Özet:

For consolidation of democracies, political scientists recognize the normative ideal that civil society should be given an enhanced role in political decision-making. Analysis of such role is very central to the study of political science and especially for democratic theory. To assess such role, one needs to understand civil society organizations’ interactions with the larger political system and its actors, their activeness in policy making processes and impact of all these over policy outcomes. This article first examines the content and methods of the literature on the impacts of the European Union (EU) process over the transformation of civil society realm in Turkey. The article points to lack of empirical research within this literature on the civil society organizations’ characteristics of involvement to decision making processes. In this respect, the article reveals the convenience of the methodological approaches of the literature on interest group influence and demonstrates how the literature on Turkish civil society can benefit from these contributions. The article draws attention to the need for future studies to empirically assess the characteristics and transformation of Turkish civil society’s participation to the decision-making processes.

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