ABSTRACT
Kemal Ataturk’s success as a political entrepreneur in Turkey has become almost legendary. His shrewd understanding of resource management en abled him to conserve, utilize, and exploit available resources to achieve his political objectives. The essential tools he used to carry out his strategy were the political equivalents of monetary policy, fiscal policy, taxation, budgeting, and planning. Effective use of these political tools also required an appreciation of the productivity implications of alternative distributions of resources. It was Ataturk’s appreciation of these implications that helped him reshape the Turkish economy, society, and polity, and make them more productive. By gaining and manipulating support, he was able to reallocate status, wealth, and authority. For every Ataturk, however, there are many statesmen in developing countries who are conspicuously less successful in the management of their political resources.
