Policy implementation in a fragmented environment: The case of Altındağ-Ankara

Date

2026-3-17

Author

Mutlu, Vesile Ezgi

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In Türkiye, social assistance provision is an important policy tool that is used in fighting poverty. Social assistance policies are widely preferred by various public institutions and organizations as well as local governments. The dispersed legal framework for social assistance provision, involvement of various implementing actors in this process and the wide variety of social assistance types have led to a fragmented and multi-headed environment. This dispersed policy environment leds to a fragmented policy implementation especially at local level. Although social assistance policies are made to be implemented from top to bottom, these policies are taken their real shape in the implementation process at the bottom by the contribution of the social assistance workers. Particularly in some districts that have different demographic and socioeconomic structures, the dispersed nature of social assistance provision and the diversity of actors are good examples for examining policy implementation. Altındağ which is one of the poorest districts in Ankara was selected due to these characteristics. The main objective of this study is to focus on the policy implementation process of social assistance provision in Altındağ and to reveal the uncertainties, shortcomings, and positive and negative aspects of the fragmented social assistance implementation both at central and local level. Furthermore, this study attempts to explain how social assistance policy has shaped in a bottom up manner with the implementation of social assistance workers who are important actors in the provision of social assistance. The findings of the study shows that, although the social assistance provision is implemented in a fragmented and challenging environment, the social assistance workers’ contribution and effective use of their discretionary power ensure that the process is carried out in a robust and coordinated manner. The key findings of the study also show that policy formulation and policy evaluation processes affect the policy implementation process which is an important stage for the bottom-up social assistance policy shaping. The main contribution of this study is to reveal how the social assistance policies are implemented in a dispersed and multi-actor environment where there is a gap between the centralized policy making and rather decentred and fragmented implementing environment.

Subject Keywords

Policy formulation vs. policy shaping, Policy implementation, Fragmented administrative environment, Social assistance provision, Policy coordination

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/118790

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis