More Similar than Different?: Foreign Policy Decision Making in Single Party and Coalition Governments.

In his 1993 study about parliamentary democracies, Andrè-Paul Frognier suggested that despite the common view in the literature that the coalition governments are less likely to pursue effective policy goals due to usually more conflictual relations between or among the coalition members, decision making in single party governments is not very different. According to Frognier, the cabinet decision-making in both single-party and coalition governments is affected not necessarily by the number of parties involved but rather whether a) a cabinet is able to debate; b) there is the existence of arrangements designed to solve difficulties among cabinet members; c) the prime minister takes a more or less active role in resolution of conflicts and/or seeks consensus; and d) the likelihood of informal collaboration among the cabinet members. Taking cues from this early study and several other studies (i.e., Thièbault, 1993; Andeweg, 1993; Kaarbo, 1996), this paper examines a number of foreign policy issues from the Turkish context with the aim to specify the conditions under which single party and coalition governments may be expected to act more similarly than the current literature leads us to believe. In order come up with some contingent ? yet arguably limited ? conditions, the paper will analyze the foreign policy decision making process by the Justice and Development party-led Turkish government (AKP, single-party) since it rose to power in Turkey, following the 2002 national elections. The findings are then compared to the foreign policy decision making by the three coalition governments (DSP-MHP-ANAP [1999-2002]; ANAP-DSP-DTP [1997-1999]; and RP-DYP [1996-1997]) that led Turkey in the 1990s and early 2000s. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]