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Public Sector Reforms to Fight Corruption in Turkey

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Public Sector Reforms to Fight Corruption in Turkey TURKISH STUDIES, 2017 VOL. 18, NO. 3, 439–458 https://doi.org/10.1080/14683849.2017.1314185 Public sector reforms to fight corruption in Turkey: a case of failed Europeanization? Digdem Soyaltin Department of Political Science and Public Administration, Istanbul Kemerburgaz University, Istanbul, Turkey ABSTRACT This article examines the practical application of legal reforms to fight corruption in Turkey, focusing on three policy sectors: civil administration, public finance management and public procurement. Facing increasing pressure, incumbent governments have adopted international anti-corruption norms and programs in the last two decades. However, the adoption and adaptation of formal institutions tends to remain decoupled from informal behavioral practices, thereby curbing the effectiveness of Europeanization in the Turkish public sector – albeit to varying degrees. The policy comparison of this article shows that external anti-corruption efforts, especially those initiated by the EU, can help domestic actors to address the problem of decoupling when certain domestic factors are present. ARTICLE HISTORY Received 14 August 2016; Accepted 24 March 2017 KEYWORDS Europeanization; decoupling; anti-corruption; governance; domestic politics; Turkey Introduction Corruption has been a pervasive problem in Turkey for many years.1 It has played a significant role in the economic crises the country has faced since Downloaded by [EP- IPSWICH] at 04:48 24 August 2017 the 1980s. Yet, a decisive anti-corruption policy was only formulated after the 2001 financial crisis, which brought the worst economic recession in the history of the republic.2 Coupled with the acceleration of the EU accession process, after 1999, the devastating consequences of the crisis on the economic and political situations compelled a more prominent fight against corruption. It is in this context that incumbent governments, mainly formed by the Justice and Development Party (Turkish acronym, AKP), have introduced a massive amount of reforms to fight corruption, in line with the programs and norms of international organizations, including the EU. CONTACT Digdem Soyaltin [email protected] Department of Political Science and Public Administration, Istanbul Kemerburgaz University, Mahmutbey Dilmenler Caddesi, No. 26, 34217 Bağcılar, Istanbul, Turkey © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group 440 D. SOYALTIN Combating corruption is an integral part of the EU’s enlargement policy. Very significant changes in Turkey’s legal and institutional framework have taken place with regard to the fight against corruption in the last two decades, in order to comply with the EU’s political conditionality. Despite the legal improvements, Turkey’s score in the Corruption Perception Index (CPI), published by the Transparency International, has dropped in recent years. In the 2014 CPI results, Turkey lost 5 points (from 50 points in 2013 to 45 in the 2014 results) and moved from the 53rd least corrupt country to the 64th.3 Many scholars also confirm the fact that the anti-corruption reforms largely failed to promote better governance in Turkey’s public sector and remained decoupled from behavioral practices.4 The real puzzle in the Turkish case is not the decoupling of formal changes and behavioral practices per se; but rather the divergence in the dynamics of decoupling across policy sectors. This article investigates why external actors have a different impact and success in addressing the existing decoupling in fighting corruption in some policy sectors and not others. By comparing the external promotion of anti-corruption norms and the provisions in civil administration, public finance management and public procurement in Turkey from 1999 – when Turkey was given the status of candidate country for the EU membership – to 2016, this article identifies the interplay of two key factors that filter externally induced change. I argue that bureau- cratic costs and administrative co-ordination account for the cross-sectoral variation in enforcing anti-corruption reforms, which give rise to differential institutional change. The detailed empirical analysis illustrates that external actors prove to be successful in promoting anti-corruption-related institutional change in policy sectors only when bureaucratic costs are low and administrative co- ordination is strong. This is the case in civil administration where ruling elites place the fight against corruption under the direct control of the govern- ment but external actors still manage to empower administrative authorities Downloaded by [EP- IPSWICH] at 04:48 24 August 2017 to bring about institutional change. Evidence suggests that institutional change remains shallow or selective when either of these factors is missing, as in the case of public finance management and public procurement, respect- ively. While the lack of administrative co-ordination mitigates the impact of legal reforms and results in shallow change in the public finance management, the emergence of an autonomous public procurement agency incurs high bureaucratic costs for the ruling elites and paves the way for selective practices. This article contributes to the literature on Europeanization and, more generally, on external good governance promotion by showing us external actors can promote institutional change and induce governments to address the problem of decoupling, if they meet with favorable domestic conditions. By highlighting bureaucratic politics and administrative co-ordination this TURKISH STUDIES 441 article identifies two conditions deserving of more attention in future litera- ture on Europeanization. The rest of this article is divided into four sections. Following the introduc- tion, section two presents the empirical puzzle in more detail and depicts how prominent explanations of Europeanization remain insufficient to explain the cross-sectoral variation that is observed in the Turkish case. Section three introduces the theoretical framework that accounts for when and to what extent external actors help countries to address the gap between formal change and behavioral practices. Section four presents the empirical data. The empirical data comes from in-depth analysis of national policy docu- ments such as medium-term anti-corruption programs, reports of various international organizations, media outlets and press releases from the govern- ment. In order to triangulate the results, I conducted 45 semi-structured inter- views with policymakers, bureaucrats, policy experts, as well as officials from the EU delegation to Turkey and Transparency International in Turkey, between April 2012 and February 2013 in Ankara, Istanbul and Berlin.5 Finally, the last section concludes the paper. State of the art: Europeanization and external good governance promotion External incentives and political interests The existing research on Europeanization and external governance promotion has identified the differential empowerment of domestic actors as a core mechanism or scope condition of domestic change.6 Domestic change is facilitated if EU incentives discourage domestic actors to veto adaptation to EU requirements (veto players), or if they empower domestic reform coalitions by providing them with additional resources to exploit the oppor- tunities offered by Europeanization (formal supporting institutions).7 Downloaded by [EP- IPSWICH] at 04:48 24 August 2017 As shown by the evidence from the CEE countries, external incentives and capacity-building measures empowered pro-reformist domestic actors vis-à- vis veto players to push through domestic reforms and balance the costs of adoption arising from a high misfit between European and domestic struc- tures.8 However, conditionality mechanisms do not just originate from the EU, but also the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. These institutions promoted the adoption of EU reforms consistent with prin- ciples of market economy and good governance. At the same time, the moni- toring mechanisms of various international organizations, such the Council of Europe (CoE), has a decisive impact on the overall Europeanization as they shape incentives of the domestic actors to adopt corrective and/or further legal changes.9 External actors also provide the domestic actors with the tech- nical knowledge, skills, financial resources and information to strengthen 442 D. SOYALTIN domestic capacity and promote the practical application of legal reforms. Reform propensity is further increased if external incentives and assistance align with the political preferences and survival strategies of the incumbent regimes. Studies on the Europeanization of current candidate states and neighborhood countries have identified alignment of the domestic preferences with external demands as a new scope condition for EU-induced domestic change.10 Necessary but not sufficient conditions for Turkey As a long-standing problem for Turkey, corruption has been one of the major concerns of the EU in Turkey’s enlargement process.11 Since Turkey obtained an accession perspective in December 1999, the EU has played a substantial role in the formulation of anti-corruption policies. The National Action Plan, issued in the aftermath of the 2001 financial crisis, came as a direct response to the demands of the EU, which largely overlapped with the IMF’sconditions.12 Yet, with the election of the AKP, the anti-corruption reform process gained fresh momentum as the new government started to introduce decisive
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