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Populism, Ideology and Discourse in the Global South

Murat Somer

Contact: murat.somer4(at)gmail.com

Professor of Political Science and International Relations, Ozyegin University Istanbul

Murat Somer is Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Ozyegin University, Istanbul. His research on polarization and de-polarization, religious and secular politics, ethnic conflicts, autocratization and democratization came out in books and journals such as Comparative Political Studies and Democratization. His recent publications include Polarizing Polities: A Global Threat to Democracy (2019, co-edited with Jennifer McCoy), and Return to Point Zero: The Turkish-Kurdish Question and How Politics and Ideas (Re)Make Empires, Nations and States (2022). Previously, he was Professor of Political Science and International relations at Koç University, Istanbul, and held visiting positions such as Democracy and Development Fellow at Princeton University Institute for International and Regional Studies (2010-11) and visiting scholar and lecturer at Sanford University Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies (2019). He has widely contributed to media, civil society and political parties on issues related to democracy, rule of law and human rights.

Research project

Depolarizing Democracies: Preventing and Overcoming Pernicious Polarization

The main project is to complete the book titled “Depolarizing Democracies: Preventing and Overcoming Pernicious Polarization,” which is co-authored with Jennifer McCoy and under contract with Princeton University Press. The book addresses the rise of pernicious polarization – the division of society into mutually antagonistic political camps — in democracies around the globe and the question of how to understand and address it. It asks how contemporary democracies can prevent or overcome extreme forms of political polarization. The book argues that problems of democracy and extreme political polarization (pernicious polarization) are closely interrelated. The solutions to pernicious polarization lie in democratic politics, democratic reforms and what we call democratic remaking. Political will and creativity (agency) play crucial roles in both the rise and the management of severe political polarization, and what can be done varies according to the level of polarization in a society. Before it reaches pernicious levels, democracies can likely handle growing political polarization by taking advantage of existing democratic institutions, making incremental reforms and forming depolarizing political coalitions. Once a society becomes locked into pernicious levels of polarization, however, the book argues that a more fundamental makeover of large-scale democratic reforms and refashioning the state, what the book calls “democratic remaking,” may be necessary. The book posits that four fault lines of polarization are critical to address in contemporary cases of extreme political polarization: inclusion, belonging and national identity; liberal versus majoritarian democracy; income and wealth inequality; and competing visions of the social contract. The book presents potential strategies to address polarization by drawing on historical and contemporary experiences of a wide range of countries with an emphasis on cases from the Global South. It then addresses two crucial cases of pernicious polarization today – the troubled wealthy, established democracy of the United States, a superpower, and the emerging economy and autocratizing electoral democracy of Turkey, a former empire and developing country at the cross-roads of multiple geocultural spheres. It concludes with a review of the toolbox of strategies and interventions identified in the empirical chapters and the need for innovative solutions to remaining crucial challenges for today’s polarized democracies. Parallel to completing the book, the project also inolves prepararing and submitting a related book proposal and ERC Advanced Grant on “Oppositions and Overcoming Democratic Erosion“.