Methodology

Government responsiveness in four policy outcomes (executive program, acts, statutory decrees and government expenditure) and institutional, political and economic factors affecting its variation will be examined with quantitative methods. At first, the correspondence between a government program introduced to the parliament and the ruling party’s election pledges will be examined. The fundamental argument here is that a government’s responsiveness is measured by the extent to which the government program corresponds with the party’s election promises. Second, the project will examine how much government bills (acts) and statutory decrees are in accord with the ruling party’s campaign promises. The expectation is that to the extent that a government is loyal to its promises in policy legislation, it is responsive to citizens. Lastly, whether government expenditure fits with its promises will be assessed and it will be argued that the more government expenditures correspond to its promises in its election manifestos, the more responsive that government is to citizens. After this conceptualization, operationalization and measurement of government responsiveness, the project will investigate the factors that affect government responsiveness. At this stage of analysis, this research assesses the impact of institutional, economic and political factors such as government type, institutional friction, competitiveness of elections, number of parties and disproportionality in parliament, issue salience, ideology, economic growth, inflation and unemployment rates on government responsiveness in Turkey.