The objective of this course is to introduce students to political parties, party systems, electoral mechanisms, and social cleavages, which constitute the foundational elements of modern political systems, from a comparative perspective. Starting with the historical and theoretical evolution of parties, the course aims to analyze Turkey's multi-party political life, institutional transformations, and contemporary alliance dynamics in depth. Furthermore, it aims to equip students with the academic skills to critically and empirically analyze contemporary political crises within the context of rising global trends such as the far-right, populism, polarization, and digital disinformation.

This course covers the functions, theories of origin, morphological types of political parties (mass, catch-all, cartel, digital), and classical/new-generation social cleavages. It theoretically examines party systems (Sartori’s typology) and the mathematical and political consequences of proportional representation and majoritarian electoral systems. In the second half of the course, this theoretical framework is applied to the historical development of party and electoral systems in Turkey from the Ottoman Empire to the present, as well as the dynamics of "alliance politics" emerging after the Presidential System. In the final weeks, the rise of the far-right in Europe, populism in the US, and the global processes of digitalization and democratic backsliding are empirically discussed through case studies.