Local Governance Lessons from Turkey’s System: Enhancing Local Governance in Afghanistan

Abstract

Historically Turkey and Afghanistan have had strong centralist administrative systems that demonstrate relative institutional flaws at the local level. Afghanistan as a country that is emerging from decades of instabilities has adopted a new legal framework for its local administration under the 2004 Constitution. Likewise, Turkey’s local administrative system has applied various reforms under the 1982’s Constitution. Although both countries’ constitutions delegate a certain amount of authorities and responsibilities at the sub-national level, local administrations are subjected to strong administrative and financial tutelage of central governments in both countries. In Turkey, local elections matter relatively on the functionality of public institutions and local democracy, whereas in Afghanistan, major local authorities still representing central government, and people at the local level have no role in making public decisions. Since Turkey’s experience on modern state-building has had a significant influence on shaping the first constitution of Afghanistan, recent reformations, successful or failed, can be lessons for Afghanistan as a country that is in the process of state-building to empower its public institutions, bring peace and rehabilitate participatory governance. This paper aims to compare the evolution, structure, and function of the local government system in Turkey and Afghanistan to clarify the question of authority and autonomy level for local governance in both countries. The author in this research examines constitutional provisions, legislation, policies of both countries regarding the interrelationship of the central government and local unites to highlight the mechanism of people’s engagement with states and offers specific recommendations at the end of this paper.