LOCAL GOVERNMENT DISCRETION AND ACCOUNTABILITY IN TURKEY
| Author | Serdar Yilmaz,Ayse Guner |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1002/pad.1646 |
| Date | 01 May 2013 |
| Published date | 01 May 2013 |
LOCAL GOVERNMENT DISCRETION AND ACCOUNTABILITY IN
TURKEY
SERDAR YILMAZ
1
*AND AYSE GUNER
2
1
World Bank, USA
2
Marmara University, Turkey
SUMMARY
After ratification of the European Charter of Local Self-Government in 1993, Turkey has witnessed major local government
reform efforts in 2000s. The policy objectives of these reforms were granting more political, administrative and fiscal discretion
to local governments along the principles of democratic decentralization and strengthening accountability linkages between
citizens and local governments. We employ a diagnostic framework to analyse the impact of these reforms. We argue that
reforms have achieved limited success in improving decision-making autonomy and accountability of local governments.
Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
key words—decentralization; local governance; accountability; Turkey
INTRODUCTION
In Turkey, local authorities have long been subjected to a strong administrative and financial tutelage of the central
government. This emphasis on strong central administration was inherited from the Ottoman Empire and was
reinforced by the Turkish Republic as part of the nation building exercise in its early years.
At the beginning of 2000s, recognizing the increasing demands from citizens for better service delivery and to
increase its chances for European Union membership, the Turkish government embarked on economic policy
reform efforts aimed at transforming public sector management practices. Decentralization of decision-making
power, development of a modern local government system and the harmonization of local government laws with
the European Charter of Local Self-Government were the integral part of this ambitious public sector reform
package. Accordingly, the government has proposed and the Parliament has enacted several local government
reform laws upgrading the archaic local government system, of which some parts were regulated by la ws from
the Ottoman Empire times.
1
The policy objectives of these reforms were granting more political, administrative and fiscal discretion
to local governments along the principles of democratic decentralization and strengthening accountability
linkages between citizens and them. In this article, we employ a diagnostic framework developed by
Yilmaz, Beris and Serrano-Berthet (2010) to analyse whether recent changes resulted in increased discre-
tion of local authorities and downward accountability towards citizens in Turkey. The framework is based
on the argument that decentralization reforms grant local governments new powers and responsibilities in
three dimensions: political, administrative and fiscal.
2
The framework provides a methodology to better
analyse the linkages between autonomy and accountability in these three dimensions of decentralization.
*Correspondence to: S. Yilmaz, WorldBank, 1818 H Street NW, Washington DC, USA. E-mail: syilmaz@worldbank.org
1
Bayraktar (2007) provides an excellent review of the evolution of the Turkish local government system from the Ottoman Empire to the recent
changes under the Turkish Republic.
public administration and development
Public Admin. Dev. 33, 125–142 (2013)
Published online 25 February 2013 in Wiley Online Library
(wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/pad.1646
Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Although decentralization offers an opportunity to improve public sector accountability by exerting stronger
pressures both from below and above, in many countries the practice is to increase the autonomy and discretion
of local governments without thinking through the accountability incentive structures that are crucial to obtain
more responsive and accountable local governments. The empirical literature is full of examples of failures or
mixed results in delivering these gains. This article contributes to the broader decentralization literature by
presenting a country case study about the linkage between discretion and accountability.
3
Studying the
Turkish local government reforms is particularly important as the country is going through a major social
and economic transformation mainly motivated by the European Union membership. The main conclusion of
the article is that recent decentralization reforms in Turkey had limited success in achieving more accountable
local governments as envisioned in the European Charter. The recent changes brought more participation
in decision-making processes of local governments. However, more needs to be carried out to clean up the
local government system that is perceived as the source of political patronage network and dominated by
rent-seeking intentions.
The article is based on literature review and information gathered during interviews with central and local
government authorities. Section 2 of the article gives a brief description of the local government system in Turkey.
Section 3 presents recent local government reform efforts in Turkey. The three following sections examine the level
of discretion and accountability in political, administrative and fiscal domains. The article finally concludes with
some broad policy recommendations.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT SYSTEM IN TURKEY
Turkey is a unitary country with a population of around 75 million people. More than 75 per cent of the
population lives in urban areas. The local government system in Turkey is based on a dual structure
4
:the
appointed deconcentrated local governments, headed by governors, and decentralized local governments,
elected by people (Figure 1). Deconcentrated units are the representatives of the central government at the local
level. The whole territory of the country is divided into 81 territorial administrations, namely provinces. For
administrative purposes, provinces are subdivided into districts (ilce), whereas decentralized local govern-
ments—organized as special provincial administrations (SPAs), municipalities and villages—are elected by
the people. SPA is an intermediate-level local government unit operating at the provincial level covering both
urban and rural areas. SPAs and provinces operate under the same geographical borders; thus, the number of
SPAs is also 81. SPAs have two branches. The deliberative branch of SPA is the provincial council, which
is headed by a president elected by the provincial council members amongst themselves. The head of
the executive branch is the governor, appointed by the central government as the head of the province. The
executive branch of SPAs is the provincial executive board (encümen), which includes both elected and
appointed members. Provincial council elects five of its members and the governor appoints five of the depart-
ment heads from his administration to serve in the executive board.
2
The framework allows analysing each of the three dimensions of decentralization in depth. Otherwise, it does not suggest a sequence. Accord-
ing to the framework, ensuring appropriate use of such discretion requires introducing effective accountability systems. Within their discretion-
ary space, local governments would be accountable to higher levels of government (upward accountability) as well as to citizens (downward
accountability). These approaches must be bridged to ensure that citizens have the ability and opportunity to demand accountability and that
local governments have the means and incentives to respond to citizen demands for accountability and better service delivery.
3
The same methodology has been used to assess decentralization in Kerala, India (Venugopaland Yilmaz, 2009), Tanzania (Venugopal and Yil-
maz, 2010), Burkina Faso (Mahieu and Yilmaz, 2010), Ethiopia (Yilmaz and Venugopal, 2010), Philippines (Yilmaz and Venugopal, 2011),
Ghana (Yilmaz, 2009) and Pakistan (Aslam and Yilmaz, 2011).
4
The dual local government system of deconcentration and decentralization is very common in the Middle East and Francophone Africa. Com-
pared with other public administration systems (i.e. Anglophone or Lusophone), local authorities in the French public administration system do
not exercise much power on behalf of the State. Furthermore, they do not manage many delegated powers. Instead, local authorities have their
own responsibilities, even though they are very closely controlled by the central government in carrying out those responsibilities.
126 S. YILMAZ AND A. GUNER
Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Public Admin. Dev. 33, 125–142 (2013)
DOI: 10.1002/pad
To continue reading
Request your trial