Does policy style shift when the political regime changes? Insights from Turkey

ABSTRACT

This article applies the concept of ‘policy styles’ to Turkey in order to contribute to the scholarly debate on the relationship between policy styles and political regime. By uncovering the distinctive features of Turkey’s policy processes through a within-case comparative approach, I advance two arguments. First, while policy styles are commonly viewed in literature as determined by administrative traditions, political institutions and policy paradigms, Turkey’s policy style has been more responsive to electoral politics, and, until recently, problem situation, in particular crises. Second, policy style is both a cause and a consequence of regime change. Turkey’s policy style has displayed both continuities as well as differences as it descended into authoritarianism. The characteristics of the policy style gradually undermine institutions of democracy. As democratic backsliding proceeds, government redesigns the institutional context of policy-making, reinforcing and consolidating the anti-democratic features of the policy style.

KEYWORDS:

• Administrative styles
• executive styles
• governance
• policy styles
• Turkey

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

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Ebru Ertugal

Ebru Ertugal is an Associate Professor at Ozyegin University in Istanbul. Her research interests comprise topics in public policy and governance, international and comparative political economy, and (de-)Europeanization. She has publications on the transformation of governance and policy, institutional change, and policy transfer in journals such as Regional Studies, Journal of European Integration, Policy & Politics, Europe-Asia Studies, European Political Science and South European Society and Politics. She is the co-editor of a book volume on the Europeanisation of Public Policy in Southern Europe published by Routledge.