Abstract:

With the reforms carried out in the field public administration in the early 2000s, almost all laws concerning local administrations were amended in Turkey, except for those related to village administrations. The basic principles, on which the amendments were based, fall into the scope of the theoretical approaches referred to as the new public administration and new public management. By their essence, in these approaches it is argued that public administration should be structured according to the principles of clarity, transparency, effectiveness, efficiency and democratic participation. Considering the fact that democracy and participation were both started on local scale, it is known that the works intended to have such principles updated in local administrations and in municipalities have even more importance. One of the instruments used to enable citizens’ participation in the decision making and application processes of local administrations is strategic planning. In the present study the level of participation in municipality administration is tried to be determined by examining the strategic plans prepared by a total of 46 municipalities in Turkey, as 25 Government Municipalities and 21 Opposition Municipalities

Keywords: