Distributive politics and regional development: assessing the territorial distribution of Turkey’s public investment

Luca, Davide and Rodríguez-Pose, Andrés (2015) Distributive politics and regional development: assessing the territorial distribution of Turkey’s public investment. Journal of Development Studies, 51 (11). pp. 1580-1540. ISSN 0022-0388

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Abstract

Turkey is often perceived as a country with low bureaucratic capacity and prone to political manipulation and ‘pork-barrel’. This article tests whether this is the case, by analysing the extent to which politics, rather than equity and efficiency criteria, have determined the geographical allocation of public investment across the 81 provinces of Turkey between 2005 and 2012. The results show that although the Turkish government has indeed channelled public expenditures to reward its core constituencies, socioeconomic factors remained the most relevant predictors of investment. Moreover, in contrast to official regional development policy principles, we uncover the concentration of public investment in areas with comparatively higher levels of development. We interpret this as the state bureaucracy’s intentional strategy of focussing on efficiency by concentrating resources on ‘the better off among the most in need’.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fjds20
Additional Information:	© 2015 Taylor & Francis
Library of Congress subject classification:	J Political Science > JA Political science (General)
Sets:	Departments > European Institute Departments > Geography and Environment Research centres and groups > Spatial Economics Research Centre
Funders:	National Scientific Research Council of Turkey, European Union Seventh Framework Programme, European Research Council
Projects:	TÜBİTAK – BİDEB, FP7/2007-2013, 269868
Date Deposited:	17 Aug 2015 13:06
URL:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/63203/

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