Politicians, parties, and tenure: How public procurements are affected in Turkey on municipality level

This research uses the Difference-in-Differences method to study the impact of a ruling party change in a metropolitan municipality on procurements. Municipalities with a change in the ruling party were compared with the others according to the procurement contract data from Turkey. Results show that cities with newly elected mayors perform better than others in most parameters. They use competitive and transparent methods more, and additionally make more savings. Little to no differences were found in mechanisms that have been previously associated with abuse of power, but abuse may not be the case in the period that has been inspected in this thesis. Overall, it can be said that the ruling party change resulted in better outcomes in the matter of procurements.