Fulya Apaydın Chair

Aylin Aydin Cakir Discussant

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It’s the Policy Style, Stupid! How Statism Facilitates (de-)Europeanization in Turkey

Europeanization research identifies the goodness of fit between the EU and domestic institutions as the key driver of domestic institutional change. The enlargement literature qualified this argument by demonstrating the centrality of credibility of the membership perspective. The failure of the EU in consolidating democracy and fostering good governance is thus attributed to misfits and lack of credible perspective. Despite these advances, the scholarship has overlooked an alternative master variable, the policy style, which we stumbled on while working on Turkey, the single longest standing candidate for accession. Focusing on the policy style, we find, has immeasurable potential for explaining not only processes of Europeanization but also of de-Europeanization. After exploring institutional foundations of Turkey’s statist policy style, we first explain how statism enabled a surprising degree of expansion in policy capacity, resulting in greater policy intensity and density in the direction of Europeanization. We then show how statism itself is, paradoxically, responsible for expanding opportunities for ‘hidden’ forms of de-Europeanization thereafter. We thus argue that processes of Europeanization themselves create the very conditions for de-Europeanization due to the nature of the policy style. We finally put our findings in comparative pre-accession perspective. We draw on the literatures on public policy and comparative politics in addition to Europeanization research in arguing for a focus on policy styles, which, we believe, essentially structure (de)Europeanization outcomes. We rely on original data based on interviews with key policymakers conducted between 2009-2015 and review of official documents in different policy areas.

Tolga Bolukbasi

Bilkent University

Ebru Ertugal

Independent

 

Democratic backsliding, de-Europeanization and the transformation of economic governance: Insights from the Turkish case

This paper examines the major shifts in economic governance in Turkey, that have been carried out within the last two decades. Oscillating between de-centralization and centralization, key institutions of economic governance and decision-making processes have gone through significant de jure and de facto transformations in the recent past, coinciding with the processes of democratic backsliding and de-Europeanization. Increasingly empowered by the successive electoral victories, the Justice and Development Party (JDP) governments, first embraced de-centralization (either generaing or sustaining decentralized constellations of governance), and then embarked on the opposite strategy of centralization, broadly justified to provide swift responses to global and regional economic crises. Particularly focusing on (autonomous and semi-autonomous) agencies, including the Central Bank, the paper aims to undestand the variations across time and policy areas with respect to their institutional constellations, both on paper and in practice; and construct analytical links between specific phases and processes of democratic backsliding and varying outcomes. The paper analyzes the processes in which shifting executive-legislative relations, executive’s relative empowerment and ultimately the transition to a hyper-presidential system have altered the political opportunity structures for pivotal actors. It shows the ways in which diminishing number of veto players accompanied by the increasing weight of those remaining players, alters incentives that the individuals and organizations face, facilitating multifarious institutional transformations, and, hence, engendering a hirerarchically centralized economic governance structure. The paper points out the nearly paradoxical impact of the EU accession (and, then the process of stalling) through the prism of a double-edged sword: first, promoting (and/ or imposing) decentralized governance in designated areas and providing templates for such change; and then, enabling centralization (evidently as an unintended consequence) by contributing to enhancing bureaucratic capacity and strengthening JDP’s political base by means of myriad mechanisms, such as expanded capital inflows and the dispersal of the EU funds.

Isik Ozel

UC3M, IC3JM

 

Social Assistance Regime in Turkey: What is Left after the loss of the EU anchor?

Recently, a series of gradual and piecemeal changes in the Turkish social assistance regime has yielded transformative outcomes concerning policy content as well as organizational and administrative arrangements. This article examines the ways in which the EU exerted influence on this reform trajectory. In doing so, it builds on “the usages of Europe” approach which offers fruitful analytical lenses to the study of the EU’s role in social policy making at the domestic level. Studies drawing on this framework posit that policy reforms are the product of domestic actors’ selective and strategic use of the resources provided by the EU such as legal, institutional, financial, political and cognitive resources. As a corollary, policy outcomes depend not only on the types and scope of available EU resources but also on how the domestic actors use them. In line with previous research on the usages of Europe in social security system in Turkey, this article expects to find that the influence of the EU on the content and direction of the reforms regarding the social assistance system in Turkey is mediated by domestic actors and past institutional arrangements. Through a qualitative analysis of primary documents, it identifies different types of EU resources available at different time points. Then, it maps the main policy developments in the social assistance regime as to legislative changes and amendments in policy directives, shifts in the strategic plans of the Directorate General of Social Assistance including failed reform proposals to unfold in what ways different EU resources are deployed by domestic actors. The paper also discusses the implications of the declining salience of the EU membership prospects for the usages of Europe in social assistance reforms and for the sustainability of already launched reforms as to whether the fading EU membership incentive leads to policy reversals.

Duygu Sonat

Potsdam University