Research

Publications

Yardimci, M. A. (2024). Terrorism, counter‐terrorism, and voting: The case of Turkey. Economics & Politics,1–27.

This paper empirically tests the impact of terrorism and counter-terrorism on voting by focusing on the two 2015 general elections in Turkey - and the 2011 general election. This period offers a unique case because, after the first election, the ongoing peace process between the incumbent party (AKP), the political party associated with the perpetrators (pro-Kurdish political party, HDP), and the imprisoned leader of the terrorist organisation (PKK) was cancelled. Instead, terror attacks recurred and curfews were implemented as counter-terrorism measures. This enables the impact of curfews and terror attacks on electoral outcomes to be analysed in a difference-in-differences setting. Terror attacks are estimated to reduce the incumbent's vote share by 3.2 percentage points, while increasing the vote share of the party associated with the perpetrators by 3.6 percentage points. Curfews are estimated to cancel out the impact of terror attacks in attacked municipalities and decrease the incumbent's vote share by 4.7 percentage points in non-attacked municipalities.

Work in progress

"Money has no religion: Campaign contributions and ideology in the U.S. House" with Andrew Pickering (University of York)

This paper investigates whether and how elected members of the US House of Representatives change their ideological positioning in response to campaign contributions. Contributions come from "Democrat", "Republican" and "split-ticket" sources, depending on donors' overall contribution profiles. "Republican" and "split-ticket" contributions are found to have a negative impact on the ideology score of representatives, indicating more liberal positioning. Similarly, "Democrat" contributions are found to have a positive impact, hence more conservative ideological positioning. Overall, money is found to have a centripetal effect on congress members’ ideology.

"Campaign contributions and financial returns in the US"

"College Teachers’ and Students’ Gender Ratios and Students’ Short and Long-run Outcomes" with Filippos Maraziotis