Quo vadis? The local government in Turkey after public management reforms

Abstract

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.

Making Decentralisation Work

“…Out of this number, 624 166 are municipalentities, 11 965 are intermediate governments and 1769 are state and regional governments (OECD, 2019). As it will be shown in the next chapters, the same reality applies to both Turkey (Gül, Kamalak and Kiriş, 2016;Tan 2018) and Cameroon (Kom, 2013), where municipalities have the largest number of units among the existing subnational governments. Therefore, in this study the comparison mostly focuses on 'municipalities' as local government units of reference.…”

“…Although Turkey and Cameroon have many differences in terms of history, geography features, politics, culture and economy, they also have in common some features that have led the researcher to conduct the present comparative study. The selection of Turkey and Cameroon was indeed guided by the following consideration: First consideration: the two countries have, to some extent, similar historical background in terms of Napoleonic tradition of their administrative system, even though the one of Turkey is longer and more ancient, dating back from the Ottoman empire in the 19th century until the beginning of the 1980s (Kapucu, & Palabıyık 2008;Öktem & Çiftçi 2016;Tan 2018;Bakır & Ertan, 2019). Turkey therefore appears at the same time attractive and a seeded candidate for the understanding of how a strongly centralized state for longtime has moved to a decentralized one.…”

Unitarian Illusion in Peru: Recentralization and Intergovernmental Conflicts from the Perspective of Local Governments

“…However, in developing countries, decentralization, as part of the RIG, is used as a mechanism for recentralizing power (Lewis, 2014 ), due to the fragmentation of local administrative units that reduces their intergovernmental negotiating capacity. In that case, without the improvement of democratic local governance, decentralization negatively affects the efficiency of local public services, and makes the local government dependent on the central government (Tan, 2020 ). All this is due to the fact that the central government retains the real power for decision-making, despite the administrative and financial autonomy of local administrations, under the argument of the integral unity of the territory.…”

Untitled

“…Следует отметить, что реформы в сфере местного самоуправления проводятся во многих странах мира. Эти процессы реформирования находятся в фокусе внимания множества зарубежных экономистов, юристов, политологов, географов, социологов (см., например: Ezeozue, 2020;Lockner, 2013;Meng, Cheng, 2020;Tan, 2020). Отдельный пласт публикаций (Blesse, Rosel, 2017;Blom-Hansen et al, 2016;Di Liddo, Giuranno, 2020;Erlingsson et al, 2020;Gendzwill et al, 2021;Hansen et al, 2014) посвящён оценке целесообразности преобразования муниципально-территориального устройства и его эффектов (объединение, разделение муниципалитетов, изменение их статуса, границ, функционала и т.…”