In the 2000s, Turkey has reformed its public administration system in line with New Public Management (NPM) principles towards a more decentralized system. Although the initial aim of the reform process is set to achieve a decentralized and more efficient public management system, the empirical data and official statistics cast doubt on whether this outcome will ever be achieved. Analyzing local government legislation, the discretion of central government in local governance, and the changes in the status of local government in public governance, the article presents the evolution of the local government system in Turkey during the Justice and Development Party government. Points for practitioners The public management reform experience of Turkey resembles the NPM reform patterns in countries with Napoleonic state tradition. Similar to these countries, the emphasis on managerial practices over participatory elements has been prevalent in improving the efficiency and effectiveness of public services. Yet, the findings in the Turkish case challenge the proposition that managerial reforms alone, without improving local democratic governance, can enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of public services.
There are millions of unrecorded land rights in sub-Saharan Africa, which are still not mapped. Therefore, there is a clear demand for innovative solutions for land tenure recording, as also written in the target 1.4 of UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In response to this need, the consortia of “its4land” European Commission Horizon 2020 project developed the “its4land toolbox” based on the continuum of land rights and fit-for-purpose approach. The advanced technological solutions of the toolbox include smart sketch maps, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), interactive boundary delineator, as well as sharing and publishing land information via geocloud services. The solutions are based on specific needs, market opportunities, and readiness of end-users. Moreover, aiming in scaling up broader governance implications are examined. During the project lifetime, the main technical tasks included tool development, prototyping, and demonstration of the tools to local, regional, national, and international users and stakeholders. Furthermore, equal emphasis was placed on needs assessment, governance, capacity, and business modeling. The current paper presents the unique its4land land administration toolbox in which the key exploitable results of the project are integrated in a joint used case in Rwanda.
Keywords: Fit-for-Purpose; Land Tenure; UAV; Boundary Delineation; Land
This article presents a novel capacity assessment framework, coined as Fit-For-Purpose capacity assessment framework (FCAF), to measure the capacity of the land administration system compliant with the Fit-For-Purpose approach. The framework incorporates legal, political, operational, social, technical, and technological capacity conditions and provides a holistic view of the capacity development pathways. The FCAF is designed by merging six capacity dimensions, namely regulations, political system, operational unit, social norms, land recording techniques, and software. FCAF systematically identifies context-specific, enabling and impeding capacity components and thus provides a basis to develop the necessary capacity development strategies and interventions. Specifically, FCAF can serve as a useful heuristic for the development of the capacity development strategies for the adaptation and sustainability of the geospatial technologies in land administration systems. In the article, by assessing the capacity needs for the adaptation of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technology in Rwandese and Kenyan land administration systems, the efficacy of the FCAF is tested. The findings suggest that in Rwanda, capacity conditions are more supportive of an easier uptake of UAV. Nonetheless, weak market conditions and strict regulations concerning UAV call for attention. In Kenya, existing institutional and political challenges in the land administration system raise concerns about the reliability and attainability of UAV under the current framework conditions. Despite that, there are more supportive market conditions in Kenya in comparison to Rwanda and multiple non-governmental and private actors that can bolster the adaptation process into a more sustainable and scalable land administration system.
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