Authoritarian Local Government Takeover and Public Procurement

• In Event: Authoritarianism in the Past & Present

Abstract

Do elections discipline local officials in competitive authoritarian regimes? Although elections have a disciplining effect on politicians in democracies, they can be the mechanism to regulate and distribute political rents in authoritarian regimes. Therefore, it is theoretically unclear whether elections in mixed regimes, characterized by competitive elections and weak checks and balances, can impact politician behaviour. This paper uses original data on the universe of all state contracts from Turkey and the quasi-experimental setting where some elected mayors were replaced with government-appointed mayors. It compares the terms of state contracts distributed by municipalities before and after government-appointed mayors take them over. The results show that government-appointed mayors use more discretionary methods: they distribute contracts with non-open auction methods and use exceptional clauses more. As a result, the contracts distributed with non-open methods by government-appointed mayors cost more to the public. In contrast, contracts given with open auctions are similar in terms of cost regardless of whether they are granted by a trustee or an elected mayor.

Authors

• Mustafa Kaba

• Fatih Serkant Adiguzel, Sabancı University

• Murat Koyuncu, Bogazici University