The decentralisation and externalisation of local public services in Turkey: the case of Manisa Province

Abstract

Governments have deployed New Public Management methods to improve public services during last decades. New Public Management reforms encompass a focus on private sector management norms and the fragmentation and decentralisation of public services. Decentralization and externalisation are among the major reforms undertaken according to the tenets of New Public Management in the provision of public services. While the decentralization of public administration is favoured in order to achieve efficiency gains by creating more flexible agencies entities, enabling direct link between local provision of services and local people, the debate around privatisation has shifted from the sale of public enterprises to a broader consideration of private sector organisations involved in the delivery of public services. In accordance with this movement, local governments, in order to improve effectiveness in service delivery have begun to use market mechanisms and alternative service delivery methods in some service.

As Turkey has been subject to New Public Management ideas for decades, the governments have implemented administrative reforms to improve public service delivery, along with strengthening financial and organizational capacities of local governments. Decentralisation reforms brought fundamental changes in the structure of urban service delivery with the expansion of their tasks, while creating more opportunities for local governments to collaborate private sector in providing local services. Municipal services have been started to be subject to marketisation and the externalisation of public services became an increasingly common practice in Turkey. In Turkish public administration, externalisation is now encouraged both legislatively and practically.

The objective of this thesis is to analyse how New Public Management works in terms of decentralisation and externalisation of local services policies in Turkey. It aims to evaluate outcomes of recent decentralisation reforms and externalisation policy of municipal services by looking at from the standpoints of several stakeholders. In order to evaluate whether the goals of decentralisation reforms and externalisation policies have been reached, stakeholder-based evaluation of decentralisation and externalisation of local services policies was conducted.

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ORCID for Roderick Rhodes: orcid.org/0000-0002-1886-2392

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