ABSTRACT
Institutions, as they are important factors affecting the form and development of economic activities at both national and regional levels, are crucial focal points in examining the expected and unexpected results of regional development policies. In this study, we aim to reveal the institutions that have developed according to or against the new regional policy introduced with the EU harmonization process in Turkey, and which types strategy institutional actors were pursued for institutional change. For uncovering the institutions, we have adopted a relational (economic geography) perspective, which treats the trinity of institutional context as regulations–organizations–institutions with an analytical distinction and conceptualize “institutions” as stabilizations of mutual expectations and correlated interaction that develop contingently according to rules and regulations. In this regards we focused on new regional policies of Turkey as regulations and on regional development agencies (RDAs) as main organization. In order to observe Turkey-specific institutions, we conducted semi-structured in-depth interviews with 18 institutional actors, which enabled us to captured their stabilized social practices, and expectations to new regional policy. We found four fundamental institutions restricting and even sometimes hinder the effectiveness of new regional policy of Turkey: (1) centralism, low trust, and disbelief for participation, (2) disinterest (especially among public organizations) in regional policies, (3) the perception among regional actors that the key task of RDAs is to distribute financial resources, (4) ignoring long-term regional interests driven by short-termism. As a result, we propose the need for policymakers to re-arrange the new regional policy and organizational structure of RDAs in more sensitive and place-based way.
