Journal of Historical Political Economy > Vol 1 > Issue 4

The Unintended Consequences of Nation-Making Institutions for Civil Society Development

Tugba Bozcaga, Department of European & International Studies, King's College London, UK, tugba.bozcaga@kcl.ac.uk , Asli Cansunar, Department of Political Science, University of Washington, USA, cansunar@uw.edu
 
Suggested Citation
Tugba Bozcaga and Asli Cansunar (2021), "The Unintended Consequences of Nation-Making Institutions for Civil Society Development", Journal of Historical Political Economy: Vol. 1: No. 4, pp 591-613. http://dx.doi.org/10.1561/115.00000021

Publication Date: 01 Dec 2021
© 2021 T. Bozcaga and A. Cansunar
 
Subjects
Comparative political economy,  Comparative Politics,  Political History,  Political Organizations,  State Politics
 
Keywords
Civil societynation-makingstate politicspolitical developmenteducation
 

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In this article:
Introduction 
Historical Background 
Civil Society Development 
Data 
Results 
Discussion and Conclusion 
References 

Abstract

A dominant idea in the literature is that civil society development tends to decrease with statism and be higher in liberal democracies. Our study argues that statist institutions do not necessarily crowd out civic associations and may even foster civil society development. To develop and test our argument, we use the case of the People's Houses, one of the major social projects of early Republican Turkey modeled after its counterparts of the era. We find that the local existence of the People's Houses has a detectable effect on present-day associational mobilization. First, drawing on qualitative evidence, we explain how the People's Houses' organizational structure contributed to developing vibrant associational infrastructure and organizational skills. We then use an original dataset that draws on archival data on the People's Houses' locations as well as an original web-scraped dataset on the present-day civic associations located across 970 districts, showing a robust and positive relationship between the People's Houses and the number of present-day local associations.

DOI:10.1561/115.00000021

Online Appendix | 115.00000021_app.pdf

This is the article's accompanying appendix.

DOI: 10.1561/115.00000021_app

Companion

Journal of Historical Political Economy, Volume 1, Issue 4 Special Issue - Historical Persistence, Part I: Articles Overview
See the other articles that are part of this special issue.