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Favoring co-partisan controlled areas in central government distributive programs: the role of local party organizations

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Abstract

We analyze the non-contributory health insurance program (“green cards”) in Turkey with RDD (Regression Discontinuity Design) and show that more citizens receive green cards in municipalities controlled by the national incumbent party, AKP (Adalalet ve Kalkınma Partisi). Our explanation for the finding emphasizes the role of local party organizations and sub-national incumbency. Local government control provides additional resources to the party to strengthen its organization, which then helps the party to target the beneficiaries of central government programs like green cards more effectively. Theoretically, we join the literature that uncovers the significance of incorporating local actors into the analysis of central government programs. Our contribution lies in depicting the mediating role of political parties and their local organizations. Even in a highly centralized context like Turkey, parties’ informal role affects program implementation. Unequal access to free healthcare results from the asymmetry between national and opposition parties in how their local organizations interact with the central government.

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Notes

  1. Alternatively, the party might benefit indirectly in general elections from the nomination of candidates with more experience in sub-national governments (Schneider 2006).

  2. Earlier work shows that incumbents are, in general, rewarded electorally for programs such as CCTs (conditional cash transfers) (Labonne 2013; Linos 2013; De la O 2013; Manacorda et al. 2011), but political targeting can increase electoral returns at the margin.

  3. Partly owing to pressure from international actors, such as the World Bank, that were involved heavily in Turkey’s healthcare reform effort (Ocek et al. 2014), the government merged different health insurance schemes—including the Green Card program—into the Universal Health Insurance Scheme in 2012. In the new system, exemption from contributions has become the critical issue for the low-income population (Demir and Kilic 2019).

  4. An elected, non-partisan position at the neighborhood or village level.

  5. The number of citizens with green cards in this analysis refers to the number after withdrawals/cancellations. An alternative analysis with new green card recipients can also be found in the online appendix.

  6. Data sources can be found in the online appendix.

  7. The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available in the Harvard Dataverse repository, [https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/HTL8AJ]

  8. During the period of analysis, voters living in rural areas within ilçes (district) boundaries did not vote for district mayors and had their own belde (town) municipalities. Following the 2012 changes (Law no. 6360), no such distinction existed in the 30 metropolitan municipalities.

  9. Eminonu, which lost its district status in 2008, is not included in the analysis.

  10. OLS estimates are reported in the online appendix.

  11. Rdplot command in Stata is used to create the figure.

  12. Another graph that includes confidence intervals and presents the data within the electoral margins of − 50% and + 50% is presented in the online appendix.

  13. http://www.yenidogus.net/haber-kaymakam-godekmerdan-4-koy-daha-gezdi/100766, https://www.haberler.com/bismil-de-yesil-kart-uygulamasina-yeni-duzenleme-haberi/.

  14. The 2004 local elections are the first municipal elections in which the AKP competed as a party. Clearly, while the AKP succeeded the FP (Fazilet Partisi, Virtue Party) in terms of ideology and party cadres, some of the local organizations were inherited by the SP (Saadet Partisi, Felicity Party) where the more traditional cadres of the FP remained.

  15. The number of observations declines, differing from the prior 1867 observations (Table 1) because of the changing number of districts and provincial centers across time. The descriptive statistics are available in the online appendix.

  16. Since green cards could sometimes be reinstated for applicants, the cancellations variable can take negative values, implying that the number of reinstatements in the district was larger than the cancellations in effect at the end of our period of analysis.

  17. Alternatively, we standardize the data by dividing the number of cancellations by 36 in the first electoral period and by 32 in the second electoral period. Again, we find a statistically significant positive effect of AKP control. The results are available in the online appendix.

  18. The results regarding the two different time periods can be found in the online appendix.

  19. We limit the analysis to individuals who do not have social security insurance and, hence, are formally eligible to apply for a green card.

  20. Alternative split sample analyses with and without fixed effects for the municipalities are presented in the online appendix.

  21. For the top category of the income variable, we take the lower cutoff point, 3000 TL.

  22. More detailed information on the survey, codebook, and the coding of variables can be found in the online appendix.

  23. The probabilities are calculated from the model in Column 1 by assigning the medians to the categorical variables, modes to ordinal variables and mean values to the continous variables. We estimate the probabilities using the code provided by Berry et al. (2012).

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Acknowledgements

Earlier versions of the paper were presented at the workshop on Voting and Party System in Turkey, February 2012, Yaşar University, 2014 Local Elections and Clientelism Workshop at IPC, the seminar series at Sabanci University and New York University Abu Dhabi. We thank the three anonymous reviewers, Selim Erdem Aytac, Alper Ecevit, Mert Moral, Erdal Aydin, Sinan Sarpca and workshop and seminar participants for their valuable feedback. We are especially grateful to Kerem Yildirim for his guidance on the data. We thank Elif Özdemir, Emine Arı, and Beril Duman for their research assistance and KONDA for sharing their data. The research has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under Grant Agreement No 256527. Ozge Kemahlioglu also benefited from BAGEP research support from the Science Academy, Turkey.

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  1. Sabancı University, Istanbul, Turkey

    Özge Kemahlıoğlu

  2. Koç University, Istanbul, Turkey

    Reşat Bayer

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  1. Özge Kemahlıoğlu
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Correspondence to Özge Kemahlıoğlu.

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Kemahlıoğlu, Ö., Bayer, R. Favoring co-partisan controlled areas in central government distributive programs: the role of local party organizations. Public Choice 187, 301–319 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11127-019-00774-5

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