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Tackling the Root Causes: Inherited Structural and Cultural Barriers to Policy Collaboration in Turkey

While Chapter 3 highlights contextual conditions that foster the formation of policy networks, Chapter 5 highlights contextual conditions that impede the formation of policy networks. The overarching question of this chapter is the following: What are the factors that hinder cross-sectoral arrangements from becoming collaborative in complex policy settings such as low- and middle-income countries with a tradition in centralized policy making? In an attempt to address this question, this study provides a detailed assessment of all cross-sectoral arrangements within the Turkish health sector focusing on the post-2003 period. Within this framework, three types of networks will be examined including (a) consultative networks where stakeholders come together primarily to legitimize certain government policies within national level health policy platforms; (b) cluster networks where stakeholder interaction falls short of becoming collaborative due to diverging interests and persistent competition at the regional level; and (c) patronage networks where governmental actors and a selected number of NGOs linked by clientelism serve as a bridge between the ruling party and its constituency at the community level. Unlike policy networks, these actor constellations observed at different levels of governance do not serve the purpose of policy collaboration. On the contrary, they have the potential to trigger politicization, fragmentation, and even polarization at the social level, especially through the distribution of selective benefits. Ultimately, this chapter aims to rise to the challenge of policy collaboration by assessing the impediments to network collaboration based on insights from the Turkish case.