The effects of the new public administration approach on social municipalism: The example of Balıkesir Metropolitan Municipality

Public administration is a dynamic field that has constantly undergone changes in the historical process. The main factors affecting the changes in public administration include political, socio-economic and technological Deciencies. The field of public administration, which continues to change due to these reasons, has experienced many reform in the historical process. The New understanding of Public Administration, which is intensively studied in the thesis, has come to the fore especially after the 1970s, when the traditional understanding of public administration has become thoroughly questioned. In the continuation of the 1970s, when the traditional understanding of management began to be found insufficient and the need for an effective and efficient understanding of public administration was frequently raised, the New understanding of Public Administration challenged the traditional bureaucratic model and opened the door to many reforms that will take place in this area. In addition to the traditional bureaucratic structure, the understanding of the New Public Administration, which has brought about significant changes in public service provision, has focused on bringing local governments to the fore. The reflections of the structural changes that have occurred primarily in European countries on Turkish public administration have been that there have been significant changes in the concepts of central and local government in Turkey. Together with many laws enacted especially in the sense that local governments are gaining importance, concrete steps of the understanding of New Public Administration at the constitutional level have started to be realized in Turkey. The most important institutions that can be defined among the local government units in the Turkish administrative organization are municipalities. As a result of the reflections of the new Public Administration approach, new duties and powers have been introduced to the municipalities at the constitutional level and the autonomous structures of the municipalities have started to be strengthened. Municipalities, nowadays health, education, right to work, etc. it actively participates in the fulfillment of basic social rights and engages in activities by producing policies suitable for its citizens at the local level. In this context, a study was conducted on the example of Balıkesir Metropolitan Municipality in order to examine the impact of the New Public Administration approach on municipalities and the social activities carried out by municipalities under the name of "social municipalism". The main bases of the study carried out by the literature review method are field research and social activities monitored throughout the province.