Local Government Budgets and Accountability

Accountability is a keystone of democratic procedures. Elected politicians need to be accountable to the public so that voters can reward/punish politicians based on certain information. In Turkey, we generally don’t know about budgets of our local municipalities but thanks to a legislation passed in 2005, these local governments have to publicize their local budgets in their webpage. While some big district municipalities started publicizing these budgetary reports, others do not have the logistical capacity to share them with the public. In this project, we will collect and analyze these reports to understand the extent to which local municipalities in Turkey took the necessary steps to become more accountable. The results obtained from this project will help us understand the institutional setting as well as party politics that can influence the level of local government accountability.