Learning and Policy Transfer in Regional Development Policy in Turkey

Abstract

This paper examines the changing dynamics of policy transfer in regional policy from supranational/international organizations to Turkey during the 2000s. It adopts a within-case comparative design and draws on an extensive review of primary sources. It shows that political will is a precondition for policy transfer where the dominant mechanism is policy learning by Turkish bureaucrats. These agents of transfer aim at improving and widening the toolkit and scope of policy intervention through increased and differentiated policy instruments, whereas political will is rooted in perceived electoral benefits of both external financial assistance and newly discovered policy instruments.