Measurement and evaluation processes of municipal service personnel: Professional qualification

Through the impact of globalization, in the process of redefining institutional roles at the local, regional, and national levels and restructuring the state apparatus at different scales, central governments have not only sought to reduce or increase their regulatory power but have also attempted to institutionalize competitive relationships among local governments as a means of strategically positioning local, regional, and national systems of goods, services, and personnel within supranational structures of capital. In this process, the nation-state level has undergone extensive rescaling in traditional regulatory arrangements, and it has even maintained control over the regimes related to urban affairs through coordinated accumulation strategies in local political-economic spaces. The standardization processes, including the measurement and evaluation of local service personnel, which constitute the subject of this study, have become an essential component in the reorganization of urban systems of goods, services, and personnel, particularly in large cities, which are the spatial representation of the service sector. In this study, professions with mandatory certification within the Vocational Qualifications Authority, due to their dangerous nature, in thirty metropolitan municipalities in Turkey were examined, and it was determined which professions are included in the national vocational standards created within the framework of international standards. The study aims to determine whether personnel providing services in disciplines identified as existing within the metropolitan municipality. To this department, they are affiliated if they live and whether they are permanent or contracted employees. The study reveals the transformation of this new formation that has emerged with the rescaling of the state, which enables both the devolution of responsibilities to local governments and the private sector and, on the other hand, the central provision of the assessment and evaluation processes of hazardous professional groups that are difficult to supervise and control.