Limits of Autonomy of Local Governments (original) (raw)
Related papers
Local Governments and Government of Cities in Turkey
At this study, local government structure of Turkey is tried to be analysed. Urban administration of Turkey may be analysed three dimensionally: First dimension is central government and the city; the second is provincial organizations of central government and the third dimension is local governments and city. Therefore, when talking about " administration of cities in Turkey " , central government, its local organizations and especially the local governments should be mentioned. In this context, at this study initially cities in Turkey will be examined from the perspective of administration, then, central administration and central administration's provincial organiations will be examined from the perspective of city governmnet. Finally two local government structures, " special provinicial administration " and " municipalities " will be examined.
Reform in Local Governments: What Did the New Municipal Law Bring in Turkey
After 2000s significant change and transformation in local government has been achieved in Turkey and as a result, a lot of legal arrangement has been put into operation. As a result of these changes, which can be called as " local government reform " , it has been tried to form a local government structure that is powerful in view of authority, duty, source and has accountability, transparency, public particip ation. In this framework, local government units have been reshaped and their structure, duties, authorities have been redefined. While some units were abolished, some of them were united. In this study, 6360 numbered law is focused on. In this framework, it is aimed at shedding light on the change in local governments by examining municipalities, special provincial administrations, local government unions and villages.
In today’s world, public administrations of the countries have begun to accept the necessity of strengthening the local governments units against the central governments, and accordingly, perform restructuring and reforming activities at the local level. The biggest obstacle in front of such activities is the intense centralist structure of the countries’ administrative customs. Hence, the most important criterion for the success of the intended reform activities is whether the local government units have administrative and financial autonomy as a result of the reforming activities. However, the degree of the importance given to the participation at the local level, transparency and accountability is among the other elements which point at the success of the reform. Azerbaijan is a country where the unitary state structure and centralization are dominant. Such attributes in the structure and operation of a country’s public administration indicate the necessity to perform some reforming activities at the local level. Thus, it is seen within the historical course just like in Turkey that local reforming activities are either not performed or no opportunity is found to implement them even if they are performed. This study will review firstly the central government-local government relationships on the theoretical basis and the necessity and quality of the reforming activities in local governments in terms of the aforementioned relationships. Afterwards, political and administrative structural features of Turkey and Azerbaijan will briefly be discussed and (although many different reforming activities are encountered in the past) the reforming activities, which have only been performed for the local government units recently, will be stressed. Thus, it will be possible to analyze comparatively at what degree the aforesaid reforming activities bear democratic and participative features that support the local autonomy and strengthen the local governments.
Conference paper, 2008
This paper focuses on the critical assessment of recent local government reforms in Turkey in terms change, continuities and constraints from the historical roots to current state. The text of Bills/Acts and related commission reports, expressions of political and administrative leaders about reform package are analysed through taking major approaches and debates in the literature into account. The main argument of this paper is that the Turkish local government system experiences a comprehensive transformation towards local governance model, but some significant characteristics of the traditional system persist and certain constraints appear to be effective for the success of the recent reforms. The possibility of recent local government reforms in Turkey to achieve transforming the local government model to local governance with the existence of these constraints is critically discussed through interdisciplinary approach.
The constitutional nature of local self-government Yerli özünüidarənin konstitusiya xarakteri
The relevance of the study lies in the importance of the functioning of local self-government bodies for ensuring democracy in European countries. The purpose of the study is to examine the constitutional foundations of the institution of local self-government, and the task of the study is to analyse the role of the European Charter in this process. The following methods were used in the study: induction, deduction, and abstraction. The main conclusion of the study is to argue that the European Charter launched a local government reform aimed at improving the efficiency of local governments as an independent level of public authority, as close to the population as possible. However, today, municipal authorities in many countries are fundamentally different from those that were created in previous years. This is primarily due to the lack of the necessary amount of own revenues to enable them to exercise their powers independently. The majority of municipalities need government assistance and intergovernmental transfers. The need to control the expenditure of state budget funds has led to the main trend in the development of local selfgovernment in the Republic of Azerbaijan being its integration into the vertical of public power.
An Analysis of Turkey Regarding the Decentralization and Local Government Reform
2014
In the post-80s, within the context of liberalization and globalization a reform on the local governments was called for all around the world. In line with this trend, reforms were put into practice in Turkey. However, these reforms were not systematically implemented up to 2000s. After the Justice and Development Party came to power, local governments were financially and administratively strengthened. Local governments have begun to come to the fore within the administrative structure in terms of authority, duties and responsibilities. In the last decade they have been the driving force of the economic production being in harmony with the market. Apart from this general picture of transformation, the government has carried out two important policies. The first one is the closure of minor local government units (municipalities and villages). The second policy is the enlargement of the borders of metropolitan and provincial municipalities. In many settlements, the process of enlarge...
30 March 2014 Local Elections were held in Turkey at the end of an extraordinarily political process and in a highly polarized atmosphere. The election exceeded the limits of the characteristic of " being local " due to such developments recorded in the pre-election period as anti-government social opposition raised against Justice and Development Party (JDP) by Gezi Park protests, tension between judicial and executive organs resulting from the power struggle between the political, social and economic interest groups and corruption investigations opened against the ministers. Ruling JDP Government turned the election into a confidence vote and Turkey entered into the local election process with the new metropolitan model (" Whole City " model). Colorful, vivid and costly election process ended up with a political geography of local election, which should be subjected to new and important analyses. Thus this chapter discusses the issue of local autonomy over pre-election propaganda process, new metropolitan municipality model, election results and political geography analyses.
DergiPark (Istanbul University), 2017
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.