New Public Management in Turkey

Local Government Reform

Yüksel Demirkaya

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781498742153
• eBook ISBN: 9781317279549
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The last three decades in Turkey have seen an extensive shift towards a neoliberal agenda. Turkey has made many attempts at reforming existing governance systems in an effort to be accepted into the European Union, attracting the attention and curiosity of public management scholars worldwide. New Public Management in Turkey is the first book to analyze large-scale public administration reforms in Turkey according to the underlying principles of democracy, transparency, accountability, and localization.

Systematically examining the literature on Turkish local government over a 25-year period, this book presents a comprehensive look at reform and its consequences through the lens of comparative public administration. The scholarly contributions to this volume from academics teaching at universities throughout Turkey offer a multi-dimensional and multi-functional analysis embracing a variety of viewpoints. Utilizing Turkey's rapid adaptations to the changing trends in public management as a case study, this book will serve as a unique and valuable policy guide for politicians and legislators seeking to develop a democratic and localized governance structure in a variety of contexts.

Part I

Reconstruction in Public Sector

Reform

1 Impact Assessment as a Systematic Tool Based on Results in Public Management Decision Making

Hamza Ateş and Fatih Akbulut

Introduction

Public authorities that regulate a particular policy area generally either rely on the opinions of the experts or make decisions through the participation of political representatives or benchmark, copy a model such as international regulations, or according to certain criteria experimentally make decisions based on analysis and findings. Theoretically, impact assessment is classified within the framework of experimental, evidence-based decision making based on analysis and findings. However, in practice, to a certain point, allToday, within the organizational context, public administration has no ultimate, independent authority to make decisions and implement them on its own, but it rather has become a huge network of public and social networks, and strengthening of these new networks and creation of new coordination mechanisms has become one of the main questions of public administration (Güler 2003, 8; Mutlu 2008, 148).

In the decision-making process, an accurate estimation of the positive and negative effects of possible consequences of decisions in real life can reduce the social costs of decisions. Therefore, decision makers use a variety of methods in order to address several policy objectives in an integrated manner, increase transparency and ensure solidarity and accountability. In order to maximize the effectiveness and efficiency of the decisions during the policy-making process the problem should be clearly defined; whether a public policy intervention is required or not should be reconsidered; if so, what level of government is the most appropriate one should be determined, whether the intended benefits of the outcomes outweigh the costs and which sections of society carry the costs should be objectively expressed, all interested parties to be consulted and finally the regulation should be clearly understandable and accessible (OECD 1997, 7).

From the perspective of efficient use of public resources and minimizing negative effects on interested parties, coordination at an early stage of decision making which is open to a wide range of stakeholder participation and transparency could improve the quality of the decisions. Furthermore, assessment of separate or integrated, direct or indirect economic, environmental, social impacts of the public policies, outlining based on data why the intended regulations are necessary is important for fair distribution of the impacts and their adoption by society.

There are numerous research studies conducted on better regulation and good governance topics both by national governments and international institutions such as the European Union. According to Güler, the sources and roots of the new “administrative power structure” which is branded as Governance are new institutional economics, new public management and horizontal, flexible network type organizational theories that replace Weberian type hierarchical theory (Güler 2003, 3). New institutional economics puts forward fragmentation of all kinds of economic activities and leaves them to the market in order to prevent from excessive transaction costs, expansion of the boundaries of private property in order to minimize externalities because of the uncertainties about property rights. The arguments put forward by the new institutional economics gave birth to the new public management which embraces professional management, performance measurement, management by results and customer oriented approaches. But this new public administration approach that argues reorganization of public administration according to market principles brings about horizontal and vertical coordination problems because of too many fragmented bureaucracies and contracted services (Güler 2003, 5–7). Although there are claims about public administration on its inefficiency and tendency to be corrupt easily and therefore should be left to the private sector through privatization, it still has an enormous role in economic activities and its regulatory role in the society is undeniable (Toksöz 2008, 177).

Discussions on governance perceptions and models are closely linked with coordination swings between government involvement on the one hand and self-governance of the society on the other. In the literature there are three coordination mechanisms defined. The first one is top to bottom command and control-type hierarchical coordination. The second is market and price mechanism acting as an invisible hand directing individual actors. The third is networks organized and communicating in order to solve common problems. Each of these hierarchy, market and network type management models has their own coordination mechanisms. Some authors claim that networks that are based on trust, solidarity and consensus are more successful in conciliation of competing and conflicting interests within complex, multi-layered, multi-player systems (Treib et al. 2005, 4–21; Herodes et al. 2007, 8). Heredos emphasizes that in order to sort out complicated organizational problems we face, networks must be developed between government and nongovernment actors. The importance of governance through networks is expressed in several reports by the EU which is by itself a network of organizations (COM 2001, 428; Herodes et al. 2007, 8).

Coordination becomes problematic when it comes to structures with multi-level, multi-actor and multi-institutional cultures and functional processes. In addition, the aim of realization of multi-dimensional political targets such as sustainable development into increase the need for coordination between different sectors. Therefore, the administrative body of the EU, the Commission, adopted an impact assessment mechanism already used by some member states (UK, Netherlands). It’s believed that through use of impact assessment procedures and spread of information a climate of trust and solidarity will develop and it will result in strengthening of the networks. Impact assessment is seen by the EU as a decision-making mechanism from bottom to top, gathering all interested parties together with minimum hierarchical control (Herodes et al. 2007, 20; Adelle et al. 2005, 4; Opoku and Jordan 2004, 6–8).

Herodes et al. studying sustainable development example have put forward five different methods for policy coordination and integration of different policy objectives. The first is to create high level consulting councils for political support. The second is the creation of sustainable development units at each Directorate General (similar to the ministries at the national governments) in order to coordinate different sectors (transport, agriculture, energy). The third is the (environmental) assessment of all projects funded by the EU budget and integration through multi-year strategic plans. The fourth is called “open coordination mechanism,” which is basically sharing of experiences and good practices without a unitary legal framework. The final method is (integrated) impact assessment, which has been used by the EU since 2002 (Herodes et al. 2007, 16–24).

Impact Assessment

In essence, the aim of doing impact assessment (IA) is to measure the quality of the relevant issues and making comments on the findings. What stage of the policy making is done by the IA changes according to the purpose of decision makers. In order to understand possible outcomes of the policies an ex-ante assessment is done during the preparation phase or an ex-post evaluation is done to analyze the actual outcomes of already practiced policy decisions. In addition, IA methods are used to get feedback and make corrective regulation during the implementation of the policies (Rotmans and Weaver 2006, 10).

IA is a systematic tool, politically neutral, based on scientific methods; and at each step of the IA, topics to be assessed are put forth in a written report. IA facilitates increasing economic performance of public regulations, elimination of health risks, avoiding social risks and prevention of environmental risks. However, some IA practices just focus on the effectiveness and efficiency of the regulations, avoiding high level policy objectives. Although there are differences between IAs in terms of their degree of transparency and openness, timing in decision making, use of external experts, depth of stakeholder participation, role of the numerical data, depth of detail, purpose, scope, range of negative and positive impacts, almost all IAs have a certain format and purpose (Jacob and Hertin 2007, 8–10).

Since their inceptions in the 1970s, IA procedures have mainly developed in two main channels. First is the environmental impact assessment procedures created by the US National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Having had worldwide acceptance of this initial step, strategic environmental assessment procedures were developed in order to integrate environmental concerns into planning and programming levels. The second mainstream channel is regulatory impact analysis which has emerged in the UK. This method was developed as a result of a “better regulations” approach to increase effectiveness and harmony of traditional policies, to do cost–benefit analysis and to assess the risks on business circles and nongovernment sectors (Paredis et al. 2006, 9–10). Research conducted by Adelle and Weiland in OECD and EU member states confirms the emergence of two distinct types of IA. According to their classification, the first one is soft cost–benefit analysis aiming to identify interactions between different, separate policies (EU, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland). The second is with a narrow scope, mostly focusing on identifying administrative burden on business circles (Adelle and Weiland 2012, 28–29).

Integration of different policy objectives such as economic, social and environmental through IA could be either in a single IA, or findings of separate IAs which were done for different objectives at different stages of policy making could be integrated into a single report at the final stage (Rotmans and Weaver 2006, 10; Sadler and Dalal-Clayton 2004, 7). Birley explains that an integrated assessment of impacts within a single system could be in two ways. The first one is integration of the findings of separate IAs; the second one is the integrated assessment of different impacts and reaching a single report. The first one is called weak, the second one is called strong integration (Birley 2003, 314–316). IA approximates sustainability IA as it widens its scope to cover economic, social, environmental, short and long term, domestic and international impacts together. Sustainability IA is practiced and strongly encouraged by some governments and international organizations (Gibson 2006, 170–180; OECD 2010).

Types of Impact Assessment

Examples from different countries indicate that IA is implemented at two stages. The first one is short, pre assessment for either simple issues which don’t require a detailed full IA or an initial assessment before full IA. The second one is, based on the findings of the initial pre-assessment, a complete, full IA. The EU Commission also prefers this method (UNDP 2007, 40). IAs vary according to their scope, purpose, methods used and regulatory framework of the country.

Environmental Impact Assessment and Strategic Environmental Impact Assessment

The most commonly used and well known type of the IA practices is environmental impact assessment (EIA). In order to deal with environmental problems that reached the point of breaking down the ecological balance, therefore threatening human life, degradation of the quality of air, soil and water, EIA procedures were developed. EIA reports can be prepared either before the start of certain major investment projects, or beyond project level they can be utilized for plans and programs. It’s called EIA when it’s prepared for the projects, while for the plans and programs it’s called strategic EIA.

Some authors consider strategic environmental impact assessment (SEIA) simply an expansion of the EIA to cover plans and programs, but on the other hand for some others it’s a separate kind of IA which distinctly covers social impacts besides environmental and economical ones. It’s claimed that SEIA has the potential to find solutions to the problems that can’t be answered at the project level, which is lower than planning and programming. It allows both the assessment of multiple, cumulative environmental effects and makes project level EIA easier and faster under the plans and programs for which SEIA applied (Turgut 2001, 479–480; Kjörven and Lindhjem 2002, 5).

Although there are not two separate, distinct regulations of EIA and SEIA in the USA where EIA first emerged, in the EU and Turkey EIA and SEIA are regulated separately. Turgut claims that the reason for this variation lies in the initial reluctance for an all-inclusive, comprehensive EIA in the EU (Turgut 2001, 478). In many countries (USA, UK, Canada, Netherlands, Denmark, Hong Kong) and international organizations such as UNDP and the World Bank, SEIA is implemented in the forms of acts, directives, guidelines (Kjörven and Lindhjem 2002, 7–18). In Turkey, EIA was first defined in the Environment Act in 1983 as a tool, and actua...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Notes on Contributors
• Preface
• Part I Reconstruction in Public Sector
• Part II Performance Management and Institutionalization
• Part III Metropolitan Management
• Index