Essays on the Political Economy of Service Provision Tu˘Gba Bozça˘Ga

Essays on the Political Economy of Service Provision by Tu˘gbaBozça˘ga B.A. in Economics, Bo˘gaziçiUniversity (2010) M.A., Central European University (2011) Submitted to the Department of Political Science in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science at the MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY September 2020 ○c Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2020. All rights reserved. Author.................................................................. Department of Political Science August 5, 2020 Certified by . Fotini Christia Professor of Political Science Thesis Supervisor Accepted by . Fotini Christia Chair, Graduate Program Committee 2 Essays on the Political Economy of Service Provision by Tu˘gbaBozça˘ga Submitted to the Department of Political Science on August 5, 2020, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science Abstract Service provision has often been studied as an outcome of political decisions and processes. This dissertation examines how the distribution of service provision and its electoral outcomes are also contingent on local social structures. It contributes to theoretical knowledge on the political economy of service provision by introducing novel arguments that explain spatial and temporal variations in state capacity and government services, non-state services, and electoral returns to service provision. The first paper develops a theory based on bureaucratic efficiency and argues that bureaucratic efficiency increases with social proximity among bureaucrats. I find that social proximity, as proxied by geographic proximity, increases bureaucratic efficiency. However, in line with theoretical expectations, geographic proximity is less likely to lead to high bureaucratic efficiency in socially fragmented network structures or when there are ethnic divisions between bureaucrats. To test this theory, I leverage a spatial regression discontinuity design and novel data from Turkey’s over 35,000 villages. The second paper explores the origins of non-state service provision, with a focus on Islamist political movements. Exploiting the spatial variation in an Islamist service provision network across Turkey’s 970 districts, this study shows that service allocation by non-state actors is highly dependent on a group’s ability to marshal local resources, specifically through the associational mobilization of local business elites. The findings rely on an original district-level dataset that combines data from over sixty government decrees, archival data, and other novel administrative data. The third paper introduces a theory suggesting that electoral returns to local public goods will increase with their excludability, i.e., the degree to which they are used only by the local population, as the local population will see them as “club goods” and as a signal of favoritism. Using a panel dataset that contains information on all public education and health investments in Turkey since the 1990s and mobility measures that rely on mobile call data, this study finds that electoral returns to public good investments are higher when they have a club good nature, although the effect is weaker in secular districts, where a perception of favoritism is less likely to develop due to the cleavages with the conservative incumbent party. Thesis Supervisor: Fotini Christia Title: Professor of Political Science 3 4 Acknowledgments This dissertation would not have been possible without the support of my advisors. I have learned an incredible amount from them and will be forever grateful for their en- couragement and guidance throughout this entire journey. Fotini Christia’s excellent mentorship and Chappell Lawson’s enduring belief in my potential as a scholar kept me going through the difficult moments. Daniel Hidalgo helped me think more care- fully about my designs and assumptions and showed me how a scholar can ‘maximize’ both rigorousness and kindness. Melani Cammett pushed me to think more about my concepts and has been enormously generous with her time and knowledge. Other pro- fessors at MIT also deserve my immense gratitude: Lily Tsai for giving me excellent advice on my research; Kathy Thelen for being a fierce advocate for the graduate student women in the department; Ben Ross Schneider for welcoming me as a first-year student; and Volha Charnysh for giving me very helpful practical advice. MIT’s Department of Political Science has been a nurturing space. I would like to thank everyone at HQ, Maria DiMauro, Diana Gallagher, Paula Kreutzer, Janine Sazin- sky, Zina Queen, and especially, our graduate student administrator, Susan Twarog, for your help with everything. I am grateful to have been a member of a wonderfully sup- portive graduate student community, especially my cohort who entered in the fall of 2013—the best and nicest possible colleagues I could ever have hoped for. My PhD years were improved immeasurably by conversations with Marsin Alshamary, Olivia Bergman, Elissa Berwick, Loreto Cox, Elizabeth Dekeyser, Michael Freedman, Nina Mc- Murry, Kelly Pasolli, Tesalia Rizzo Reyes, Emilia Simison, and Weihuang Wong. I was also very lucky to have the companionship and moral support of the international student community in the department during the stressful COVID-19 and visa policy crises. I would also like to thank Alisha Holland for the endless amount of helpful practical advice she gave me throughout my PhD and for introducing me to Boston’s best culinary spots, and Aslı Cansunar for her incomparable companionship and friendship. I thank Ahmet Utku Akbıyık, Cem Mert Dallı, Serdar Gündo˘gdu, and Kayıhan Kesbiç, who provided outstanding research and field assistance for my dissertation. I also thank the Program on Governance and Local Development at the University of Gothenburg and the MIT Center for International Studies for financially support- ing my research. I have had the fortune to receive incredibly valuable feedback from many great colleagues and scholars at different stages of my dissertation. I wish to thank all of them: Daron Acemo˘glu,Pablo Balan, Ozgur Bozcaga, Dana Burde, Melani Cammett, Aslı Cansunar, Loreto Cox, Cesi Cruz, Killian Clarke, Elizabeth Dekeyser, Alice Evans, Pablo Fernandez-Vazquez, Alisha Holland, Dan Honig, Guy Grossman, Yichen Guan, Michael Freedman, Danny Hidalgo, Timur Kuran, Evan Lieberman, Avi- tal Livny, Nina McMurry, Pete Mohanty, Rich Nielsen, Ken Opalo, Thomas Pepin- sky, Melina Platas, Albert Ali Salah, Jeremy Spater, Weihuang Wong, and the partici- pants at the APSA, MPSA, POLNET, and PolMeth Annual Meetings, AALIMS-NYUAD, NEMEPWG-Harvard, and NEWEPS conferences, Development Analytics Seminar Se- ries, MIT-PVD and MIT-SSWG seminars, and Harvard-MENA Politics workshop. I must 5 also thank my faculty and mentors at Bo˘gaziçiUniversity and Central European Univer- sity, especially Ahmet Faruk Aysan, Anıl Duman, and Hakan Yılmaz, who supported me when I decided to do a PhD and made themselves available for guidance, sometimes years after I had graduated. Finally, I am indebted to numerous people for their generous help during my field work in Turkey, but I shall avoid listing their names for reasons of confidentiality. Without the weekend distractions, my PhD life would have been unbearable. I was fortunate to hang out with an incredible Turkish community in Boston: Seda Akbıyık, Ahmet Utku Akbıyık, Onur Altında˘g,Emrah Altındi¸s,Zeynep Balcıo˘glu,Ladin Bayurgil, Emre Gençer, Arda Gitmez, Elçin Içten,˙ Defne Kırmızı, Ekin Kurtiç, Gaye Özpınar, Seda Saluk, Aytu˘g¸Sa¸smaz,Akif Yerlio˘glu. My friends from home, in Istanbul and Ankara, were also always ‘here’: Eylül Eygi, Ebru Küçükboyacı, Nihan Toprakkıran, Elvin Vural, and Ru¸senYa¸sar, thank you so much for filling my life in Boston with joy despite the physical distance; and the others, you know who you are, thank you for reminding me of the fact that distance cannot alter how wonderful it is to spend hours in conversation with a good mate. The support of my family helped me immensely throughout my PhD: ¸Serife-Hakkı Yumaklı, Nihal-Mehmet Kani Bozça˘ga,Taygun-Cansu Yumaklı, and Özen-Gökhan-Berk- Sarp Bezirci. I couldn’t have finished this dissertation without the help of my mother, ¸Serife Yumaklı, who crossed the Atlantic to help me take care of our newbornly daughter during the application and dissertation processes. I am also so happy that we could cross the Atlantic in the final months of my PhD, amid the pandemic and visa crises, so that our daughter could meet her grandfather and my father-in-law Mehmet Bozça˘gabefore he passed away; Father, thank you for waiting for us. But my biggest gratitude goes to Mustafa Özgür Bozça˘ga,my anchor in life. Whenever I wavered, he held me up. Having him as a partner, friend, and intellectual companion has been the most beautiful thing in my life. Finally, I am so lucky to have my lovely daughter Arden Süreyya Bozça˘ga,whose presence since 2019 has brightened my life—yes, including during my dissertation writing year, which could have been one of the most stressful times ever without her presence. I dedicate this work to Özgür and Arden. When I started my educational journey, I could never have imagined that, as the child of a couple who were barely able to complete elementary school before having to work and earn money from a very young age in order to survive, I would be so lucky as to become an alumnus of MIT. My experiences while growing up and observing the results of structural inequalities in my everyday life have been my main motivation to study political economy. I am very happy and grateful for the path my life has taken me on. But I am most thankful for it giving to me the opportunity to appreciate the beauty of the following verses from the Anatolian folk poet Yunus Emre: “Knowledge should mean a full grasp of knowledge: Knowledge means to know yourself, heart and soul. If you have failed to understand yourself, Then all of your reading has missed its call.” 6 Contents 1 Introduction 15 2 The Social Bureaucrat: How Social Proximity among Bureaucrats Affects Local Governance 21 2.1 Introduction....................................

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