The challenges of new public management in Turkish public financial management: A questionnaire-based analysis

The New Public Management reforms, which were developed to find solutions to the economic problems experienced in the 1970s and to restructure the public administrations of the countries, have been implemented in many developed and developing countries since the early 1980s. Having been affected by this process, Turkey has also implemented these reforms to redesign its public administration. However, there have been some disruptions in the implementation process of the reforms in Turkey like in the other developing countries. This thesis aims to examine the current status of the reforms in the Turkish Public Financial Management System applied under the concept of New Public Management and to put forward policy recommendations to improve the process. The data in the research were obtained through a questionnaire developed for the entire public financial management. Accordingly, the thesis reveals the shortcomings in public financial management and proposes solutions for them from the point of view of the participants of the research. These participants included the top managers working in the central government and metropolitan municipalities, expenditure authorities/heads of departments, the directorates/heads of strategy development departments, and the internal and external auditors. As a result of the research, it was determined that there are some problems in the Turkish Public Financial Management System. These problems were detected especially in the relative size and performance management of the public sector as well as transparency and accountability, the budget oversight of the Turkish Grand National Assembly/Local Council, the Turkish Court of Account performance audit and the performance-based budget. Thus, second-generation public financial reforms and program-based performance budget implementations came to the foreground in solving the aforementioned problems.