Thinking about domination relations in the act of delegation: The case of candidate selection processes in the Republican People's Party

This study is on the domination relations that emerged in the process of selection of candidates for the Republican People's Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi – CHP). This study contends that although the CHP used different methods for selecting candidates in the 2007, 2011 and 2015 elections, people, majority of whom can be qualified as party professionals, were still elected and a radical change in the composition of candidates and MPs did not emerge. This fact has been demonstrated via diagrams of multiple correspondence analysis based on Turkey-wide statistics collected from party publications and other sources, as well as on data from an ethnographic field research carried out in Kırklareli. To analyse hidden mechanisms of domination, the study draws upon Pierre Bourdieu's theory of symbolic violence by comparing it with Marxist concepts of 'ideology' and 'hegemony', as well as the evaluations of classical elite theories. This study contends that the conceptual toolbox provided by the theory of symbolic violence provides researchers with remarkably different perspectives on the relations of domination compared to the Marxist concepts of "ideology" and "hegemony". The study also demonstrates that Bourdieu's theory of practice enables researchers to analyze their problematic within the context of their historical and relational foundations unlike generelizations of classical elite theories based on highly functionalist and essentialist assumptions. In this context, this study critically interrogates the truisms of Turkish politics that the central appointment method (merkez yoklaması) is the indicator of "oligarchy of leaders" and the primary method (ön seçim) is the indicator of "intra-party democracy". The study reveals the fact through statistical and ethnographic data that the people who are nominated by the party and who are elected as MPs are identical in all three election periods despite the existence of different selectorates (the party's central organization, party members and delegates). Thus, the study aims to make a theoretical and methodological contribution to both social theory and the political science literature with regards to the themes of selection of MP candidates and intra-party democracy. Keywords: The Republican People's Party, Selection of Political Candidates, Intra-Party Democracy, Pierre Bourdieu, Theory of Symbolic Violence, Multiple Correspondence Analysis.