Research on the attitudes of civil administration chiefs towards public administration reforms

The aim of this research is to reveal the perspectives of the local administration chiefs, who, as a public policy implementer, are themselves in a change as a result of the reforms, on the public administration reforms implemented in Turkey after the 2000s. First of all, the concept of public administration reform and the concept of local administration were analyzed in depth, and the reform areas in the historical process in Turkey were examined. Quantitative method was used in this research. Accordingly, the data were collected by using the questionnaire technique. The population of the research consists of a total of 1224 provincial and district civil administrators (governors, deputy governors and district governors) who are the implementers of public administration reforms. In the research, the full census sampling technique was applied and a questionnaire was sent to all provincial and district administrative supervisors covered by the universe. The sample of the study consisted of 332 administrative chiefs who responded to the entire questionnaire and returned the questionnaire. IBM SPSS program was used to analyze the data. The findings obtained as a result of the study; findings on the sociodemographic characteristics of the local administrative chiefs and findings on the perspectives of the local administrative chiefs towards public administration reforms are classified separately and presented with tables. The main assumption of the study is that centralist tendencies will primarily be effective in the evaluations of the local administrative chiefs regarding the reforms and that they exhibit a profile that strengthens relations with the society, improves the quality of public service and is open to innovations. There are eight assumptions in this framework. Of these assumptions, only the assumption that local chief executives view public administration as a field of expertise and oppose civil society having a say was falsified. As a result, the thesis reveals that the local chiefs support public administration reforms, but are distant from local administration reforms that reduce the control of the central administration, especially in connection with these reforms, their authority is reduced and this situation negatively affects the execution of public services. Keywords: Public Administration Reforms, Civil Administrators, Attitudes of Civil Administrators, Public Administration