Distributive Politics and Regional Development: Assessing the Territorial Distribution of Turkey’s Public Investment

Abstract

One of the most important decisions that governments face is how to allocate the public resources necessary for development, given each country's budget constraints. According to the literature on the links between wealth and institutional performance, highly kleptocratic countries are expected to show higher levels of politicisation of the public purse. The article tests the extent to which socioeconomic criteria (equity and efficiency) or electoral concerns Moreover, in contrast to official regional development policy principles, the Turkish state tended to favour areas with a higher level of development over those with greater 'socioeconomic need'. Our results therefore challenge much of the distributive politics literature, which has overly emphasised the role of pork-barrel in public policy-making. At the same time, they underline the need of paying more attention to the political economy of regional development strategies.

Winners and losers of rapid growth in Turkey: Analysis of the spatial variability of convergence

“…For public expenditures we end up with lack of significant influence, which can be explained by the centrality of public investments. Similar to debates for developing countries, there are possibly non‐economic priorities in Turkey that loosens the connection between regional development and distribution of public investment (Luca, ; Luca & Rodríguez‐Pose, ). We report positive but again a weak connection between regional growth and agglomeration (only for SEM and SDM).…”

Locational disadvantage and the spatial distribution of government expenditure on urban infrastructure and services in metropolitan Sydney (1988–2015)

“…At the same time, the evidence is also clear that the most disadvantaged suburbs (decile 1) were largely excluded from this redistributive pattern and neglected in allocation of resources. As identified also by Luca and Rodríguez‐Pose () in Turkey, channelling public investment to ‘the better off among the most in need’ leaves critical urban resources further from the reach of the very people arguably most reliant on locally provided services (Briggs, , p.923).…”

The urban–rural gap in healthcare infrastructure: does government ideology matter?

“…Also, in Greece, Turkey and Chile, the geographical distribution of public investment expenditure is influenced by political manipulation. In Greece and Turkey, for example, regions with many core supporters are rewarded with public investment expenditure (Lambrinidis, Psycharis, & Rovolis, 2005;Luca & Rodríguez-Pose, 2015;Rodríguez-Pose, Psycharis, & Tselios, 2016). In Chile, the central government grants large amounts of public investment expenditure to regions in which the mayor is politically aligned with the central government (Livert & Gainza, 2018).…”