also benefits to opt-in web

surveys. First, our VAA for each of these elections allowed us to gather unparalleled amounts

of data from larger number of voters than traditional surveys, combining wide-ranging

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information about their political behaviour, opinions and background characteristics. In

addition, studies have shown that computerized self-administration reduces measurement

error relative to other modes of data collection, increasing both the level of reporting and the

report accuracy of opinions and attitudes compared with more “conventional” surveys

(Kreuter et al., 2008; Sakshaug et al., 2010). Moreover, online survey questions are answered

more truthfully and carefully compared to interviewer-administered surveys (Olson, 2006).

This combination of self-selection and self-administration leads to a pool of respondents less

likely to misreport their preferences and behaviour, and thus measurement errors should be

smaller (Sakshaug et al., 2010). After recording their initial vote intention, the VAA offered

users an instant ‘reward’ in the form of ‘advice’ of which candidate most closely represents

the users’ own preferences, which intensifies the incentive to be truthful and accurate.

[INSERT TABLE 2 HERE]

More practically, we could not find nationally representative samples that cover our

five cases with comparable policy preference and PTV questions in our case. Given the

difficulties of conducting nationally representative electoral surveys in non-democratic

countries, Middle Eastern cases are especially suitable for utilizing VAAs.2 Additionally,

VAA questionnaires are more suitable for research on electoral responsiveness, issue voting

and spatial models since there are thirty questions in each VAA to measure the distance

between parties and voters unlike traditional election surveys which usually have far less

questions on these issues. As such, VAA data provide researchers with more precise

placement of voters and parties along different political dimensions. Our ensuing analyses

show that studies based on VAA samples also have face validity that can help us explain

important political developments in many different parts of the world.

2 It is important to underline that there are efforts for representative surveys in the region as well. One

prominent example is the Arab Barometer. However, neither Arab Barometer nor other similar

surveys, such as the World Values Survey, have similar questions or items that are comparable across

our cases.

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Findings

Our findings are based on PTV questions and the distance between parties and voters.

For each case, we measured the average distance between four largest parties and their

relevant PTV orders. We expect that as the distance of individuals from the party positions

increases their likelihood to vote for that party should decline. In Israel, Turkey and Egyptian

parliamentary elections our graphical depiction clearly shows this expected trend. In other

cases such expected tendency is not observed.

[INSERT GRAPH 1 HERE]

In the Turkish case, the four largest parties shared 95.39% of the total votes. This is

the largest sum of vote shares among our five countries. This is not unexpected given that

there is a 10% national threshold and a predominant party system in which voters act

strategically.3 For all of the four relevant parties, distance towards a political party in two

dimensional space decreases as the voter’s tendency to vote for that party increases. This is

expected in countries where the parties are socially embedded and the voter’s propensity to

vote for a party overlaps with their distance to the party in the two dimensional space. The

only slightly exceptional case can be the Nationalist Action Party (NAP). Distance to the

NAP does not decrease by gradations as voters become more inclined to vote for the party.

However, there is still a clear decline even if it is not gradated. This lack of congruence

between voters and the party can be explained by several alternative factors. First of all, NAP

represents the ultranationalist far right ideology of Turkey. It is the third largest party in the

country which had about 13% of total votes in 2011. Although the nationalist issue items are

included in our 30 issue questions, the final political map may not be grasping the salient

issue dimension for the NAP.

3 See Çarkoğlu (2011) Gümüşcü (2013) and Müftüler-Baç and Keyman (2012) on the emerging

predominant party system in Turkey.

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[INSERT GRAPH 2 HERE]

Israeli general elections of 2013 is similar to the Turkish case in the sense that four of

the most important parties’ voters and their distance vs PTV tendencies fit to our expected

pattern reflecting social embeddedness. However, the Israeli case had the smallest sum of

vote shares for the four parties with 49% of total votes unlike the Turkish case. Potentially

the remaining more than half of the electorate in Israel may be mobilized by factors not

grasped by our two dimensions and hence these parties may not reflect the expected pattern

we observe in our analyses. Even if these two cases represent the two opposite sides of the

spectrum4 for party fractionalization, they share an important empirical finding. Similar to the

Turkish case, Israeli parties are also socially embedded exhibiting the expected pattern of

linkage between distance in the issue space and PTV. Therese is relatively high levels of

responsiveness and issues that are relevant for party supporters find a reflection from the

party platforms. An interesting finding relates to Yesh Atid, the second largest party after

Likud/Israeli Beitenu electoral alliance. Country specialists were not expecting Yesh Atid to

gain so much prominence and seats in the Knesset. Indeed, the party platform also signals to

such a prominence: in every different PTV order, respondents were closer to the party on

average compared to the other three largest parties. This signals to the fact that Yesh Atid’s

electoral campaign was based on change, reformation and efficiency that were “catch all”

phrases during the 2013 Israeli electoral campaign period. The party gained prominence

thanks to its charismatic leader, Yair Lapid who is a well-known figure in the Israeli media.

Compared to relatively more institutionalized and older parties in the Israeli party system,

Yesh Atid was able to translate its original and unusual discourse into unexpected results in

the ballot.

4 As mentioned above, value for the effective number of parties was also the lowest in Turkey (2.96)

indicating that the 10% national threshold and emergence of a predominant party system in Turkey

makes the country less fractionalized compared to Israel where the threshold is 2%.

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[INSERT GRAPH 3 HERE]

Tunisian constituent assembly elections were held on 23 October 2011, 10 months

after the revolution. All of the four largest parties were established before the revolution and

they were relatively more institutionalized compared to some newcomers in other cases such

as Yesh Atid in Israel and Free Egyptians Party in the Egyptian parliamentary elections.

However, this relative organizational strength does not directly translate to socially

embedded parties or a party system that is open to competition in issues besides from

Islamism vs. secularism. In this respect, Tunisian case is an ideal case, showing problems in

democratic transition processes. Tunisian elections do not show a gradated spatial proximity

between parties and voters. None of the four largest parties could tap into the voters’ issue

preferences in accordance with proximity. The likelihood to vote for the Tunisian parties

appear to remain more or less constant irrespective of the distance in the issue space.

Compared with the Turkish and Israeli cases where voters who are more likely to vote for a

given party are closer to the party in the issue space (except for the Turkish NAP), politically

relevant Tunisian parties hint at a finding that is suggested by earlier theoretical work on

democratization and party institutionalization. Transition periods are not finalized with the

coming of elections. On the contrary, such elections carry the risk of reversal with them.

Although we have not witnessed such a reversal in the Tunisian case right after the elections,

it is clear that party platforms do not respond to voters’ preferences. Limitations in

responsiveness and divergence in the issue space indicates that the post-Arab Spring Tunisia

is still in the process of transition and it requires further deliberative processes for the

establishment of socially embedded, responsive parties.

One interesting example in the Tunisian case is the Democratic Forum for Labor and

Liberties. Before the revolution, this party played a secondary role during Ben Ali’s tenure.

Unlike Ennahda and Congress for the Republic, Democratic Forum was already recognized

by the Tunisian government before the revolution. Also unlike the PDP, it did not boycott the

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rigged elections. This earlier institutionalization gave Forum an advantage on responsiveness

and it hints at the relatively higher level of its embedded nature. This does not suggest that

Ennahda and other parties were not mobilizing different political groups at all. However,

electoral participation and involvement in formal political processes was an important

experience for the Forum. This does not imply that they are more advantageous in earning

votes. Indeed, Ennahda was able to get 37% of the total votes whereas the Forum got only

7%. In other words, political parties that were banned from inclusion into the formal political

processes still had a considerable support in the post-revolutionary Tunisia. But this support

did not translate into a clear-cut positioning in the issue space. Inclination to vote for a given

party in the Tunisian elections is not associated with closer issue positioning. A similar

limitation on political responsiveness and social embeddedness is also visible in the

Moroccan and Egyptian cases as well.

[INSERT GRAPH 4 HERE]

For this study, Morocco represents a yardstick to gauge the distance between a

monarchical Middle Eastern regime in which the Arab Spring uprisings were softened by

general elections held in 2011 and the King Mohammad VI implemented a constitutional

reform package. Referendum for the constitution was passed by a sizeable majority of the

voters (98.5%) and the king’s decisions saved him from a faith similar to that of Egyptian and

Tunisian presidents. Although turnout in the constitutional referendum was relatively high,

around 75%, turnout for the elections held in late November of 2011 was the lowest in the six

elections across our five cases with a 45%, indicating that the overall level of internal

political efficacy is low in Morocco. This is not unexpected given that the king has preceded

the legislative and executive powers prior to the reform. In addition to the problems of

accountability and internal efficacy, Morocco also faces serious limits in competition and

contestation. The king was able to appoint key political offices up until recently. He exercises

18

ultimate political, civil and religious authority in the country and thus it is not unexpected to

argue that Morocco represents the least democratic, i.e. the most autocratic case for our

comparison.

The Moroccan party system is home to several different party types. First of all,

Istiqlal and National Rally of Independents represent parties that are closer to the monarch.

While Istiqlal directly defends the monarchy and traditional authority of the monarch, NRoI

incorporates candidates and independent political figures that are closer to the palace. On the

other hand, the Justice and Development Party represents the moderate Islamism in Morocco.

Just as its name suggests, it is ideologically influenced by its Turkish counterpart, the Turkish

JDP which has been ruling Turkey for the last eleven years. Moroccan JDP gained

prominence in the late 1990s and became the second largest party in the legislative elections

held in 2007. Besides from JDP, our empirical results indicate that no other relevant party is

socially embedded in the Moroccan party system. In fact, even JDP’s average distances per

order are not gradated as expected. For instance, those respondents who have indicated that

they are less likely to vote for JDP (order of 1) are closer to the party in the issue space than

those who selected that they are more likely to vote for JDP (order of 6). This unusual

gradation can be an artificial effect of the VAA opt-in sampling given that only 3.5% of all

the respondents indicated that they are in the order of 1 for the JDP’s PTV score. However,

the fact that JDP has been the only viable alternative to that of the monarchy’s political clout

makes the party an exception in Morocco. In fact, Pellicer and Wegner (2012) argue that the

JDP is able to monopolize votes of the educated middle class in the country. No other party is

able to do that. After the party won the elections as a result of King Mohammad IV’s political

and constitutional concessions, it was able to hold onto the power unlike what we have been

witnessing in Egypt after the coup against Morsi’s government or in Tunisia where political

19

turmoil has been continuing thanks to assassinations of important political figures from the

opposition.

[INSERT GRAPH 5 HERE]

Egyptian parliamentary election was held in three stages between 28 November 2011

and 11 January 2012. This election was a turning point for the country as it was the first free

and fair election after the 1952 military coup by the Free Officers movement. This was also

the first election for the Muslim Brotherhood, an important Islamist movement not only for

Egypt but for the whole region. The Brotherhood participated with the Freedom and Justice

Party (FJP) and gained 37.5% of the votes followed by the radical Islamist Al-Nour Party

with 27.8% of the votes. In total, these two Islamist parties gained more than 65% of all the

votes in this election. In fact, FJP was the only party among all parties that had more

respondents who had PTV score of 6 or higher than those lower than 5. VAA results support

the argument that Islamism vs. secularism was the main issue for this election. There were

questions in the Egyptian parliamentary election VAA tapping into to the role of Sharia,

place of the Coptic minority as well as the role of women in politics. VAA results indicate

that the standard deviation of respondents’ score along the conservatism vs. change axis was

higher than their score along the economic left-right axis. Results from this VAA indicate

that both FJP as well as Al Nour responded to important issues, as their supporters would

expect. In this respect, both parties show a gradated decline in average distance among

different PTV orders even if Al Nour is categorically more distant to the voters compared to

the FJP. Similarly, Free Egyptians Party (FEP) shows the same pattern of social

embeddedness. FEP represents the socially liberal and secular groups in the country. Its

constituency is made up of the Coptic minority as well as secular civil society and prominent

intellectuals. Given that such parts of the civil society were the driving force during the

formative periods of the Egyptian revolution, the party was able to become the fourth largest

20

one in the elections. In addition, it was able to respond to the concerns and preferences of

liberal and secular voters. New Wafd (NW) is also a secular party but the difference between

it and FEP is the fact that NW is the oldest party in the country. However, the party was in

turmoil before and during the elections, the electoral coalition they struck with the FJP was

cancelled right before the elections and the NW had to participate and compete with the

alternative secular Egyptian bloc, led by Egyptian Social Democratic Party and FEP. In this

respect, the NW’s platform and electoral campaign strategy was comparatively inadequate.

Turmoil and internal conflict within the party translated into lack of responsiveness to the

voters. The fact that the party is the oldest in Egypt may have been an advantage against the

alternative FEP. However, even if the NW gained eighty thousand more votes than the

Egyptian Bloc, their party platform was the least responsive in the Egyptian parliamentary

elections.

[INSERT GRAPH 6 HERE]

Egypt was a semi-presidential country and 2012 presidential election was the first of

its type in which presidential candidates could compete for the office. Four largest candidates

got 86.6% of the votes and in the runoff, Morsi and Shafik competed for the presidency.

However, the VAA was devised before the elections and majority of the respondents used the

VAA before the first round. Questions that tap into the two axes were somewhat similar to

the earlier VAA for the parliamentary elections. However, some questions were revised and

others were added in accordance with the changes in issue saliency and political

developments in the country. Results indicate that none of the candidates were responsive

towards the voters in respect to the 30 questions asked to measure the two axes. For instance,

there was neither substantive nor statistically significant difference between different PTV

orders. For instance, those who indicated that they are not very likely to vote for Morsy

(order of 2) had an average distance of 1.44 whereas respondents who indicated that they are

21

very likely to vote for Morsy (order of 10) had a higher average distance of 1.45. Similar

examples are observed for other candidates as well. Therefore, one question is why such a

lack of responsiveness and social embeddedness prevailed in the presidential election

whereas the Egyptian parliamentary elections is closest to what we would expect in a

functional electoral system, except for Israel and Turkey.

Answer to this question may lie in artifacts of the VAA, differences in presidential vs.

parliamentary elections or the changing political conditions in Egypt. Regarding the

deficiencies in the VAA, it is outright possible to rule out the impact of the number of

respondents who have used the VAA (refer to the Table 2). It may also likely be that the

selected questions to tap into the two axes became irrelevant over the course of the

presidential election campaign. However, longitudinal analysis of responses indicates that the

respondents’ spatial distribution stayed the same over time. Regarding the limits of the VAA,

one may also argue that the selected questions do not measure the expected concept. In other

words, it is possible that there are limits in the construct validity. This criticism requires

further methodological studies on VAAs.

Besides from the problems that can be associated with VAAs, there can also be other

substantive issues. First of all, presidential election campaign can be different from political

parties for several reasons. For instance, an important division was the new political figures

vs. the old elite. This division was not very prevalent in the parliamentary elections as the old

elite was barred from participating in the elections. The second candidate in the first round,

Ahmed Shafik was the final prime minister during Mubarak’s presidency. In fact, the runoff

between Morsy and Shafik witnessed a clear division in the country; Morsy was able to win

the presidency with a 3.4% margin. In this respect, a considerable amount of presidential

election campaign was devoted to the differences between the old elite and the opposition.

This division is not fully delineated in the issue space and presidential candidates were not

22

responding to social change or economic left-right cleavages. This is a problem associated

with the Egyptian case indicating that the presidential election was not based on political

platforms or policy preferences. Rather, the campaign witnessed polarization of the country,

where Islamist pro-revolutionary political figures and the old elite were competing. This

polarized social structure is an alternative explanation to the artifacts of the 2012 Egyptian

VAA. Further research can help us explain whether the VAA design or substantive shifts and

conjunctures in the country explain the lack of presidential candidates’ responsiveness.

Discussion and Conclusions

These five cases and six elections suggest that there are contextual and regional

determinants for the social embeddedness and electoral responsiveness of political parties.

Table 3 is a summary of the country graphs and it refers to the correlation between PTV

orders and the average distance. Expectation from a socially embedded, responsive and

democratic election would be to have high values of negative correlation. In other words,

respondents are expected to be more likely to vote for a party as they get closer to that party

in the issue space. Or as their distance in the issue space increases voters are expected to

become less likely to vote for that party.

It is clear that the Turkish and Israeli cases are the most electorally responsive party

systems in the larger MENA region. This is not unexpected given the consolidated

democratic regimes and institutionalized elections in Israel and Turkey, albeit the Turkish

case is still ridden with several deficiencies stemming from party closures and coups. With

the exception of the NAP, all of the largest political parties in these two countries respond to

the voters in the issue space in the expected way. On the other hand, Moroccan elections of

2011 shows a non-responsive party system that may also help us explain alienated voters

with relatively low levels of internal political efficacy and lowest level of turnout across the

six elections. Monarchical nature of the Moroccan politics and injection of monarchist ideas

23

into the electoral campaign as well as the king’s religious and security-related powers

indicate that the Moroccan parties may not be embedded into the issue space, except for the

JDP. This is also not surprising given the fact that Islamism is a salient dimension in many of

the countries in the region and JDP represents such an ideology in Morocco. JDP is able to

monopolize a considerable portion of the voters thanks to its place along the Islamism vs.

secular cleavage.

Between Morocco, Turkey and Israel, we have two cases which held the first free and

fair elections in the post-Arab Spring period. Tunisia and Egypt are the two countries,

additionally with Libya, which witnessed a significant political fracture because of the Arab

Spring. Three elections held in these two countries help us measure the impact of the Arab

Spring. Empirical results from our findings are mixed. First of all, it is clear that the both

countries are less responsive than the Turkish and Israeli elections. The only election that

resembles these two elections is the Egyptian Parliamentary elections. Further research is

required to explain whether this resemblance was an artifact of the Egyptian VAA or if there

were causes for the responsiveness. However, the Egyptian presidential election as well as

the Tunisian elections were not very responsive. It is not possible to argue that the parties

corresponded with the issues that were relevant for the electorate. An interesting finding is

about Islamist parties in the region. As mentioned above in the findings section for the

Moroccan JDP, Islamist parties are the most responsive. FJP and Nour in Egypt as well as

Ennahda in Tunisia have relatively high values of electoral responsiveness. This may be

related to several issues. First of all, the Islamist movements were able to establish their own

incentive provision networks. Also, these movements established their own political elites in

these three countries. These political elites were able to benefit from the Islamism vs.

secularism cleavage. Even if FJP and Ennahda were not legally recognized before the

24

revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia, they benefitted from vast social networks in order to

respond to their constituents.

[INSERT TABLE 3 HERE]

The Egyptian presidential election is an outlier case in this comparison. Further research is

required to explain why this was the case. Even if the parliamentary elections in Egypt were

relatively responsive, this is not the case in the presidential election. This difference may be

related to the differences between first-order and second-order election types as well as the

nature of presidential elections in Egypt. Contextual and theoretical reasons would assist

further research in this topic.

Table 4 introduces the same relationship in a multivariate context with demographic

controls. After controlling for age, education level and gender we still see that distance in the

issue space is inversely related to PTV. The signs of the distance variable conform to

previous findings with correlation analyses and only the Tunisian CPR appears to have an

insignificant distance coefficient. The magnitudes of the distance coefficients show that the

strongest embeddedness in the two-dimensional space appears in Turkey followed by Israel

and the Egyptian parliamentary elections exhibit the third strongest responsiveness in the

expected direction. A similar observation can also be made with the degree of explanatory

power these models have reflected in the r-square values. Israeli case has the highest average

r-square value with 0.27 followed by Turkey with 0.23. Egyptian case follows closely with

0.2 r-square value. However, in the Turkish case the NAP and in the Egyptian case the Wafd

appears with lowest r-square values suggesting that the two-dimensional space we use in

these models do not adequately capture the space of competition for these two parties as they

do for the others.

In summary, this paper indicates that the Arab Spring was not a success story for

electoral processes. Egyptian and Tunisian cases had serious limitations in respect to their

25

electoral responsiveness as well as cleavage convergence. This is not unexpected given that

the countries had only the founding elections. Further institutionalization of political parties,

a free media in which parties are able to inform the voters about their campaigns as well as

contestation and inclusion into the political elite circles may be crucial for development of a

responsive electoral system in which political parties are agents that represent their

principals.

Additionally, this substantive research utilized VAAs to collect the necessary data for

empirical analyses. VAAs are an especially new phenomenon in countries besides from the

advanced industrial democracies. As far as we know, Egyptian, Moroccan, Turkish and

Tunisian VAAs were the first of their kind in these countries while the VAA in Israel was the

second of its kind. Therefore, VAA research in the Middle East is experiencing its first steps.

As the response rates and attrition because of the logic check indicates in the methods and

data section, further research is required to develop VAAs, especially in non-Western

contexts. However, our results indicate that the VAAs have face as well as predictive validity

and they can be especially useful if utilized for preliminary and exploratory research. In

addition, VAAs can also be used in an experimental survey studies, increasing its leverage

and validity. Our substantive findings, especially the comparison of Egyptian parliamentary

and presidential elections, indicate that further methodological research in assessing the

impact of VAAs on the validity of research is crucial. Opt-in online sampling in VAAs may

cause artefactual inflation or deflation of the findings. Matching VAA respondents with

nationally representative samples can be a solution to this shortcoming. However, this may

not be always possible, especially if the research is on non-democratic or semi-democratic

countries where national electoral survey research is not always possible.

26

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29

TABLES AND GRAPHS

5 Likud and Israel Beitenu formed an electoral alliance on 25th of October, 2012, approximately 3

months before the election. Of the 31 seats won by the coalition, 20 were given to members of Likud

while 11 were Israel Beitenu seats.

Table 1- 6 Elections, 4 Largest Parties and Their Vote Shares

TURKEY - 2011 ISRAEL - 2013 EGYPT – PARLIAMENT 2011

JDP 49.83 Likud

Israel Beitenu5

23.34 FJP 37.5

RPP 25.98 Al-Nour 27.8

NAP 13.01 Yesh Atid 14.33 Wafd 9.2

PDP 6.57 Labor 11.39 FEP 8.9

Total Vote Share

Effective Number of Parties

95.39

2.96

49.06

8.68

83.4

4.2

TUNISIA - 2011 MOROCCO - 2011 EGYPT – PRESIDENTIAL 2012

Ennahda 37.04 JDP 22.8 Morsi 24.78

CPR 8.71 Istiqlal 11.9 Shafik 23.66

Forum 7.03 NROI 11.3 Sabahi 20.72

PDP 3.94 AMP 11.1 Aboul Fotouh 17.47

Total Vote Share

Effective Number of Parties

56.72

4.78

57.1

7.95

86.63

4.92 (First Round)

30

Table 2- Summary Statistics

Variable

Name n Mean

Std

Dev.

Mi

n Max

Variable

Name n Mean

Std

Dev.

Mi

n Max

EGYPT Parliament MOROCCO

dist_fjp 59605 0.93 0.56 0 4.47 dist_jdp 19688 0.83 0.49 0 4.61

dist_nour 59605 1.67 0.61 0 5.32 dist_istiqlal 19688 0.68 0.42 0 3.13

dist_wafd 59605 1.32 0.54 0 3.66 dist_rally 19688 1 0.46 0 3.34

dist_fep 59605 1.91 0.61 0 4.58 dist_amp 19688 1.14 0.44 0 3.63

ptv_fjp 42181 5.43 4.1 0 10 ptv_jdp 16009 5.98 4.04 0 10

ptv_nour 36456 3.45 3.97 0 10 ptv_istiqlal 14770 1.4 2.62 0 10

ptv_wafd 35175 3.32 3.54 0 10 ptv_rally 14239 1.8 2.89 0 10

ptv_fep 34704 4.04 3.88 0 10 ptv_amp 14270 1.3 2.56 0 10

EGYPT President TUNISIA

dist_morsy 63820 1.49 0.48 0 3.71 dist_nahda 11253 1.26 0.56 0 3.44

dist_shafik 63820 1.91 0.5 0 4.06 dist_congress 11253 1.22 0.55 0 2.92

dist_sabahi 63820 1.19 0.47 0 4.17 dist_forum 11253 1.69 0.59 0 2.55

dist_fotouh 63820 0.98 0.4 0 3.56 dist_pdp 11253 1.48 0.52 0 2.75

ptv_morsy 35959 2 3 0 10 ptv_nahda 9441 2.82 3.97 0 10

ptv_shafik 37112 1.75 2.9 0 10 ptv_congress 8507 5.33 4.21 0 10

ptv_sabahi 36519 4.47 3.56 0 10 ptv_forum 8676 2.4 3.32 0 10

ptv_fotouh 37569 3.91 3.54 0 10 ptv_pdp 8728 1.34 2.85 0 10

ISRAEL TURKEY

dist_likud 85727 1.5 0.8 0 3.96 dist_jdp 60004 0.62 0.34 0 4.01

dist_beit 85727 1.86 0.77 0 4.32 dist_rpp 60004 0.64 0.31 0 4.05

dist_yesh 85727 0.92 0.54 0 3.93 dist_nap 60004 0.8 0.37 0 3.69

dist_labor 85727 1.6 0.8 0 4.45 dist_pdp 60004 0.75 0.36 0 4.21

ptv_likud 62190 3.99 3.6 0 10 ptv_jdp 49485 3.25 3.99 0 10

ptv_beit 60646 2.14 2.99 0 10 ptv_rpp 49737 5.03 3.68 0 10

ptv_yesh 60396 4.24 3.36 0 10 ptv_nap 47317 4.83 3.64 0 10

ptv_labor 61546 4.45 3.41 0 10 ptv_pdp 46277 3.08 3.42 0 10

31

Table 3 - Correlation Between PTV orders and the Voters’ Distance to the Party

(All values are significant, p<0.001)

ISRAEL TURKEY

Likud -0.64 JDP -0.54

Israel Beitenu -0.50 RPP -0.51

Yesh Atid -0.39 NAP -0.26

Labor -0.49 PDP -0.49

EGYPT PARLIAMENT MOROCCO

FJP -0.49 JDP -0.31

Nour -0.47 Istiqlal 0.012

WAFD -0.11 NRoI -0.11

FEP -0.53 AMP -0.16

TUNISIA EGYPT PRESIDENTIAL

Nahda -0.24 Morsy -0.04

CPR 0.03 Shafik -0.14

Forum -0.16 Sabahi -0.01

PDP -0.07 Aboul Fotouh -0.01

32

Table 4 –Explaining the Probability to Vote (PTV) Scores with Distance in the Issue

Space And Demographic Controls

Asterisks indicate level of statistical significance, * p<0.05, ** p<0.001, *** p<0.0001

constant Distance Female Age Education r2 N

Turkey

JDP 30.345*** -3.913*** -0.511*** -0.020*** -0.134*** 0.32 47761

RPP 0.554 -3.704*** 0.481*** 0.031*** 0.050* 0.25 48006

NAP 31.319*** -1.404*** -0.388*** 0.008*** -0.163*** 0.07 45728

PDP 27.401*** -2.780*** -0.262*** -0.005*** -0.133*** 0.27 44725

Israel

Likud 8.559*** -2.879*** -0.416*** -0.013*** 0.090*** 0.43 55900

Israel Beitenu 6.388*** -1.896*** -0.400*** -0.013*** -0.017* 0.27 54543

Yesh Atid 5.874*** -2.432*** 0.061* 0.002* 0.129*** 0.15 54284

Labor 7.325*** -2.066*** 0.001 0.006*** 0.048*** 0.25 55311

Morocco

JDP 7.882*** -2.538*** 0.463*** -0.011* -0.045*** 0.11 11496

Istiqlal 1.897*** -0.084 -0.642*** 0.017*** 0.029 0.02 10589

NRoI 4.074*** -0.715*** -0.920*** -0.010*** 0.078* 0.03 10195

AMP 4.095*** -0.981*** -0.453*** -0.012*** -0.079** 0.03 10261

Tunisia

Ennahda 5.743*** -2.707*** 1.242*** -0.018*** -0.385*** 0.09 7452

CPR 5.263*** 0.275 0.321*** -0.048*** 0.131 0.02 6765

Forum 5.349*** -2.135*** -0.434*** 0.024*** 0.192** 0.06 6893

PDP 3.398*** -0.959*** -0.719*** 0.043*** 0.020 0.04 6932

Egypt President

Morsi 3.426*** -0.264*** -0.627*** -0.002 -0.039 0.01 28355

Shafik 3.176*** -0.773*** 0.138*** 0.019*** -0.135*** 0.03 29067

Sabahi 3.008*** -0.089* -0.228*** -0.006** 0.348*** 0.003 28979

Aboul Fotouh 3.491*** -0.106* -0.198*** -0.013*** 0.199*** 0.003 29822

Egypt Parliament

FJP 9.188*** -3.556*** 0.699*** 0.008*** -0.332*** 0.25 27596

Al Nour 10.021*** -2.959*** 0.939*** 0.005* -0.586*** 0.25 23996

Wafd 5.890*** -0.647*** 0.238*** 0.024*** -0.515*** 0.02 23287

FEP 11.330*** -3.147*** -0.543*** 0.015*** -0.186*** 0.28 22780

33

GRAPH 1:

GRAPH 2:

34

GRAPH 3:

GRAPH 4:

35

GRAPH 5:

GRAPH 6: