Social mobility and pro-government mobilization: the case of July 15th pro-government mobilization in Turkey

Abstract

What are the economic determinants of pro-government mobilizations? While recent studies have contributed to our understanding of the relationship between a defined set of economic variables and political unrest – including revolts, riots, and uprisings against the status quo – there has been relatively little attempt to understand how these models might apply to demonstrations in support of the existing regime, which remain an understudied phenomenon within the literature. The coup attempt, which took place in Turkey on 15 July 2016 and was organized by a religious movement within the Turkish military, led to widespread public protests which ultimately succeeded in overcoming the threat. This case affords us a valuable opportunity to study the phenomenon of pro-government mobilization and its political and economic underpinnings. By applying the theoretical contributions of the already well-established literature on social mobility, we argue that higher earnings, economic equality and social mobility will foster a greater likelihood of mass mobilizations in support of the regime. Our study contributes to the literature theoretically by extending the scope of the existing theories on mass mobilization and empirically by examining a rare case of pro-government mobilization in Turkey by using individual and regional level datasets.