Local Government Discretion and Accountability in Turkey

Ebel, Robert D.; Güner, Ayşe

doi:10.1002/pad.1646

Cited by 23 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…We see no argument why officials and staff at higher government levels (and managing larger expendable funds) should be expected to be less susceptible to corruption than those at lower levels of government. Rather, theory would expect the opposite (Yilmaz, Beris, & Serrano-Berthet, 2008); those that are not controlled by higher levels of authority, those that have more to win by bending, would be expected to fall more easily into temptation.…”

Section: A Note On Preventing Corruptionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Procurement at Local Government Level – Issues and Controversies

Mrak

Vretenar

Antonić

2017

CEPAR

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Local government, as administrative units, performs a broad range of services that require to establish relations with outside partners, including those belonging to the private sector. Public procurement, due to the size of the involved financial flows, is government activity especially exposed to inefficiencies, corruption and dishonesty. There is an everlasting discussion on the ideal size and the range of services to be kept 'in-house' of local government units (LGUs).Transaction Costs Economics (TCE) represents a theoretical paradigm specially designed to interpret the issue of efficiency in inter-institutional relations. However, even though TCE might be envisaged as a tool for building better systems and institutions, practical experience suggests that efficient organization of complex multi-institutional systems is still a goal to be met. Therefore, public procurement procedures at LGU level are suitable to analyze the transaction costs. In an attempt to determine the main organizational features of the existing scope of institutions/entities involved in delivering services to citizens, we provided an overview of the complexity of inter-organizational relations at LGU level. In this paper, we present results of an empirical research of public procurement procedures from the perspective of LGUs in Croatia. Picking up on questionnaire responses from 200 LGUs that reported having held over 350 cases of providing services through contract agreements with 'independent' service providers, we formed an opinion of what could be the consequences of developing more structured public procurement procedures.

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Section: A Note On Preventing Corruptionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Procurement at Local Government Level – Issues and Controversies

Mrak

Vretenar

Antonić

2017

CEPAR

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“…Although Page (1991: 21) acknowledges that there are no readily available direct indicators for discretion, surely fiscal, administrative, and functional power (although differently labelled) may arguably be recognized as cross-country indicators of local discretion (Zimmermann, 1981;Page and Goldsmith, 1985;Berman and Martin, 1988;Kersting and Vetter, 2003;Yilmaz et al, 2008;Hooghe et al, 2010).…”

Section: S I L V I a B O L G H E R I N Imentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Under administrative regulation, the actions of local governments are constrained by the need for legally binding advance approval by the centre, whereas under statutory regulation only a posteriori validation is required. Functional (or political) power concerns a broad range of meanings, from the political setting (Yilmaz et al, 2008) to inter-institutional relationships (Keating, 1995), including the size of local units. 2 Political/functional power will be conceived here as an indicator of local discretion, in the sense that local governments may be entitled with more or less functions (Page and Goldsmith, 1987), competences, tasks, and self-organization powers.…”

Section: S I L V I a B O L G H E R I N Imentioning

confidence: 99%

Crisis-driven reforms and local discretion: an assessment of Italy and Spain

Bolgherini

2015

Riv. Ital. Sci. Polit.

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The recent and still enduring global economic and financial crisis deeply impacted the institutional framework in Italy and Spain by prompting a series of reforms, which ultimately re-shaped the local government features. Based on a qualitative comparative analysis of recent reforms, the author shows that (directly and indirectly) crisis-driven provisions have significantly impacted the local levels and changed the central/local relations in both countries. During the years of crisis, a decrease in local discretion in its three main facets (fiscal, administrative, and political/functional) has taken place. This outcome could both allow for a better understanding of how central and local governments have interacted during the crisis and to contribute to the formulation of more general considerations on local discretion and central/local relations in Italy and Spain.

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“…The first generation reforms were intended to grant more discretion to local governments along the principles of democratic decentralization and improve downward accountability towards citizens (Yilmaz and Guner, 2013). We have argued that these reforms achieved limited success (Yilmaz and Guner, 2013). In this paper, we extend the analysis to the second generation reforms which aimed to achieve economies of scale in municipal service provision through reducing the number local government units significantly.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of Recent Changes on Local Government Discretion and Accountability in Turkey

Güner¹,

Yılmaz²

2017

mjecon

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The first generation local government reforms in Turkey partially granted discretion to local governments. However, they have largely failed to improve downward accountability towards citizens. In 2012, the government has embarked on the second generation reforms which aimed to achieve economies of scale in municipal service provision through municipal amalgamation. The government redesigned the configuration of municipalities, abolished special provincial administrations in metropolitan municipal jurisdictions and converted villages to neighborhoods of municipalities. This paper extends the earlier analysis on local government discretion and accountability to these recent changes. The main focus of the paper is on fiscal discretion and accountability since these changes have mostly affected the fiscal structure of local governments. Analyzing the data issued by the Ministry of Finance, the preliminary results show that local governments have become more dependent on intergovernmental transfers.

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Local Government Discretion and Accountability in Turkey

Cited by 23 publications

References 8 publications

Procurement at Local Government Level – Issues and Controversies

Procurement at Local Government Level – Issues and Controversies

Crisis-driven reforms and local discretion: an assessment of Italy and Spain

Impact of Recent Changes on Local Government Discretion and Accountability in Turkey

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