The impact of local self-government on governance in the unitary, regional and federal states of the EU and Turkey: A comparative analysis

The notion of the state as a provider of social welfare has been replaced by a more limited notion of the state, focused more on supervisory and regulatory functions, built around concepts such as openness, accountability, participation, effectiveness, efficiency, effectiveness and efficiency, around phenomena such as localisation, new law, new public administration and governance, which have become more visible in the post-1980 period. This change has led to the emergence of a tendency to strengthen local governments, which are seen as the service units closest to the people, especially in administrative and legal terms, in relation to central governments. The idea that strengthening local governments, in other words making them more autonomous, will contribute positively to the more efficient and effective delivery of services needed by the public is widely accepted by institutions such as the European Union, the World Bank and the United Nations. This study discusses and analyses the conceptual framework of local autonomy, which aims to strengthen local governments, whose importance is growing by the day, in the context of the European Charter of Local Self-Government, an international document. In addition, governance aims to weaken the centralised state structure by sharing powers or, in softer terms, by shifting the balance of power towards local governments and non-state actors, thus creating a more democratic, effective and efficient administrative structure in line with the neoliberal understanding. When the phenomena of governance and local autonomy are evaluated together in line with their objectives, the existence of similarities between these two phenomena such as effectiveness in service delivery, economy, efficiency and a democratic administrative structure stand out. In this context, the aim of this study is to examine the impact of local autonomy on governance in EU Member States (France, Bulgaria, Germany, Belgium, Italy and Spain) and Candidate Countries (Turkey), categorised according to their administrative structures, for the period 2008-2020, using the panel data analysis method. Furthermore, the data-based analysis to be carried out within the framework of the study aims to make an empirical contribution to the literature by examining whether the degree of implementation of local autonomy varies according to the administrative structures of the countries. To this end, local autonomy is first included as an independent variable in the empirical model, which is built using data from the Local Autonomy Index published by the Council of Europe. Then, in order to measure the extent to which efficiency, productivity and effectiveness are achieved in the provision of public services, the data obtained from the World Governance Indicators published by the World Bank since 1999 were used as dependent variables in the model and analyses were carried out. In this way, an attempt was made to obtain results that would allow us to understand the impact of local autonomy on governance, which is the objective of the study. An overall assessment of the results shows that local autonomy has a positive effect on governance processes, in line with the literature reviewed. In addition, the study shows that the impact of local autonomy on governance does not depend on the administrative structures of the countries, which has not been empirically analysed in the reviewed literature.