Concentration of executive power and government responsiveness: examining pledge-policy congruence under the Justice and Development Party (AKP) rule

The main purpose of this thesis is to shed light upon the effect of institutional change on the responsiveness of an elected government to its electoral mandate. Examining pledge-policy congruence across policy domains, it is intended to elucidate how agenda congruence between proposed electoral pledges and subsequent government actions varies under different institutional arrangements. In order to do so, this thesis focuses on periods of the governing Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) covering approximately six legislative tenures over more than twenty years. Using a novel data set, it is found that excessive dominance of the executive power in the hands of a popularly elected president decreases government incentive to respond to its electoral mandates between elections.