Political Strategies for Health Reform in Turkey: Extending Veto Point Theory

Abstract

Abstract—This qualitative case study uses primary interview data to investigate the political processes of how Turkey established a unified and universal health coverage system. The goal of providing health coverage to all citizens through a unified system has been adopted by many low- and middle-income countries, but few have achieved it; Turkey is a notable exception. We use institutional veto point theory to identify four institutional obstacles to a unified and universal coverage system in Turkey between 2003 and 2008: (1) the Ministry of Finance and Treasury, (2) the Ministry of Labor and Social Security, (3) the Office of the President, and (4) the Constitutional Court. Our analysis shows how Minister of Health Recep Akdağ and his team of advisors used political strategies to address and overcome opposition at each veto point. Where possible they avoided institutional veto points by using ministerial authority to adopt policies. When adoption required approval of others with veto power, they delayed putting forward legislation while working to facilitate institutional change to remove opposition; persuaded or made strategic compromises to gain support; or overpowered opposition by calling on the prime minister to intervene. Our findings propose an extension to institutional veto point theory by showing how the exercise of political strategies can overcome opposition at institutional veto points to facilitate policy adoption.

Keywords:

• health reform
• institutional veto point theory
• policy adoption
• Turkey
• universal health coverage

INTRODUCTION

Of the many low- and middle-income countries that have introduced reforms to move toward universal health coverage in recent years, Turkey is one of the few to realize both a unified and universal system of coverage. Major reforms in Mexico and Thailand, for instance, have yet to place all of their citizens under a single insurance coverage scheme with a single benefits package.^1,2 These countries still have multiple systems of coverage with more restricted benefits for lower-income groups.

In 2003, Turkey's newly elected Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (AK Party or Justice and Development Party) promised to improve public health, expand health insurance to all citizens, and guarantee access to high-quality health services.³ To accomplish these goals, the incoming Minister of Health, Recep Akdağ, introduced a series of reforms under the Ministry of Health's (MoH) Health Transformation Program (HTP). A central component of the HTP was to include all Turkish citizens under a publicly run, single-payer health insurance scheme that provided equal access to all health facilities belonging to the scheme.⁴

The immediate history of reform attempts was not auspicious. Prior to 2003, Turkey had attempted to establish a national health insurance system for universal health coverage on at least nine different occasions.^3,5–8 These efforts had been stymied by legislative gridlock in the Parliament, opposition by the Constitutional Court, and instability in the policy agenda linked to the brief tenure of ministers of health.⁵

The national elections in November 2002 marked a sea change in Turkish politics. After more than 40 years of coalition governance and secularist leadership that dated to the 1920s, the newly formed AK Party won a parliamentary super majority after running on an Islamist platform. The AK Party's dominance in Parliament ended the gridlock of weak coalitions, but Minister Akdağ's proposal to create a unified and universal health financing system was not universally accepted within the Party and also confronted opposition from people within the government bureaucracy, executive leadership, and the judicial branch.⁹ Some of the resistance to AK Party initiatives came from secularists, who opposed the Islamist orientation of the AK Party platform.^10,11

In this article, we explain how Minister Akdağ and his reform team overcame opposition to adopt a unified and universal health financing system in Turkey between 2003 and 2008. Our references to Minister Akdağ below include his team of advisors, which worked closely with him in designing, adopting, and implementing the HTP. This team was composed of technical experts, many of whom had worked on previous attempts to establish a national health insurance system (I-32, I-18, I-11). Importantly, Akdağ was minister of health from November 2002 through January 2013, which provided consistent leadership for the government's health reform agenda over the period studied in this article.

Institutional veto point theory is the starting place for our analysis.¹² We use this theory to identify the institutional veto points, which we define as formal institutions with the ability to block the adoption of either administrative or legislative policy proposals to reform Turkey's health system. Contrary to past applications of this theory, we find through this case study analysis that in Turkey's health reform, institutional veto points were not binding obstacles to reform. Rather, we extend this theory to show how Minister Akdağ designed political strategies that addressed and overcame opposition at the veto points, thereby facilitating the adoption of a unified and universal health financing system in Turkey—a major reform accomplishment. This article demonstrates the potential importance of institutional veto points in structuring the policy adoption process. It also shows that veto points do not always represent absolute blockages to reform; strategic political action by policy makers can overcome them in certain circumstances.

The article is organized as follows: After this introduction, we describe the HTP's health financing reform. The next section presents the conceptual framework used to motivate and structure the analysis, followed by a description of the data and methods used. The following section applies the institutional veto point theory to the general adoption of health reform policies in Turkey between 2003 and 2008. We then use this framework to analyze institutional opposition to the adoption of a unified and universal health financing system in Turkey between 2003 and 2008 and the strategies used to overcome this opposition. The next section discusses the implications and lessons that emerge from this analysis and the limitations of this analytical approach, followed by a brief conclusion.

THE HEALTH TRANSFORMATION PROGRAM'S HEALTH FINANCING REFORM

When the AK Party came into office in 2003, approximately half of the population was insured by one of the three social security institutions: (1) the Sosyal Sigortalar Kurumu (SSK) for blue and white collar workers in the government and private sectors (33% of the population); (2) the Bağ-Kur for artisans and the self-employed (12% of the population); and (3) the Emekli Sandığı for retired government employees (5% of the population).⁵ The SSK and Bağ-Kur each had separate management structures within the Ministry of Labor and Social Security (MoLSS), and the Emekli Sandığı was managed by the Ministry of Finance. The three social security institutions were funded through a combination of payroll taxes, employer contributions, and general government tax revenues. Each institution had its own benefit package and payment system, which led to differences in access, services covered, and copayment contributions.⁷

Unemployed individuals and informal sector workers were left without insurance coverage, unless they qualified for the MoH's Green Card Program.¹³ The Green Card Program was established in 1993 as a special noncontributory low-income insurance scheme that reimbursed low-income households for all inpatient expenses incurred in public facilities.¹⁴ Outpatient services were not covered. As of 2002, approximately 9% of the population was eligible for coverage under the Green Card Program; however, due to bureaucratic, and sometimes corrupt, enrollment procedures, only approximately 3.7% of the population was enrolled.¹⁵

The HTP reforms sought to create a single-payer health financing system with a common benefits package for all Turkish citizens and a clear purchaser–provider split.⁴ This goal required the unification of the numerous social security and health financing schemes, which were divided between the MoH and MoLSS. At the beginning, Green Card holders were the focus of the MoH efforts. In 2004, outpatient care was added as a benefit for Green Card holders, and in 2005, benefits were further expanded to include outpatient prescriptions. The expanded benefits plus efforts to streamline the enrollment process produced an increase in Green Card holders from 2.5 million in 2003 to 9.1 million in 2011.^5,16 Next, between 2005 and 2007 benefits were gradually upgraded and harmonized across the three social security schemes.⁵

In 2006, two separate laws, Law 5502 and Law 5510, were presented in Parliament that if passed together would have fully unified all social security and health financing schemes and established the Social Security Institution (SSI) as a single-payer organization.⁵ Only Law 5502 was fully adopted in 2006. This law provided the legal framework to unify the three social security schemes under the SSI. Law 5510, the Law on Social Security and Universal Health Insurance (SSUHI Law), was passed by Parliament but was referred by the president to the Constitutional Court, where it was ruled unconstitutional. The SSUHI Law sought to integrate the direct health financing schemes into the SSI as a complement to Law 5502's integration of the three social security schemes. Groups affected by the proposed law included active civil servants and Green Card beneficiaries. Following the 2007 elections, in which the AK Party won additional seats in Parliament and gained control of the presidency, the SSUHI Law was cleared of legal challenges by the Constitutional Court and passed into law in October 2008. As a result, in 2010, active civil servants were integrated into SSI and in 2012 Green Card beneficiaries became the last group to join SSI.

As of December 2012, the unified social security scheme had two contributory structures. The contributory scheme requires that all blue collar employees in the public and private sectors, active civil servants, white collar employees, and the self-employed pay 12.5% of their pensionable salaries to SSI. Of this amount, employers are required to pay 7.5% and the remaining 5% is paid by the employee. The noncontributory regime, composed primarily of Green Card beneficiaries, involves a new means-testing system that is administered by the Ministry of Family and Social Policies.⁵

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

The conceptual framework for this analysis is derived from the approach Ellen Immergut used to answer the question, “Why do countries with similar levels of development have different health care systems?”¹² Through her comparative research on the Swedish, Swiss, and French health and political systems, she showed that interest groups, political actors, and policy proposals did not differ significantly across the three countries over the course of the 20th century. But differences in health systems could be explained by differences in incentives, opportunities, and constraints for political influence resulting from the institutions involved in making policy decisions. The combination of these factors created sites of contestation that she identified as her primary explanatory variable and termed “institutional veto points.” She defined these as the “political arenas in which government proposals may be blocked.”¹⁷

We use this theory of institutional veto points to structure our analysis of Turkey's health reform and show how institutional veto points affected the policy adoption process. Our approach is informed by Immergut's work focusing on institutional veto points and by Tsebelis's work on the role of veto players as individuals or collective actors whose agreement is necessary for policy change.¹⁸ Our analysis finds that opposition at institutional veto points represented an important constraint to reform but did not represent an insurmountable obstacle. Rather, we show how institutional veto points can be overcome in some instances through the skillful use of political strategies. We find that Minister Akdağ used political strategies to avoid specific obstacles, delay while facilitating institutional change, persuade and compromise, and overpower opponents, to deal with opposition at the institutional veto points he confronted.

The purpose of this single case study is to analyze political strategies in the Turkish health reform between 2003 and 2008. We make no contention that these are the only possible strategies. Although we do not examine external validity, we believe that the political strategies identified and analyzed here may be applicable in other settings. In addition, our research methods could be used to analyze other cases. With more examples it may be possible to draw stronger inferences about reform strategies in general. Despite these caveats, we believe that policy makers considering reform in other contexts may find value in our analysis of Turkish evidence and discussion of political strategies for overcoming institutional veto points.

DATA AND METHODS

Qualitative data for this analysis were collected through semistructured interviews and documents collected from the published and grey literature on Turkey's health reform and the political economy of the HTP.

Interviews

The interview process was multistaged. First, initial interviews took place in March and April 2013 in Ankara and Istanbul, Turkey. These stakeholder interviews were conducted by Bump and Sparkes as part of an investigation of the general political economy of the HTP undertaken as part of a World Bank research project.¹⁹ We used a purposeful sampling approach to identify interviewees by constructing a preliminary list of stakeholders prior to arriving in Turkey based on a literature review of health reform in Turkey and other countries. To help ensure consistency and completeness, we wrote a semistructured interview guide. Second, as part of this same project, in May 2013 Bump and Sparkes interviewed World Bank officials based in Washington, D.C., who had been directly involved with health reform in Turkey before and during the HTP.

From these initial interviews, we developed a hypothesis about the importance of institutional veto points to the adoption of a unified and universal health financing system in Turkey. Sparkes then conducted two subsequent rounds of interviews to ask targeted questions related to this hypothesis. In the third round of interviews, Sparkes collected extensive qualitative interview data through ten one-on-one and group discussions with former Minister Akdağ in the fall of 2013, after he had left office. Sparkes conducted the fourth round of semistructured interviews in January 2014 in Ankara and Istanbul to ask key informants specific questions related to the political strategies used by Minister Akdağ and his team to address institutional veto points. Maximum variation sampling was used to ensure that a wide range of perspectives on the reform process were taken into account.²⁰ Interviewees included representatives from government, professional associations, academia, health professionals, and the World Bank and were arranged with assistance from colleagues at the MoH and also independently based on our own contacts in Turkey. The distribution of interviewees across different stakeholder groups is shown in Table 1.

Table 1. Interviewee Groups

Stakeholder Group	Number of Interviewees
Government	16
Professional associations	5
Academia	4
Health professionals	6
World Bank	5

Where possible, we interviewed key actors directly to learn their perspectives and insights. We were able to do this with interviewees who were or had been at one or more of the most relevant institutions. But with the highest-level institutions, such as the president and Constitutional Court, the assessment of positions on the unified and universal health coverage system was based on second-hand accounts that were triangulated across different sources. In general, these positions were well known and advanced through official documentation. Most of the unique information presented in this analysis centers around Minister Akdağ's strategic responses.

Interviews were conducted in English, in a mix of Turkish and English, or in Turkish with professional interpretation, according to circumstances. Each interviewee was informed of the purpose of the study, of our intention to take detailed notes of each interview, and of our process for handling interview data. We requested permission to take notes and to report quotes attributed to a general affiliation. Institutional review board approval was granted for this study (IRB13-1294) and deemed exempt by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health's Office of Human Research Administration. Interviews are cited in this article according to the number assigned to the interviewee to maintain anonymity.

Documents

We collected documents in the grey and published literature on Turkey's health reform to develop our ideas and gather information and help reduce possible bias introduced through stakeholder interviews.²¹ Google Translate was used for all sources written in Turkish. Although this is not a precise method of translation, we argue that it was sufficient to confirm or counter information collected through interviews. Translated Turkish documents were only used to triangulate data collected from other sources and were not used as a primary source because of our concerns about the limitations of machine translation.

Analysis

The first analytical step was to conduct a stakeholder analysis to map supporters, opponents, and related strategies employed by Minister Akdağ to increase the likelihood of policy adoption success for the overall HTP.²² The second step in our analysis was to use Immergut's theory to identify the institutional veto points that affected the Turkish health policy adoption process between 2003 and 2008. We defined institutional veto points as formal institutions with the ability to block either administrative or legislative policy proposals.¹² Institutional veto points were identified through detailed interview questions with relevant stakeholders, as well as through the in-depth literature review. The list of institutional veto points involved in health policy reform in Turkey was developed based on the first three rounds of interviews and the literature review. To confirm accuracy, the veto points were presented in the fourth round to interviewees who had been directly involved in the adoption of the HTP.

In the third step of our analysis, we conducted a case study of the role of these institutional veto points in the adoption of a unified and universal health financing system between 2003 and 2008 in Turkey.^4,23,24 To conduct this case study, we collected data from interviewees, published sources, and government documents on the key policies that expanded and unified the financing system. We asked interviewees about the specific policy adoption strategies used to promote these policies based on the relevant institutional actors involved, with a focus on institutional veto points.

Outcome Variable

The outcome variable for this analysis is the adoption of a unified and universal health financing system in Turkey. This outcome variable is defined in two ways based on the type of legislative or administrative instrument involved. For primary laws, adoption is defined as the full passage into legislation and the publication of the law in the Official Gazette. With regard to secondary level regulations and tertiary-level ministerial directives and circulars, adoption is defined as implementation because the minister of health and/or other cabinet ministers could implement these measures without further hurdles.

Explanatory Variables

There were three explanatory variables that affected whether the new financing system was adopted: (1) the institutional veto points that could block adoption; (2) the political actors at each institutional veto point; and (3) the reform strategies used by Minister Akdağ to address opposition at a veto point. We identified these variables based on institutional veto point theory and through initial interviews that highlighted the importance of Akdağ's strategies to overcome opposition at a veto point.

All interviews were transcribed into electronic text. The data were then coded to indicate whether they provided information on relevant institutional veto points, the political actors at each institutional veto point, or the strategies used by Minister Akdağ to adopt his policies. This coding process allowed us to develop important themes about the role of institutional veto points in the adoption of reform, how those veto points shaped reform adoption strategies, and how Minister Akdağ's strategies overcame opposition at the veto points.

INSTITUTIONAL VETO POINTS TO HEALTH POLICY REFORM IN TURKEY, 2003–2008

In this section, we identify and examine the institutional veto points in Turkey that could have blocked the health reform efforts of the minister of health and his team. Our analysis of institutional veto points expands on Immergut's focus on referenda, constitutional courts, and legislative bodies by also examining the role of lower level government institutions and administrative instruments as part of the reform process.

Turkey had three levels of authority involved in adopting different types of administrative and legislative instruments related to the HTP. These three levels of authority were described to us by ministerial attorneys and policy makers in Turkey.

1. Primary-level authority was required to create new institutions and make large changes to the overall government budget through legislation. Institutions holding primary authority to block legislation included the MoH, cabinet members acting through the Council of Ministers, prime minister, president, and Constitutional Court.

2. Secondary-level authority was required to change the MoH budget and make policy changes that impacted multiple ministries through regulations. Institutions holding secondary authority included the MoH, cabinet members acting through the Council of Ministers, prime minister, and Council of State.

3. Tertiary-level authority was held by the MoH and could be used to make changes to existing ministerial programs and to implement primary legislation through ministerial directives and circulars.

We identified seven institutional veto points that could block the adoption of legislative and administrative instruments for health reform in Turkey. Table 2 presents these seven institutional veto points and describes their potential capacity to block adoption according to level of authority.

Table 2. Potential Institutional Veto Points According to Level of Authority in the Turkish Health Reform Adoption Process

Institutional Veto Point	Primary Laws	Secondary Regulations	Tertiary Ministerial Directives and Circulars
1. Ministry of Health (MoH)	Capacity to block changes to MoH policies or programs by refusing to put forward laws for further approval.	Capacity to block any proposed changes to MoH policies or programs by refusing to put forward regulations for approval or through representation in Council of Ministries.	Capacity to block because any changes to ministerial programs or policies had to be put forward and approved by the minister of health.
2. Cabinet ministers acting through the Council of Ministers	Ministries directly affected by potential reform had the capacity to block adoption through their representation in the Council of Ministers.	Ministries directly affected by potential reform had the capacity to block adoption through their representation in the Council of Ministers.
3. Prime minister	As head of government, the prime minister had the capacity to unilaterally block adoption by refusing to put forward legislation for parliamentary approval.	As head of government, the prime minister had the capacity to unilaterally block adoption if disagreed with policy.
4. Council of State		The Council of State is the highest administrative court in Turkey and had the capacity to block adoption due to its role in adjudicating disputes over administrative instruments and any disputes between ministerial entities.
5. Parliament	Capacity to block if a majority of the 550 members of the Parliament voted against proposed legislation.
6. Office of the President	Capacity to block by referring legislation passed by Parliament to the Constitutional Court based on potential violation of the Constitution or by referring legislation back to Parliament.
7. Constitutional Court	Capacity to block by ruling against constitutionality of legislation and thus block adoption. Its decisions were binding.

^a As heads of their respective ministries, each minister was responsible for the general policy of the government and for matters within the jurisdiction of his or her own ministry.

Source: Adapted from Ref. 39.

We use this list of seven potential institutional veto points presented in Table 2 to identify four that actually constituted serious obstacles to the adoption of the unified and universal health financing system in Turkey between 2003 and 2008. We discuss these four institutional veto points in the next section.

Case Study: Adopting a Unified and Universal Health Financing System

Of the seven potential institutional veto points with the capacity to block the HTP's financing reform, we found that the Parliament and prime minister were generally supportive of the reform. By contrast, we found that the reform faced strong opposition from some individual cabinet ministers within the Council of Ministers, including the Ministry of Finance, Undersecretariat of Treasury, and the Ministry of Labor and Social Security, as well as from the president and Constitutional Court.

These five institutions formed four veto points: (1) the Ministry of Finance and Undersecretariat of Treasury, (2) the Ministry of Labor and Social Security, (3) the Office of the President, and (4) the Constitutional Court. We analyze the Ministry of Finance and Undersecretariat of Treasury as a single veto point because of the similarity in the substance of their opposition and the similarity in the strategies used to overcome that opposition. All interviewees identified these four veto points and their importance in structuring the policy adoption strategies of Minister Akdağ and his team. We next analyze these four institutional veto points, their contestation of the reforms, the strategies used to overcome their opposition, and the institutional changes that occurred to move the policy adoption process forward (see Table 3).

Table 3. Institutional Veto Points to the Adoption of a Unified and Universal Health Financing System and the Adoption Strategies Used by Minister Akdağ and His Team

Institutional Veto Point	Veto Power	MoH Adoption Strategies	Time Period During Which Veto Point Was Most Relevant
Ministry of Finance and Undersecretariat of Treasury	Capacity to block secondary administrative and primary legislative instruments from adoption due to discretion over budget and concern over government deficits.	(1) Persuade Ministry officials, to gain support for secondary administrative and primary legislative instruments. (2) Avoid by using tertiary administrative instruments. (3) Take advantage of positive economic growth as a facilitating factor.	2003–2005
Ministry of Labor and Social Security (MoLSS)	Capacity to block secondary administrative and primary legislative instruments from adoption due to prominent role in pre-reformed health financing and service delivery systems.	(1) Persuade MoLSS officials, to gain support for secondary administrative and primary legislative instruments. (2) Compromise by using mutually beneficial primary legislative instrument. (3) Overpower by using prime minister's authority.	2003–2006
President	Capacity to block primary legislative instruments from adoption by referring laws to Constitutional Court.	(1) Avoid by using lower level administrative instruments. (2) Delay primary legislation and work to facilitate institutional change to reduce opposition.	2003–2007
Constitutional Court	Capacity to strike down laws or decrees found to be unconstitutional.	(1) Avoid by using lower level administrative instruments. (2) Negotiate and make strategic compromises, to gain support for primary legislation.	2003–2008

Veto Point #1: Ministry of Finance and Undersecretariat of Treasury

The Ministry of Finance and Undersecretariat of Treasury leadership opposed policy measures that they believed would lead to larger public deficits. These two institutions worked closely together, with the Ministry of Finance responsible for setting fiscal policy and the Undersecretariat of Treasury responsible for managing financial assets. When the AK Party was elected in 2002, Turkey was just emerging from a decade of economic volatility, high and increasing public sector borrowing requirements, high interest rates, and increasing public sector deficits, all punctuated by a series of economic crises.^25–27 Although they were two separate institutions, both the Ministry of Finance and Undersecretariat of Treasury were concurrently tasked by the Turkish government and the International Monetary Fund to implement plans to address the government deficit, which was driven largely by high social sector spending.^26,28–30

Strategic Response

At the outset of planning the reforms in 2003, Minister Akdağ and his team first persuaded the Ministry of Finance and Undersecretariat of Treasury that a short-term increase in resources (to expand benefits and increase coverage) would lead to long-term efficiency gains and cost-savings (I-17). They did this in two ways. First, Minister Akdağ's team worked closely with technical experts to create detailed actuarial models that presented cost scenarios of different inputs, benefits packages, and service utilization (I-21, I-11, I-19). These projections provided evidence to the financing authorities that the MoH had carefully considered the budgetary implications and fiscal sustainability of their proposed plans. Second, they promoted the reform plan based on its objectives of increasing and expanding financial protection and its potential to improve efficiency in the health system (I-20, I-11). A completely unified and universal financing system would increase the potential efficiency gains brought about by the HTP's supply-side interventions and promote financial sustainability in the long run—the primary concern of the Ministry of Finance and Undersecretariat of Treasury.

As a second strategy, Minister Akdağ pursued policies that could be adopted under his own authority and hence did not require support from the Ministry of Finance and Undersecretariat of Treasury, which questioned the fiscal prudence of expanding the health financing system. Minister Akdağ expanded benefits and increased coverage through lower level administrative mechanisms. He was able to do this for programs that were under the MoH's jurisdiction as long as the changes did not require overall increases in the MoH's budget as allocated by the Ministry of Finance (I-17). The primary vehicle for these changes was the Green Card Program for low-income individuals (I-4, I-5, I-11, I-17). The first step was to bring the Green Card Program and its related budget under the authority of the MoH. Prior to 2003, the Green Card Program had been funded through central budgetary allocations and paid for directly by Social Solidarity Funds controlled by the Prime Minister's Office.³¹ In support of the MoH, the prime minister transferred this budgetary authority to the MoH. This budgetary authority allowed the MoH and Minister Akdağ to change the benefits package and expand coverage without needing the approval of other institutions (I-4, I-5).

Veto Point #2: Ministry of Labor and Social Security

The MoLSS opposed any measures that would diminish its power and influence in the health sector or that would decrease the benefits or services available for SSK beneficiaries (I-8, I-11).⁵ These were important considerations for Minister Akdağ and his team because at the start of the HTP, the MoLSS had more influence in health financing than the MoH because the MoLSS covered approximately 45% of the Turkish population through its SSK and Bağ-Kur systems.⁵ To achieve Akdağ's goal of implementing a purchaser–provider split in the health system, all financing schemes had to be consolidated into a single institution and all health facilities transferred to the MoH.

Strategic Response

Minister Akdağ persuaded leaders of the MoLSS to support the reform by assuring them that there would be no reduction of entitlements for SSK beneficiaries. By contrast, his objective was to increase the entitlements of other beneficiaries to match Turkey's highest, those of retired civil servants under Emekli Sandığı. By doing so, Minister Akdağ ensured that most organized beneficiary groups and the MoLSS would not oppose the administrative and legislative instruments needed to adopt and implement the reformed system. Several informants involved in designing the reform reported that initially there were plans for a basic benefit package with options for supplementary care. However, in advance of parliamentary elections in 2007, the Council of Ministers chose to prioritize the political popularity of the reforms over financial sustainability concerns and therefore decided to offer a generous benefits package to all Turkish citizens (I-23, I-17, I-27, I-32). Language for supplementary insurance to complement a basic benefits package was included in the SSUHI Law in order to appeal to the financing authorities that were concerned about the costs of the expanded insurance system. However, in reality no one covered under SSI required supplementary insurance because the standard benefit package was so generous.

However, the MoH was unable to convince the MoLSS to transfer its SSK hospitals to the MoH. To overcome this opposition, Minister Akdağ and his team relied on direct intervention by the prime minister to overpower the effort by the MoLSS to stop this transfer. On the authority of the prime minister, the MoLSS's SSK hospitals were all transferred to the MoH in 2005. After months of intense back-and-forth discussions between the MoH and MoLSS, the prime minister personally called the minister of labor and social security to inform him that all SSK hospitals would be moved under the MoH virtually overnight. The prime minister then introduced a bill in Parliament that was quickly passed to provide legislative support for this new policy.³²

To gain the support of the MoLSS for the financing component of the reform, Minister Akdağ compromised by combining his health reform plans with pension reform in Laws 5510 and 5502, which were put forward to Parliament in 2006. This meant that the establishment of the SSI and unification of all health financing schemes were packaged together with an increase in the national retirement age. The MoLSS was under substantial pressure to reduce the fiscal burden of pension obligations and hence favored an increase in the retirement age (I-11). The MoH leadership realized that the political viability of MoLSS's increased retirement age proposal could be advanced by bundling it with the much more popular proposal to expand health benefits (I-17, I-11). The move by Minister Akdağ to combine these different objectives ensured that the MoLSS would support the adoption of the primary legislative instrument needed to unify the health financing system.

Veto Point #3: The President

The president constituted a significant veto point to the unified and universal financing system through his ability to refer legislation to the Constitutional Court for review, as well as his ability to influence the Court by appointing its members. Although these actions do not directly obstruct the legislative process, they lead to review by the Constitutional Court, which can entail long delays and a final ruling that may be negative. From May 16, 2000, until August 28, 2007, the president of the Turkish Republic was Ahmet Necdet Sezer, who had been elected by the Parliament before the AK Party came to power. Sezer had been president of the Constitutional Court from 1998 to 2000 and was the first Turkish head of state to come from the judicial branch. Although he was not affiliated formally with any political party, he was a strong defender of secularism and often opposed AK Party initiatives.³³

Once Laws 5510 and 5502 were passed by Parliament in 2006, they were forwarded to the president's office for final approval, which was granted in the former case. However, in the latter case, President Sezer referred Law 5502 (SSUHI Law) to the Constitutional Court because he believed it was unconstitutional. He argued that civil servants, as “owners of the Republic,” should not be part of the same law or social security system as the rest of the Turkish citizens (I-5, I-11, I-17). He was particularly opposed to the provision increasing the retirement age from 48 years for women and 52 years for men to 65 years old for the entire population (I-11, I-5).

Strategic Response

Minister Akdağ and his team largely avoided the veto point of the president by expanding and unifying the health financing system primarily through secondary and tertiary administrative instruments before introducing primary legislation in 2006 (I-5, I-27). As long as coverage expansions and benefits package increases took place through regulations, ministerial directives, or circulars, President Sezer could not exercise his veto power (I-23, I-11, I-13). Minister Akdağ's use of a staged adoption and implementation process also served to gain public support for the AK Party's health reform agenda, which helped support the party in the 2007 election and thereby helped generate support for institutional change.

Although Minister Akdağ and his team could not avoid the veto power of the Office of the President for the SSUHI Law, they delayed putting forward primary legislation as long as possible while President Sezer was in office until mid-2007. While doing so, Minister Akdağ focused on building electoral support for the AK Party's health reform agenda in advance of the 2007 presidential elections. In August of that year, Abdullah Gül, a prominent member of the AK Party, was elected president as the successor of Sezer. Gül's candidacy was initially blocked by the Constitutional Court in May 2007 due to questions over his commitment to secularism.³³ However, after the AK Party won 47% of the popular vote in July 2007, Gül was elected easily as the new president.³⁴ With Gül's election, both the Office of the President and the Parliament were controlled by the AK Party for the first time. This ended the opposition from the Office of the President to the unification of financing systems under the health reform.

Veto Point #4: The Constitutional Court

The Constitutional Court had the ability to block legislation or decrees by ruling them as unconstitutional. As of 2006–2008, all four regular and four substitute members of the court were chosen by the president. Therefore, it was not surprising that the Constitutional Court agreed with President Sezer's concerns and nullified the articles in the SSUHI Law pertaining to active civil servants. As a result, the full unification of the health financing system was blocked in 2006.

Strategic Response

The avoidance strategies that Minister Akdağ used toward the president were also applied to his approach to the Constitutional Court. Because the Court was aligned with the president, it was expected that controversial legislation would go directly from the president to the Constitutional Court, where it was likely that they would be blocked. In addition to avoidance strategies, Minister Akdağ decided to make strategic compromises on the provisions of the SSUHI Law that pertained to current and retired civil servants in an effort to end the Constitutional Court's opposition to the law. President Gül could have exercised his authority to appoint new judges more sympathetic to the law, but when he took office he had other priorities. To adopt the SSUHI Law and remove the Constitutional Court as a veto point, Minister Akdağ and the minister of labor and social security agreed that the new social security requirements would only pertain to civil servants hired after October 2008—effectively exempting existing civil servants and neutralizing their opposition. This change was enough to end the Constitutional Court's opposition to the law (I-17, I-2, I-5).

DISCUSSION

This use of the theory of institutional veto points to analyze health reform in Turkey provides further evidence that institutional veto points shape the reform of health systems. Our analysis, however, goes beyond the original theory advanced by Immergut to examine the strategies used to overcome opposition at each of the four veto points in Turkey. Although we present a single case, we are able to increase leverage over our hypothesis about how institutional veto points structured Minister Akdağ's policy adoption strategies by building on Immergut's analysis.³⁵ We begin our analysis with the same motivating questions that Immergut used in her three case studies—why does Turkey have a unified and universal financing system? However, we find that in the case of Turkey the key explanatory variable in determining Turkey's outcome was not how institutional veto points structured interest group influence. Rather, in the case of this minister-driven reform, the key explanatory variable was how these institutional veto points structured the strategic actions of Minister Akdağ to promote the adoption of his desired policies.

Instead of focusing on how institutions constrained interest group influence, as Immergut did, we show how institutions constrained policy adoption but also how political leaders adopted multiple political strategies that finally overcame and circumvented the veto points. This analysis argues that institutional veto points do not exist in a political vacuum; instead, the analysis shows how political actors (Minister Akdağ and his team, in this case) can use strategies to address veto points and construct a process that overcomes institutional obstacles and results in policy adoption. Minister Akdağ and his team leveraged the favorable political and economic environment to advance their policy agenda.¹⁸

Our analysis identifies four key strategies that enabled Minister Akdağ to achieve his policy objectives.

1. Avoid: Minister Akdağ used an intentional legislative strategy that emphasized secondary and tertiary administrative instruments to avoid the veto points of the president and Constitutional Court (if primary legislation were proposed). Attempting to begin the reform using primary legislation would have stalled adoption until after the 2007 elections. Instead, Minister Akdağ was able to adopt and implement much of the reforms far earlier by using lower level ministerial directives, circulars, and regulations, and he postponed primary legislation as long as possible. He and his team worked to gain the support of other ministries with vested interests in the reform process and therefore could rely on their support in adopting these lower level administrative instruments. When he eventually needed primary legislation to fully adopt the unified system, the SSUHI Law was written so that it was flexible and open-ended to allow for as much discretion as possible during implementation (I-5, I-12, I-4). Therefore, the particulars of the new financing system would still be decided by Minister Akdağ, in coordination with the other ministries directly impacted by and involved in this system, through the continued use of administrative instruments.

2. Delay action while facilitating institutional change: Minister Akdağ's use of tertiary-level administrative instruments to adopt coverage expansions provided benefits to the Turkish citizenry that created important political consequences for the AK Party. Public satisfaction with the health system increased dramatically in the early years of the reform thanks in part to the increase and expansion of benefits for both Green Card holders and SSK beneficiaries that occurred through ministerial directives and circulars.³⁶ This public support helped win additional votes in Parliament and also helped the AK Party make electoral gains in the 2007 Parliamentary elections. This increased electoral support was ultimately the lynchpin of the strategy because it gave the AK Party enough seats in Parliament to capture the Office of the Presidency, replace Sezer with Gül, and align the presidency with the AK Party's policy agenda and Minister Akdağ's health reform plans.

3. Persuade and compromise: Minister Akdağ and his team created a new organization for negotiating with other government agencies to reduce bureaucratic politics and lower the likelihood of opposition to secondary administrative and primary legislative instruments. Shortly after coming into office, Minister Akdağ established an interministerial working group that was composed of leaders from the MoLSS, Treasury, Ministry of Finance, and the Ministry of Development (formerly State Planning Organization), all of whom had a vested interest in health reform. It did not include ministers themselves—members were senior leaders with technical expertise and political experience to directly influence their ministers (I-5, I-15, I-17, I-11). This membership reflected the intention that the new group focus on the technical aspects of the reform. Once the group reached conclusions, each member was responsible for convincing his minister to support the position. For instance, the representative from the MoLSS was one of the few bureaucrats from that ministry who was in favor of the unified system (I-11). This working group was also the venue where Minister Akdağ's team presented the detailed actuarial models to Ministry of Finance and Treasury colleagues to convince them of the financial sustainability of the reformed system. Importantly, the members of this working group agreed to engage in vigorous policy debate without losing sight of their ultimate objective of a reformed health system (I-5). This agreement ensured that discussions and negotiations would continue even with disagreements. This working group allowed Minister Akdağ to incorporate the concerns of other ministries in the reform process and thereby gain the support of other ministries. He involved these policy makers in the planning and design of the reform to generate support for the adoption of his policies and for the later stage of implementation. Minister Akdağ's willingness to make strategic compromises extended beyond Cabinet ministers and was necessary until the final stages of the legislative process. Ultimately, the unification of the social security schemes hinged on the Constitutional Court's decision. By modifying the retirement age requirement so that it only applied to newly hired civil servants and not those already in service, Minister Akdağ was able to appease the court's members and see the SSUHI Law passed into legislation in 2008.

4. Overpower: Minister Akdağ used the power and support of the prime minister to override the opposition of other ministries to his proposals. Several interviewees and a published report cited Minister Akdağ's close relationship with Prime Minister Erdoğan and the importance of health reform within the AK Party agenda as factors that gave Minister Akdağ exceptional power and influence within the interministerial working group and the Cabinet to push forward his policy agenda (I-15, I-17, I-27, I-8).³⁷ Minister Akdağ was able to leverage this power to ensure that relevant Cabinet ministers remained engaged with his health reform plans despite pushback from the Ministry of Finance and MoLSS. He could also rely on the prime minister's strategic intervention when he was not able to gain the support of these two ministries on his own accord.

This study has several limitations. We do not contend that our analysis is the only possible explanation for the adoption of Turkey's health reform. There were other hurdles that were overcome, ranging from interest group opposition, technical difficulties, financing constraints, resource shortages, and public behavior change issues.¹¹ As discussed above, our explanation is given additional credibility based on the comparisons that can be drawn to the previous failed attempts to achieve a similar policy objective in Turkey, as well with Immergut's three case studies, which also show the importance of institutional veto points in blocking policy adoption. We are also limited by our use of interview data. Our analysis may suffer from recall bias because it concerns events in the past. Interviewees may not have been entirely forthcoming in their responses or linguistic issues could have constrained their ability to fully respond to or understand questions. We try to overcome these issues through triangulation of data and accounts; however, some bias may still exist.

CONCLUSIONS

Minister Akdağ and his team in the MoH carefully crafted their policy adoption strategies to address and overcome opposition at four institutional veto points that posed the largest threats to the adoption of their ambitious health reform. This analysis finds support for Immergut's argument of the importance of institutional veto points and how they can serve as major obstacles to the adoption of health reform. In addition, we go beyond this finding to show that political leaders promoting reform can, in some instances, design political strategies that overcome opposition at institutional veto points—in ways that can raise the political feasibility of a reform and lead to successful policy adoption.³⁸ In this instance, Minister Akdağ addressed the obstacles at institutional veto points by avoiding some through the use of lower-level administrative instruments to adopt changes to the health system, by delaying action while facilitating changes in institutions that opposed his reform policies, by persuading and making strategic compromises with key opponents, and by overpowering opponents at specific institutional veto points through executive actions taken by the prime minister. This application and extension of institutional veto point theory to the single case study of Turkish health reform provides an example of a strategic approach to policy adoption that other countries may learn from to increase the likelihood of the adoption of their own reform agenda.

DISCLOSURE OF POTENTIAL CONFLICTS OF INTEREST

No potential conflicts of interest were disclosed.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We thank Ashley Fox and Kara Hanson for their helpful comments and suggestions. We also thank the late Marc Roberts for many discussions that motivated this study. We appreciate the assistance of Volkan Çetinkaya and Banu Ayar in facilitating interviews. We are grateful to all interview respondents whose participation made this article possible.