About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

27 J. Pol. Stud. 1 (2020)

handle is hein.journals/jlo27 and id is 1 raw text is: Journal of Political Studies, Vol. 27, Issue - 1, 2020, 01:14 Local Democracy as an Instrument for Socio-Political Change: The Case of Turkey Saifullah Khan Abstract The study focuses the rise of Erdogan and his strategy towards restoring the traditional Islamic face of Turkish society without antagonizing its European neighbors and avoiding direct confrontation with the dominant Secular Nationalist Troika. The four consecutive landslide victories for Justice and Development Party (AKP) in national as well as in local government elections have legitimized Erdogan's initiatives. The study argues that it was only local democracy that first enabled Erdogan to take initiatives like banning public nudity, restricting consumption of alcohol in public places and allowing women to wear head scarf according to Islamic criteria even in the Europeanized city like Istanbul and later on, raised Erdogan to the rank of President of Turkey where he amended the national constitution and narrowed the role of military and state Judiciary in political and administrative affairs of Turkey. The study draws a conclusion that when the national political environment of a highly centralized state is dominated by specific political elites in such a way that new forces don't have any space to emerge and challenge the status quo than the political institutions at local levels can be used, beyond their normative assignments, for influencing the socio-political behavior of society in desired way. Keywords: Erdogan Doctrine, Turkish Society, Local Democracy, Instrument of Socio-Behavioral Changes. Introduction During the last two decades, the internationalisation of socio-economic and political activities has challenged the well-established monopolistic authority of national governments to execute state policies and dispersed most of its assignments to local government on the idea that it can manage the impacts of globalization better than the national government. Hence, more the world is globalized, the more it is going to be localized (Loughlin, 2007, pp.4-5). In simple the administrative requirements, managerial demands, cultural variation and socio-ethnic diversity provide reasonable justifications for states to have some form of decentralized local government at lowest local level (Smith, 1985, p.48). Local government literally means the government by the people of locality, constituted by law and possesses reasonable authority to decide and administer a range of public policies within a relatively small territory (Singh, 2009, p.2). In societies where the national political environment is dominated by specific political elites in such a way that new forces do not have any space to emerge and take part in national policy making process, than the only way to engage the deprived segments of society to national politics is the representative local democracy (Rondinelli,1981, PP-133-145). *Author is PhD Scholar, Department of Politics and I.R, International Islamic University Islamabad, Pakistan.

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most