Framework to understand policy capacity of regional institutions in a state centric tradition; case of development agencies in Turkey

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2016

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Yalçın, Gökhan

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Transformation of states, as the most complex political organization of the human rationality, has been a critical topic of contemporary governing problematic, as it fundamentally alters the conventional methods of policy making. Functionality of the statehood as the pivotal policy actor has been challenged by supra-national as well as sub-national policy actors and conclusively states, as a social concept, somehow are obliged to re-organize their internal architecture to increase their capabilities. Within this framework of evolution in the understanding of the statehood, political and functional significance of the regional and local scale have gained an important momentum with the rise of globalization of production systems. In this changing institutional eco-system some policy actors were demolished yet some others have emerged due to the new conditionalities of contemporary policy making. This conflict ridden process of transformation necessitates a conceptualization of the capacities of new institutional fixes whether they adopt into local policy making eco-system or they will be isolated as a result of the resistance that might come from the ground based realities that are intrinsic to the nature of local development and decentralization. Emergence of the Turkey’s development agencies in a similar manner can be conceptualized as the will of the state to decentralize some its fundamental abilities with a centrally forged motivation that is discussed to be inadequately supported by the local policy makers. Therefore, embeddedness of the regional scale and agencies as the flagship institutional entity of regions, into main policy making channels of state can be argued to be a major element that determines the ideal functionality of the development agencies. Thus said, within this context, this thesis aims to understand given all the bottlenecks and policy realities of the time being, how policy capacity can be generated in the development agencies in a context that historically inherits local and central tension yet desperately in need of inter-scalar policy coordination for a better delivery of the public policies. Findings of the study indicate that multi-scalar mobility the development agencies with unique position in the local institutional eco-system can play a critical role to generate and sustain policy capacity in the given contextual framework.

Subject Keywords

City planning., Regional planning., Local government., Municipal government.

URI

http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12619756/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/25479

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Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Thesis

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Citation Formats

G. Yalçın, “Framework to understand policy capacity of regional institutions in a state centric tradition; case of development agencies in Turkey,” Ph.D. - Doctoral Program, Middle East Technical University, 2016.