Democracy at the local level in Turkey: an empirical analysis of municipalities

Focusing on accountability and the rule of law, this dissertation examines the democratic performance of municipalities. It develops an analytical and theoretical framework for studying the local in a broader context of clientelist linkages and neoliberal policy frameworks embedded in democratic backsliding and utilizes an original dataset on the irregularities reported by the Turkish Court of Accounts (Sayıştay) for municipalities in Turkey between 2012 and 2018. Contrary to earlier findings in the literature, I find that the level of irregularities increases with temporal proximity to elections and this effect is stronger for municipalities with more prior audit experience. Being audited more is also associated with increase in the level of irregularities. As such, neither vertical nor horizontal accountability is achieved for malfeasance in municipal politics in Turkey. The theoretical expectation that longer tenures foster clarity of responsibility and less malfeasance in public administration is not supported either as I find that duration of political parties in municipal governments shows a positive effect on the level of irregularities. The content analysis of audit reports further shows that those in bookkeeping, public procurement, and the management of municipal real estates and operating rights are the most common types of irregularities in the metropolitan municipalities in Turkey. While the overall performance of the incumbent metropolitan municipalities shows higher levels in many types of malfeasance including irregularities reported as being repeated, this research also argues that municipal irregularities are significantly associated with the risk of public loss and corruption