Learning and policy transfer in regional development policy in Turkey

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the changing dynamics of policy transfer in regional policy from supranational/international organizations to Turkey during the 2000s. It adopts a within-case comparative design and draws on an extensive review of primary sources. It shows that political will is a precondition for policy transfer where the dominant mechanism is policy learning by Turkish bureaucrats. These agents of transfer aim at improving and widening the toolkit and scope of policy intervention through increased and differentiated policy instruments, whereas political will is rooted in perceived electoral benefits of both external financial assistance and newly discovered policy instruments.

KEYWORDS:

• European Union
• Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
• policy learning
• policy transfer
• regional development policy
• Turkey

JEL:

• O20

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Ebru Ertugal http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5421-8388

Notes

1. The EAP was a document that transformed policies in the government programme based on the JDP’s election manifesto into concrete work programmes.

2. The RDA law was brought before the Constitutional Court by the main parliamentary opposition party (Republican People’s Party) and the Council of State.

3. The grant scheme directly finances a project, selected through a competitive process, to help achieve an objective identified in the regional plan.

 

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the postdoctoral research programme (BİDEB 2219) of The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK).