Özet:

In this study, the perspectives of Sabahaddin Bey and Joshua Toulmin Smith, two political philosophers from different times and cultures, are analyzed concerning central government, local governments, and decentralization. It does not find any direct contact between Sabahaddin Bey and J. T. Smith’s ideas; however, both thinkers’ negative attitudes towards central government and their arguments for local governments to be independent from the center are pretty similar. Another common feature is that their ideas were not popular in a historical period in which centralization accelerated. However, while J. T. Smith defended the Anglo-Saxon local government tradition in his own country with various arguments against centralization, which was a consequence of industrialization and capitalism; Sabahaddin Bey defended the same Anglo-Saxon tradition with similar ideas while trying to transform his society and the Ottoman administrative structure, which he saw as centralized and communitarian. This study aims to compare some of the views of J. T. Smith and Sabahaddin Bey, which have yet to be studied in Turkey, to reveal the similarities and differences and to create a stepping stone, a first step, for future studies in this field. In the article, the available works of both political thinkers were reviewed and analyzed comparatively. The article is the first study in this field.