Changes in local service provision in the neoliberal era: cases of municipal companies from Eskişehir and Konya metropolitan municipalities (2000-2014)

Abstract

This thesis examines increasing interactions between metropolitan municipalities and the market as well as the role of the central state in this context in the post-1980 era. Since the 1980s, municipalities have interacted more with the private sector in the process of the provision of local services and more tended to incorporate municipal economic enterprises. Especially in the post-2000 period, the number of these companies has increased, including within the bodies of prominent metropolitan municipalities in Anatolian cities. These companies have enhanced metropolitan municipalities’ areas of activity in city economy and provided them with more freedom and power in the economic realm in an environment where the local level has turned into a more significant scale, while the central authority is trying (and achieving) to have more impacts on the society and the economy. This study also explores similarities and differences between two metropolitan municipalities which have been in the hands of different political traditions and parties at least in the last two and a half decades. Therefore, for this work, it is important to look at the differences between a metropolitan municipality administered by the ruling party and another municipality controlled by the main opposition party. It is observed that although being directed by different political parties, the main motives for establishing municipal firms are substantially similar in the two cities. Together with the practices of buying goods and services from municipal or other regular companies, municipalities try to shift towards the private sector where they have more independence from the central authority, make investments and supply common local projects more easily, quickly, flexibly and cheaply in an atmosphere of increasing competition among cities. However, despite of the similarities between the two municipalities with regard to tendencies towards setting up economic enterprises and to other arguments, it should be added that municipalities governed by opposition parties, unsurprisingly, have greater number of reasons for avoiding the center’s impacts. This thesis, firstly, refers to some theoretical perspectives so as to explicate the noteworthiness of and changes in the city level in the neoliberal period in addition to the role of the central government and transformations in the working of local governments. Secondly, a short historical background about local administration and public service provision methods, together with the current regulations concerning municipal economic enterprises are stated. Thirdly, the two metropolitan municipalities, Eskişehir and Konya examples -and their utilization ways of municipal enterprises are elaborated. In the last section, some similarities and differences between the two cases are discussed as well as the accountability issue which continues to be a serious problem in both cases.