Cilt/Volume II Sayı/Number 1 Nisan/April 2009 Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi/Journal of Social Sciences 113 WHY DO BUREAUCRATS PUSH FOR ADMINISTRATIVE REFORM? PROPOSING A MODEL OF BUREAUCRATIC BEHAVIOR Mete YILDIZ∗ Uğur ÖMÜRGÖNÜLSEN∗∗ __________________________________________________________________ ABSTRACT Bureaucrats are usually portrayed as the firmest resisters against change. As a very visible exception to this tendency, Provincial Governor Mr. Recep Yazicioglu (1948- 2003) had long been considered a very vocal advocate for administrative reform in Turkey. For the last three decades, he criticized the excessive centralization, ineffectiveness, inefficiency, and unresponsiveness problems that plague the Turkish public bureaucracy. By using literature review, archival search and in-depth semi-structured interview methods, this study examines Governor Yazicioglu’s life, career, accomplishments, and evaluates the applicability of the concepts of “exemplary public administrator” (Cooper and Wright, 1992), “public service motivation” (Perry and Wise, 1990) and “exit, voice and loyalty” (Hirschman, 1970) in a non-U.S. setting. It is concluded that these concepts can be useful in explaining exemplary bureaucratic behavior in the Turkish bureaucracy when they are combined with several additional explanatory factors (i.e. political environment, positive examples, amount of risk of being a critic, longevity of criticism, providing successful examples of implementation, support of the media, and support of citizens) within a proposed behavioral model that is applicable internationally. Keywords: Administrative reform, bureaucratic behavior, exemplary public administrators ∗ Dr., Hacettepe Üniversitesi, Kamu Yönetimi ve Siyaset Bilimi Bölümü E-posta:
[email protected] ∗ ∗ Dr., Hacettepe Üniversitesi, Kamu Yönetimi ve Siyaset Bilimi Bölümü E-posta:
[email protected] YDÜ Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi, C.