From progressive reform to institutional concerns: the evolution of public administration reform discourse in EU reports on Türkiye (2015–2025)

1 Introduction

For the last 40 years, public administration reform has been recognized as a multifaceted process, which is not limited to reforming administrative techniques. The reform literature addresses various aspects of improving the efficiency, performance, coordination, and accountability of public administration, simultaneously changing its political and institutional relations (Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2017). Reform is considered a process of change that is discontinuous, non-linear, and historically contingent (Christensen and Lægreid, 2007). This means that reforms of administrative systems are complex processes, which are related to political and institutional histories and require political resources for their implementation.

A large part of the theoretical debates concerning public administration reform is dominated by the discussion about the New Public Management (NPM). By promoting the idea of enhancing performance measurement and result-orientation as well as introducing the elements of a market economy to the public sector, NPM views flexibility and a more efficient state as the ultimate goal (Hood, 1991). At the same time, the literature on public administration reforms notes that NPM was criticized for being a set of merely ad hoc instrumentalities that failed to address the issue of institutional change and respond to the challenges of governance (Güler, 2005). This is why the debate on reform shifted toward considering the conceptual framework of governance.

The governance paradigm does not take administration merely as a state-centered government, but also it is a multi-actor and multi-level decision-making process (Rhodes, 1996; Fukuyama, 2013). The governance perspective highlights the “network government” based on the idea that state, private sector, and civil society are mutually dependent actors in the processes of public policy-making and policy implementation (Osborne, 2006). Indeed, the reform of public administration in the EU is governed by the principles of transparency, accountability, and the rule of law, which demonstrates that reform processes are related to administrative capacity, institutional quality, and governance. On the other hand, the theory of historical institutionalism is also relevant to the analysis of public administration reform processes. Historical institutionalism focuses on institutional constraints and how social structures and policy outcomes emerge through “path dependency” (Pierson, 2000). The historical institutionalist literature on public administration reform analysis perfectly matches with the reform dynamics in Türkiye. The reform of public administration from Tanzimat to today was regarded as a process of continuity (Sürgit, 1972; Gökçe et al., 2001).

In Türkiye, public administration reform gained a new momentum especially in the post-1980 period, together with neoliberal policies, the governance approach, and the EU harmonization process (Polatoğlu, 2001). In this period, instruments such as performance management, strategic planning, and fiscal discipline became increasingly widespread (Güler, 2005). However, the literature indicates that these reforms often remained fragmented, proved insufficient in deepening institutional capacity, and involved various limitations at the implementation level (Çetin, 2010).

One of the most influential institutional transformations in recent years, which has far-reaching effects on public administration reforms in Türkiye is related to the Presidential Government System introduced by the 2017 constitutional reform. It is argued that this new system configuration has resulted in more centralized decision-making processes, faster policy implementation, and organizational restructuring (Özdemir, 2021). On the other hand, the presidential government model has also triggered debates on autonomy, checks and balances, and accountability (Çığman, 2021; Kartal and Demirhan, 2017). Thus, it can be concluded that recent institutional changes in Türkiye’s political system, particularly the shift to the presidential government model, set the stage for the topics addressed by the Commission.

We aim to contribute to literature in three points. First, the study addresses the lack of long-term analysis, which remains limited in the literature, by examining public administration reform through a longitudinal and thematic content analysis of the European Commission (EC) Reports on Türkiye. Second, the study approaches reform processes within a multidimensional theoretical framework by integrating the approaches of New Public Management, governance, and historical institutionalism. Third, the study empirically demonstrates that reform discourse in Türkiye has evolved from an approach focused on technical modernization toward an axis of institutional governance and accountability. As a result, this study presents an integrated analysis that addresses public administration reform not only in the context of increasing administrative capacity, but also together with institutional power relations, governance structures, and political system transformations. In this respect, the study seeks to make an original and analytical contribution to the literature by explaining the longitudinal evolution of the EC’s public administration reform discourse on Türkiye, characterized by a shift from progressive reform expectations toward increasing institutional concerns. Existing studies on Türkiye have largely examined public administration reform through domestic institutional change, EU conditionality, or specific reform instruments. Studies focusing on Europeanization have also analyzed the transfer and implementation of EU norms in candidate countries. However, comparatively less attention has been paid to how the EC’s public administration reform discourse on Türkiye has evolved longitudinally across successive reports and how changes in this discourse relate to changing EU administrative priorities. We address this gap by distinguishing the evolution of external reform expectations from actual institutional implementation.

The present study makes a theoretical contribution by illustrating that the identified shifts in EC reform discourse cannot be considered as manifestations of institutional change. The findings demonstrate that EC reports serve as instruments of institutionalization of EU administrative norms and indicate their adaptation to changing domestic political and administrative environments. Therefore, the present research responds to the critical theoretical question of differentiation between the process of institutional change and reform discourse by proposing conceptual distinctions. In order to operationalize the study’s theoretical objectives, the following research question was formulated: “How has the European Commission’s discourse on public administration reform in Türkiye evolved between 2015 and 2025, and what does this evolution reveal about changing EU administrative priorities and the relationship between reform discourse and institutional transformation?”

2 Conceptual and theoretical framework

Public administration reform is presented as a multidimensional process of transformation, which presupposes improvement of the administrative functions of the modern state. At the same time, reform encompasses a wide range of issues related to restructuring of governance relations, system of administration, and decision-making mechanisms, taking into account the responsibility relationships (Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2017). Consequently, the study of public administration reform implies an explicit or implicit understanding of the reform as a process of transformation of a political and managerial character. The reform context emerges from the intersection of political, administrative, and institutional issues of governance. Reform processes are not singular events characterized by a linear and uniform development pattern, but are multi-faceted and complex phenomena with a focus on history, power relations, and international influences (Christensen and Lægreid, 2007). Thus, the current study will rely on three theoretical approaches to study public administration reform, namely: New Public Management (NPM), governance paradigm, and institutional logic, including the historical institutionalist approach. Such an inclusion allows for analyzing both the instrumental and structural aspects of reforms in a comprehensive manner.

Although all of the mentioned theories address public administration reforms, they describe several different aspects of reforms. Thus, classical public administration theory focuses on the rule of law, hierarchy, and bureaucracy, NPM prioritizes performance, leadership, and manager empowerment, post-NPM views reforms as a matter of overall government coordination, and governance/New Public Governance concentrates on multiple-actor management and participation (Ansell et al., 2025; Ahmad and Esposito, 2025). Accordingly, this study treats these perspectives as complementary analytical lenses for interpreting changes in the EC’s reform discourse rather than as successive or interchangeable reform models.

First, NPM stands out as a reform paradigm that promotes efficiency, performance measurement, competition, and the use of market-like mechanisms in the public sector (Hood, 1991). This approach, which became influential on a global scale in the post-1980 period, aimed to make public administration more flexible and results-oriented. In Türkiye as well, it is seen that the influence of NPM became more visible particularly with the neoliberal transformation process after 1980, and that instruments such as performance, strategic planning, and fiscal discipline came to the fore in public administration (Polatoğlu, 2001; Güler, 2005). Nevertheless, the literature contains criticisms that NPM has often remained limited to fragmented and instrumental reforms and has been insufficient in deepening institutional transformation.

The governance approach, which constitutes the second theoretical axis, redefines public administration by moving it beyond a state-centered structure and treating it as a multi-actor, multi-level, and network-based decision-making process (Rhodes, 1996; Osborne, 2006). Within this approach, relations of mutual dependence exist among the state, the private sector, and the civil society in the processes of formulating and implementing public policies. The EU normative framework in public administration reform also rests on the same understanding. It is, in fact, based on the evaluation criteria applied to candidate countries, among which transparency, accountability, the rule of law, and institutional capacity, in particular, take a prominent position (Jano, 2024; Fasone and Simoncini, 2024; Statista, 2025).

Public administration reform is not a unitary historical development but rather a succession of different reform traditions. Classical Weberian public administration is characterized by legality, hierarchies, bureaucracy as a guarantee of neutral and predictable decision-making. The reform of public administration known as NPM was distinguished by its emphasis on managerial autonomy, accountability, and improved performance, as well as the introduction of rationality, efficiency, outcome-oriented, market-like methods, and fiscal responsibility (Hood, 1991; Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2017). However, despite being regarded as a significant force in administrative reforms, NPM suffered criticism for promoting fragmentation and overemphasizing managerial accountability.

These criticisms influence the emergence of post-NPM approaches, which sought to strengthen policy coordination, whole-of-government arrangements, and institutional integration (Christensen and Lægreid, 2007). Closely related, but conceptually distinct, New Public Governance places greater emphasis on collaborative networks, inter-organizational relationships, and multi-actor policy processes (Osborne, 2006). Accordingly, governance should not be understood as a residual concept replacing NPM. Rather, it represents a broader analytical perspective encompassing institutional quality, accountability, participation, transparency, and collaborative decision-making.

Beyond these reform traditions, the European Administrative Space (EAS) provides the most relevant normative framework for interpreting the EC’s evaluations of candidate countries (OECD/SIGMA, 1999). Developed through the EU enlargement process and operationalized by the SIGMA Principles of Public Administration, the EAS establishes common administrative standards concerning legality, accountability, transparency, professionalism, merit-based civil service, policy coordination, administrative capacity, and sound public financial management (OECD/SIGMA, 2023). Rather than prescribing a uniform administrative model, it provides a common reference framework against which administrative reforms in candidate countries are assessed. Consequently, many of the themes examined in this study-including administrative structure, human resource management, policy-making capacity, fiscal management, and the rule of law-reflect the administrative expectations embedded within the European Administrative Space (Meyer-Sahling, 2009; Olsen, 2003; Grabbe, 2006). Accordingly, the five analytical themes employed in this study were not constructed arbitrarily; rather, they were informed by the core administrative dimensions emphasized in the European Administrative Space and the SIGMA Principles of Public Administration.

To explain how these administrative norms evolve from formal expectations into institutional practice, this study adopts a broader neo-institutionalist perspective. Historical institutionalism explains how existing institutional arrangements and path dependency shape reform trajectories (Pierson, 2000). However, because the empirical material consists of EC reports, sociological institutionalism also provides an important analytical lens by explaining how international administrative norms are diffused, translated, and selectively adopted in domestic settings. Concepts such as institutional legitimacy, isomorphism, symbolic compliance, and decoupling help explain why reform principles such as merit, accountability, transparency, and the rule of law may become increasingly prominent in official reform discourse without necessarily producing equivalent institutional transformation (Meyer and Rowan, 1977; DiMaggio and Powell, 1983).

This institutional approach is especially relevant for the Turkish administrative development context. Public administration in the Turkish Republic has traditionally followed the trajectory of a strong state with administrative centralization and a legal-rationalistic approach, which to a large extent explains reform patterns in general and their implementation in particular (Heper, 1985; Heper, 1992). This administrative tradition has been determined by administrative tutelage, a strong legalistic approach, and personnel management where issues of merit, patronage, and politicization have characterized administrative reforms, thus influencing reform trajectories (Demirelli and Aydin, 2024; Kemahlıoğlu, 2012; Çelenk, 2009). Such institutional arrangements may determine adaptation processes in administrative reforms, promoting certain alternatives while constraining others. In other words, the response of the domestic administrative system to external policy pressures (EU-driven reform agenda) may interpret these pressures through the lens of existing institutional arrangements, thus determining reform pathways, which do not necessarily follow the EU blueprint. Therefore, the reform priorities identified in the successive EC reports should not be interpreted as a reform agenda that was implemented in Türkiye, but rather they need to be understood within the context of institutional arrangements in the Turkish public administration system.

Third, the historical institutionalist understanding of public administration reform processes is based on the recognition of the influence of institutional frameworks, decision-making outcomes, and political forces shaping reforms (Pierson, 2000). The said perspective is characterized by the emphasis on the phenomenon of path dependency, and reform processes are considered to be gradual and contingent on historical context. In turn, historical institutionalism explores the processes of critical junctures and gradual institutional change, such as layering, drift, and conversion, through which reforms configure policy institutions in a way that does not follow from historical prerequisites directly. In particular, the analysis of critical junctures and institutional layering can help understand the phenomenon of public administration reforms in Türkiye under consideration. In this vein, political and administrative changes observed in Türkiye can be viewed as critical junctures shaping the development of administrative reform processes. At the same time, the observed contradictions between reform rhetoric and the status quo can be explained by reference to the concept of institutional layering (Capoccia, 2016; Capoccia and Kelemen, 2007; Streeck and Thelen, 2005). The reform of public administration in Türkiye can also be considered through the lens of historical institutionalism, as it can be applied to analyze the reform process in five areas: administrative structure, management of personnel, policy formulation, fiscal administration, and rule of law. These areas have been identified as the key components of public administration reforms in accordance with the findings of the article.

These analytical dimensions were not chosen at random, as indicated by their close association with the theoretical framework used in this study. Administrative Structure and Human Resource Management embody the key areas of managerial change proposed by NPM; policy-making capacity and rule of law are influenced by governance theory and the ideas of the EAS; and historical institutionalism serves as the primary theoretical background for understanding the long-term transformations that take place in the system under study (Poljašević et al., 2025; Aristovnik et al., 2022; Semenov, 2025). Therefore, all dimensions form a single framework connecting the theoretical basis and the empirical analysis.

In relation to administrative reform, the discussion around centralized policies has been dominated by the dilemma between centralization and institutional autonomy. The former has the advantages of shortening decision-making processes and easing policy coordination, while, on the other hand, it may undermine accountability and institutional pluralism (Fukuyama, 2013). In the Turkish context, this issue has become especially relevant in the wake of the constitutional reform of 2017. In this regard, the introduction of the Presidential Government System by the Turkish authorities has become highly relevant to the reform discourse of the Commission in regards to public administration. In other words, it should be stated that the shift toward a more centralized presidential regime made the Commission re-evaluate its assumptions in relation to administrative reform. In particular, the changes introduced by the reform of 2017 made decision-making shorter and more centralized, and they also led to the restructuring of the administrative system (Özdemir, 2021). Thus, it can be concluded that, when it comes to Türkiye, the Presidential Government System created a crucial institutional pre-condition for the Commission’s reform strategy, which comprised concerns about centralization, autonomy, accountability, checks and balances, and technical competence in public administration.

In the context of human resource management, the merit principle is regarded as the key pillar of determining the professional profile of public administration. Although the application of merit-based practices ensures public service’s neutrality and professionalism, its decline raises concerns about politicization and institutional de-professionalization (Şen, 1995; OECD, 2017). At the same time, as found in the reports produced by the European Commission, the discussion about Türkiye’s public personnel system primarily revolves around the principles of merit and appointment. Policy-making capacity may be defined as the government’s ability to formulate policies in a rational, comprehensive, and coordinated manner. The limitations in policy-making capacity result in deficient reforms that lack analytical depth and sustainability (Howlett and Ramesh, 2014). In this regard, it is reported that policy analysts have centered their discussions around the issue of coordination and the analytical underpinnings of reform in Türkiye’s public administration policy.

Fiscal management and transparency, in turn, represent the financial aspect of reforms. Budget transparency, internal control, and competition in public procurement are the three key areas to focus on when addressing fiscal management (Allen et al., 2013). Notably, in the recent reforms, this area has been considered together with accountability. Lastly, the rule of law and accountability is the foundation upon which public administration reforms are laid. The rule of law is a limitation of power, whereas accountability ensures that there is an obligation to report publicly on the exercise of that power (World Bank, 2017). All these areas were considered vital by the EU during its reform monitoring process and evaluation of the candidate states’ readiness.

It can be stated that the EC’s reform discourse on Türkiye shows a three-stage evolution characterized by changing emphases on administrative modernization, institutional governance, and accountability. These analytical phases are consistent with the thematic evolution presented in the findings and provide the conceptual foundation for interpreting changes in the Commission’s evaluative priorities over time. Therefore, this study aims to develop an integrated theoretical perspective that addresses public administration reform not only in the context of increasing administrative capacity, but also together with institutional power relations, governance structures, and political system transformations. In this respect, it brings together the approaches of NPM, governance, and institutional transformation, which are often addressed in the literature in a disconnected manner, within an analytical synthesis through the case of Türkiye.

3 Research method

This study was designed within the framework of the qualitative research approach in order to examine the transformation over time of the discourse on public administration reform in the EC Reports on Türkiye. The research adopted a hybrid analytical strategy combining inductive coding with theory-informed thematic interpretation. While initial codes were generated from the documentary data through open coding, the resulting categories were subsequently interpreted and organized in relation to the theoretical framework of the study. In this respect, the study is positioned within the interpretive qualitative research paradigm (Merriam and Tisdell, 2016). The document analysis method was used in the research. Document analysis is a qualitative research technique that makes it possible to analyze written and institutional documents systematically and is widely used particularly in the examination of public policies and administrative processes (Bowen, 2009; Yıldırım and Şimşek, 2018). In this direction, the study was designed as a longitudinal document analysis, and the temporal evolution of reform discourse was examined at the thematic level.

3.1 Data collection

The dataset of this research is based on the EC Reports on Türkiye. Although the EC Reports provide a consistent and systematically produced documentary source for analyzing the evolution of EU assessments of public administration reform, they should not be interpreted as objective measurements of institutional reality. Rather, they represent evaluative policy documents produced within the EU’s enlargement and conditionality framework. Hence, this study interpreted these reports as instances of the EC reform discourse instead of being interpreted as actual interventions into the institutional transformations that were taking place in Türkiye. This assumption drove the coding as well as the interpretation of the results. Specifically, this study has utilized document analysis method for studying the discourse on the reform in public administration. Document analysis in this context is an effective qualitative research technique in which written reports are analyzed systematically as per the issue of the study (Bowen, 2009). In the research literature, reports, policy and/or related documents are widely used as important sources of information to understand administrative and/or social processes (Merriam and Tisdell, 2016; Bryman, 2012). For this reason, the reports published by the EC on Türkiye were used as the documentary corpus for the current analysis of public administration reform discourse.

The EC Reports on Türkiye published between 2015 and 2025 were analyzed in this study. The reason for this choice is the fact that the most recent developments within the discourse on public administration reform take place within the last 10 years. By choosing this option, we will be able to focus on the latest trends in the narrative on Türkiye’s EU accession and its administrative reforms, rather than provide a comprehensive historical analysis of the development of this policy area. In 2017 there was thus no annual report, hence it cannot be counted in this research work, i.e., it has to be left out (Republic of Türkiye, Directorate for EU Affairs, 2026). Despite this fact creating an unavoidable temporal gap in the dataset, the lack of similar 2017 country report prevents year-by-year interpretation for this particular reporting cycle. An alternative document was not substituted in order to maintain document type and institutional origin constant across the longitudinal dataset. To be part of the data, the text had to contain an explicitly evaluative assessment referring to at least one of the study. The five analytical domains or some related reform issue; entirely descriptive passages that bear no substance for public administration reform were coded out. In the process of data collection, the report texts were carefully examined, and sections that included statements regarding public administration reform were determined. In that way, text sections that had themes in which public administration reform was emphasized (governance structure, public personnel system, policy-making ability, fiscal management, the rule of law) were identified, and the relevant page ranges were systematically recorded. In that manner, a data table was generated by classifying data segments that came from report texts into years and thematic areas (as presented in Table 1).

Table 1. Data table.

Based on Table 1, the dataset used in the research was structured as a comprehensive document database consisting of report texts from different years and reflecting the thematic dimensions of public administration reform.

3.2 Data analysis

The analysis was executed with MAXQDA 24 by using a multi-stage qualitative content analysis procedure. The analytical process combined an inductive coding procedure with theoretically informed thematic interpretation, such that sensitivity to the empirical material was matched by conceptual consistency with the public administration reform literature. The paragraph was adopted as the unit of analysis because it generally represents a coherent policy statement or evaluative judgment in the EC Reports, thereby allowing the preservation of contextual meaning during coding.

In the first stage, all reports were imported into MAXQDA and read repeatedly to achieve familiarity with the data. During the second stage, open coding was conducted inductively to identify recurring reform-related statements without imposing predetermined categories. Similar codes were then compared, merged, refined, and grouped according to conceptual similarity through constant comparison. In the third stage, these preliminary categories were interpreted in light of the theoretical framework developed for this study, resulting in five higher-order analytical themes: administrative structure, human resource management, policy-making capacity, fiscal management, and the rule of law. Finally, MAXQDA’s analytical tools were used to examine code frequencies, code co-occurrences, and temporal variations across successive reporting periods.

Because the EC Reports vary in length and level of detail across reporting years, code frequencies were interpreted with caution and were not treated as direct indicators of the intensity of reform. Rather than relying solely on numerical frequencies, the analysis considered the qualitative context, thematic relevance, and consistency of reform issues across reports.

3.3 Coding of the data

The study made use of a hybrid method of both inductive and theory-driven coding. In the first stage of coding, codes were generated inductively by engaging in an open coding of report texts. As a result, several recurring themes and patterns were revealed which were related to reform issues. Some of the codes generated from the initial step include presidential centralization, oral recruitment examinations, policy coordination problems, budget transparency, and regulatory capacity.

After developing the empirical codes, we reviewed and organized the theoretical framework used to guide the research. Theoretical categories such as administrative structure, human resource management, policy-making capacity, fiscal management, and the rule of law, among others, were used to group together related codes and create larger aggregates of information. In this way, the findings were organized around key themes while still maintaining fidelity to the empirical data in the documents. Additionally, the process helped keep the analysis consistent with the existing literature on public administration reforms.

Coding was performed by the authors, who continuously reviewed the entire dataset while performing the analysis procedures. In order to ensure trustworthiness, the coding decisions, categories, and themes were continuously discussed and compared, and the codebook was negotiated with the co-author to ensure that individual interpretations did not skew the results of the analysis. Instead of aiming for an agreement between coders, the study applied the principles of transparency and iterative comparison which are also typical of qualitative document analysis.

For the purposes of analysis, the five higher-order themes were operationalized through such indicators as Administrative structure (statements about centralism, autonomy, and checks and balances), human resource management (statements about merit, appointment, and politicization), policy-making capacity (statements about evidence, analysis, and inter-agency coordination), fiscal management (statements about budget transparency, internal control, and public procurement), and the rule of law (statements about judiciary, local democracy, and accountability). The indicators were employed as conceptual frameworks for coding the relevant passages retrieved from reports for different years.

To increase the transparency of the coding process, Table 2 contains examples of the inductively derived codes and shows how these were grouped together according to the sets of theory-informed analytical categories used in the study. In this way, using both inductive and deductive coding ensured that the findings were both consistent with the documentary evidence and connected to relevant theories.

Table 2. Examples of inductive codes and theory-informed analytical themes.

The examples presented are illustrative rather than exhaustive. Inductive codes were generated directly from the EC Reports on Türkiye and were subsequently grouped into broader analytical themes through an iterative coding process informed by the theoretical framework.

As illustrated in Table 3, the analytical themes were not imposed on the data at the outset. Instead, open coding groups of recurring concepts and evaluative statements were transformed into empirical codes and interpreted within the overall theoretical conceptual structure. The analytical cohesion of the study was improved because these empirical interpretations were anchored in the data but could also be justified on a substantive level.

Table 3. Examples of inductively generated codes and their alignment with theory-informed analytical themes.

The examples presented are illustrative rather than exhaustive. The complete coding framework consisted of a larger number of first-cycle codes that were iteratively refined and grouped into higher-order analytical themes.

4 Findings

Based on the qualitative content analysis, this section describes how the discourse on public administration reform evolved thematically and over time in EC Reports on Türkiye in the 2015–2025 period. The descriptive word cloud (see Figure 1) summarizes, thematically, the concepts constituting the thematic codes derived from EC Reports on Türkiye (2015–2025). The size of a concept represents its relative frequency in the coded dataset and should not be interpreted as indicative of substantive or institutional importance. In that sense, policy-making capacity, HRM, the rule of law and the administrative structure are concepts that seem to arise frequently during the period covered by the study, while digitalization, EU membership conditionality, centralization, merit, and accountability are concepts that appear, albeit infrequently, as still relevant parts of the broader reform agenda.

Distribution of the five analytical dimensions across all EC Reports on Türkiye, 2015–2025 in Figure 2. The figure summarizes the relative distribution of analytical dimensions and shows how each dimension has been distributed across the coded dataset within the Commission’s reform discourse throughout the study period, without assuming this distribution reflects substantive weight. Policy-making capacity, administrative structure, and human resource management appear most frequently in the coded material. In the initial period of assessments, in 2015 and 2016, assessments focused mainly on administrative professionalism and recruitment based on merit. Oral examination methods, politicization of public employment and weak institutionalization of regulatory impact assessment were recurring concerns (ECSWD Turkey Report, 2015, p. 12–13; ECSWD Turkey Report, 2016, p. 14–17).

A clear development in this second period (2018–2020) was the explicit shift toward executive centralization, institutional reshuffling, and reforms of the system of governance after the constitutional amendments. At the same time, merit in senior public jobs, policy coordination, and institutional monitoring increased as central elements of the reform language. The focus on governance quality and institutional responsibility became more pronounced (ECSWD Turkey Report, 2018, p. 12–20; ECSWD Turkey Report, 2019, p. 19–20; ECSWD Turkey Report, 2020, p. 18–20).

Finally, in the last (2021–2025) phase, the reform discourse extended the focus from organizational reform to include a broader governance perspective. Policy coordination, institutional governance, fiscal transparency, public procurement, parliamentary oversight, and regulation capacity are elements of Commission evaluations in 2021–2025, which can be read as demonstrating that the reform policy was increasingly conceived as a part of democratic governance and institutional resilience (ECSWD Turkey Report, 2021, p. 18–20; ECSWD Türkiye Report, 2022, p. 21–22; ECSWD Türkiye Report, 2023, p. 21–24; ECSWD Türkiye Report, 2024, p. 24–25; ECSWD Türkiye Report, 2025, p. 59–60). These findings show that public administration reform has not remained limited to debates on administrative modernization, but has turned into a multilayered reform debate covering different dimensions of governance such as administrative structure, human resource management, fiscal governance, and the rule of law. Taken together, these patterns indicate a gradual reorientation of the Commission’s evaluative priorities rather than merely fluctuations in the frequency of individual reform themes.

Figure 3 presents the co-occurrence patterns among the analytical themes identified in the EC Reports on Türkiye between 2015 and 2025. The figure illustrates the themes that most frequently appeared within the same textual context, thereby providing insight into how different aspects of public administration reform were jointly discussed in the Commission’s evaluative discourse. These co-occurrence patterns should be interpreted as indicators of discursive association rather than as evidence of causal or institutional relationships. The results indicate that administrative structure and policy-making capacity exhibited the strongest co-occurrence pattern among the coding categories throughout the study period. This repeated association points to the fact that these issues were increasingly discussed in an integrative, evaluative governance-oriented context and not as completely independent administrative issues. For example, issues related to senior public appointments were linked in discourse to discussions of the merit principle, which were part of the Commission’s wider assessment of administrative professionalism and institutional accountability (ECSWD Turkey Report, 2019, p. 19–20). Likewise, the relationship between administrative structure and institutional autonomy became more evident only after the constitutional reforms. For example, the Commission linked the centralization in policy-making to institutional limitations in autonomy and regulatory oversight to demonstrate the Commission’s evaluation of administrative performance capacity in relation to administrative arrangements (ECSWD Turkey Report, 2021, p. 18–19). The co-occurrence between policy-making capacity and governance structure became more explicit in the later reports. Instead of separating policy coordination from broader issues of institutional governance and administrative performance, it was increasingly linked with those broader issues. Likewise, fiscal management was consistently discussed together with accountability and parliamentary oversight. The Commission’s assessments of budget transparency and public procurement therefore formed part of a broader governance narrative centered on institutional accountability rather than isolated fiscal management concerns (ECSWD Türkiye Report, 2024, p. 24–25). Taken together, these co-occurrence patterns suggest that the Commission increasingly discussed administrative structure, merit, accountability, policy-making capacity, and fiscal governance within a broader governance-oriented reform discourse. These associations should be interpreted as characteristics of the Commission’s evaluative discourse rather than as direct evidence of institutional interdependence within the Turkish public administration (Tables 4–6).

Table 4. Coding scheme.

Table 5. Themes and sample findings from the report texts.

Table 6. Time-based thematic evolution of public administration reform in EU reports on Türkiye (2015–2025).

Figure 4 illustrates the year-by-year changes in the thematic emphasis of the EC’s public administration reform discourse on Türkiye between 2015 and 2025. In the 2015 report, the reform debate focused primarily on administrative modernization, the improvement of service delivery, and e-government practices (ECSWD Turkey Report, 2015, p. 13). In the 2016 report, however, the limited use of evidence-based methods in policy-making processes and the lack of institutional coordination emerged as prominent elements of the reform debate (ECSWD Turkey Report, 2016, p. 14–17). In the 2018 and 2019 reports, the emphasis shifted toward institutional centralization and debates on merit in the public personnel system. In particular, the 2019 Report on Türkiye drew attention to the increasing role of the executive in senior public appointments and raised concerns regarding the merit system (ECSWD Turkey Report, 2019, p. 19–20). Across these reporting years, the Commission’s reform discourse thus moved from an emphasis on administrative modernization toward growing concerns with institutional governance and human resource management. Figure 4 therefore captures the chronological reorientation of the Commission’s reform discourse rather than changes in the actual intensity of reform implementation.

In the 2020 and 2021 reports, the reform debate increasingly concentrated on accountability, policy coordination, and institutional oversight mechanisms. It was explicitly stated in this regard that policy development processes are centered, executive-dependent regulatory institutions structure has strengthened institutional autonomy debates. Institutional governance, policy co-ordination and budget planning relationships were also taken up within this theme in the 2022 and 2023 reports. The said reports stated that policy development processes have become centered on the presidency and the shortcomings in co-ordination between institutions have persisted (ECSWD Türkiye Report, 2022, p. 21–22; ECSWD Türkiye Report, 2023, p. 21–24). In the 2024 and 2025 reports, in contrast, the reform debate was mainly concerned with issues of the rule of law, budget transparency and accountability instruments. It is during this period that criticisms of public financial management, public procurement and parliamentary control mechanisms rose to the fore (ECSWD Türkiye Report, 2024, p. 24–25; ECSWD Türkiye Report, 2025, p. 59–60). In general, Commission reform discourse shifted away from the technical modernization discourse of 2015–2017 to institutional centralization and merit-related concerns in 2018–2020, before the emphasis increasingly focused on accountability and the rule of law after 2021. The time series graph below illustrates this thematic transformation over time.

Figure 5 offers a broader overview of the change of relative weight of the five analytical themes over time by showing a heat map similar to Figure 4 but for year-by-year. While Figure 4 offers a year-by-year change in emphasis, the heat map shows broader focus by the Commission on thematic focus over time, suggesting a shift in focus away from administrative modernization and capacity-related concerns toward a growing emphasis on institutional centralization, merit, accountability, and rule of law. This pattern is not intended as a measurement of intensity of reform, but a measurement of the change in relative emphasis of these analytical themes. It should not be interpreted as an intensity measure of reform, but a measure of change in the relative emphasis in the analytical themes used by the Commission (ECSWD Turkey Report, 2015, p. 10; ECSWD Turkey Report, 2016, p. 14–17). The post-2016 institutional context, which included both the failed coup attempt as well as the ensuing state of emergency, corresponded, to an increasing degree, to an evaluative attention upon the public personnel regime, merit, institutional checks and balances, and accountability. From 2018 onwards, considerations of executive concentration and institutional restructuring grew. Similarly, for the 2020 and 2021 reports, accountability, institutionalism, and policy coordination were increasingly related to public administration reform (ECSWD Turkey Report, 2018, p. 12–20; ECSWD Turkey Report, 2019, p. 19–20; ECSWD Turkey Report, 2020, p. 19–20; ECSWD Turkey Report, 2021, p. 18–20). Figure 5 thus complements Figure 4 by identifying broader thematic concentrations across periods, instead of reproducing the chronological order of annual reports.

In the 2022 and 2023 reports, the thematic intensity has revolved more around debates on institutional governance, budget transparency and regulatory capacity. It was noted that policy development processes have been centered on the Presidency, and problems of inter-institutional coordination continue (ECSWD Türkiye Report, 2022, p. 21–22; ECSWD Türkiye Report, 2023, p. 21–24). In the 2024 and 2025 reports, reform discourse has focused mainly on the rule of law, accountability measures, and public financial management. Specific focus was given to the rule of law, transparency in public financial management, and the efficacy of accountability measures (ECSWD Türkiye Report, 2024, p. 24–25; ECSWD Türkiye Report, 2025, p. 24–25). These findings suggest that discourse on public administration reform revolved around the axis of technical modernization in the period 2015–2017, shifted to institutional restructuring and centralization during the 2018–2020 period, and, after 2021, became more focused on accountability and the rule of law. The thematic intensity map plots this transformation distributed over time.

Temporal change of the five analytical thematic fields within the EC Reports of Türkiye for the periods 2015–2025 can be observed in Figure 6. The analysis in the 2015 Report on Türkiye addressed reform discourse more in terms of administrative modernization, improvement in service delivery, and e-government practice (ECSWD Turkey Report, 2015, p. 10). The reform debate in the same report was focused on policy-making procedures and analytical capability (ECSWD Turkey Report, 2015, p. 12–13). In the 2016 Report on Türkiye, it was highlighted that evidence-based methods were limited in scope in policy-making processes, and the regulatory impact assessments had not become institutionalized in practice (ECSWD Turkey Report, 2016, p. 14–17).

Starting with the 2018 Report, Commission reform discourse increasingly emphasized concerns over institutional centralization and changes to governance regimes. It argued that executive powers expanded and decision-making centralized following the constitutional amendments (ECSWD Turkey Report, 2018, p. 12–20). The 2019 Report on Turkey emphasized reform discourse in respect of the public personnel system and the merit principle in particular. The increasing role of the executive in top appointments was highlighted, and merit-based appointment mechanisms noted (ECSWD Turkey Report, 2019, p. 19–20). In 2020 and 2021 reports, reform discourse increasingly focused on the areas of accountability, policy co-ordination, and institutional oversight mechanisms. Specifically, policy development was noted as being centralized and analytical policy instruments limited (ECSWD Turkey Report, 2020, p. 19; ECSWD Turkey Report, 2021, p. 18–20). As in the two following reports, in both the 2022 and 2023 reform debates, institutional governance, regulatory capacity and policy coordination came under greater attention during this period. It was stated further in both reports that policy development processes were anchored in the Presidency and that problems of inter-institutional coordination persisted (ECSWD Türkiye Report, 2022, p. 21–22; ECSWD Türkiye Report, 2023, p. 21–24). In contrast, in both the 2024 and 2025 reports, the focus of reform discourse was mainly on fiscal management, budget transparency and accountability mechanisms. Specifically, in those reports, parliamentary scrutiny is claimed to be weak in budget processes, and the opaque nature of public procurement emerged as a key theme of the reform debate (ECSWD Türkiye Report, 2024, p. 24–25; ECSWD Türkiye Report, 2025, p. 24–25). All in all, the longitudinal timeline shows a move in the Commission’s public administration reform discourse from a focus on technical modernization in 2015–2017, to a focus on institutional centralization and merit-related issues in 2018–2020, and accountability and the rule of law after 2021. The change mirrors a move in evaluative focus from administrative modernization toward broader issues relating to institutional governance and democratic oversight.

Figure 7 shows a paradigmatic picture of public administration reform discourse in EC Reports for the period 2015–2025. The model is an interpretive synthesis of thematic findings made with the content analysis carried out on the text of the reports. The results of the analysis reveal three main stages. At the first stage, corresponding to administrative modernization, between 2015 and 2017, reform discussions were mainly about issues such as the effectiveness of public services, strengthening of administrative capacity, and digitalization (ECSWD Turkey Report, 2015, p. 10; ECSWD Turkey Report, 2016, p. 5–6). During the second phase (2018–2020), the Commission’s reform discourse turned from the institutional dimension into organizational transformation and modifications to the framework for administration. Centralization, the development of executive powers, and the merit principle of the public personnel system became more salient in the evaluation of the Commission (ECSWD Turkey Report, 2018, p. 12; ECSWD Turkey Report, 2019, p. 19–20). In the third phase (2021–2025) the emphasis within the discourse of the reform was more on governance, accountability, and fiscal transparency. Issues of policy coordination, transparency of the budget, and public financial management became more prominent in the evaluations by the Commission (ECSWD Turkey Report, 2021, p. 18–20; ECSWD Türkiye Report, 2024, p. 24–25). The model predicts that the discourse of public administration reform of the Commission shifted from a focus on technocratic modernizations to an evaluative framework on governance and accountability.

Figure 8 presents a synthetic image of changes in thematic emphasis over the entire period of study, comparing these to patterns across time (as seen in earlier figures) and patterns of relative concentration for individual themes. While the earlier figures display annual change or patterns of the concentration of specific themes, the figure depicts the general drift of the Commission’s reform discourse as a whole: namely, a gradual shift from technical/administrative themes to evaluative focus across a more complex multilayered evaluative framework of institutional governance, accountability, fiscal transparency, and the rule of law. The figure indicates changes in evaluative emphasis for the Commission and is not a proxy for corresponding institutional change in Türkiye.

The three phases were delimited analytically, based on sustained shifts in thematic dominance in the sequence of evaluations rather than changes in frequency of code alone. The transition into the 2018–2020 phase is related to the strengthening of institutional centralization, administrative reconfiguration, and evaluative focus on performance and merit in relation to the major shifts in the political-administrative context in 2021. The post-2021 phase was identified by the relatively more sustained clustering of accountability, the rule of law, fiscal transparency, and institutionalization in evaluations. Thus, the phase boundaries can be seen analytically as a periodization of changing evaluative emphasis and should not be taken as actual turning points in Türkiye’s administrative development.

Together, these suggest the longitudinal pattern identified in the reports is more productively interpreted as a reconfiguration of EC evaluative priorities than as a historical unfolding of administrative reform in Türkiye. While earlier reports privileged administrative modernization/ capacity-related concerns over institutional governance/ merit/ accountability/ fiscal transparency/ rule of law-related concerns, more recent evaluations started incorporating questions related to institutional governance/ merit/ accountability/ fiscal transparency/ rule of law. The continued persistence and intermingling of such concerns in the period of reporting calls into question the need to designate the various phases identified in the reports as mutually exclusive and sharply bounded. Rather, these periods may be understood as changes in the relative saliency and the organization of reform themes in EC discourse, and this discursive shift forms the analytical basis of the analysis that follows.

5 Discussion

This study reveals the evolution of reform discourse regarding public administration from the 2015 to 2025 as a result of a longitudinal and thematic analysis of EC Reports on Türkiye. This evolution has shown the way that the reform discourse does not display a linear but rather a multilayered structure in which changes occur as a result of different institutional-political dynamics. Accordingly, this study supports the literature that argues that rather than a mechanical modernization process, public administration reforms are a result of complex, political-contextualized, institutional-structured, and power-relationship-bound transformations (Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2017; Christensen and Lægreid, 2007). Emphasis should be given to the fact that these findings must be seen as a story of the emergence of the reform discourse of the EC and are not direct measures of the outcomes or the implementation of the reform in the sphere of public administration in the country of Türkiye. EC reports represent an external evaluative frame of reference to capture changes in reform agenda-setting, issues of concern, and prescriptions for governance. As a result, this paper records the evolution in the framing and emphasis by the EC and, at the same time, acknowledges that the practical effects and outcomes might be different and can be read only with a further layer of supporting empirical evidence, such as from domestic policy documents, formal legal reform measures, institutional habits, or findings from empirical work in the field.

Extending this main pattern, this analysis shows how the reform’s discourse develops in three different phases of technical modernization, institutional centralization, and governance-oriented accountability. Instead of a linear movement between two different administrative paradigms, the results show the Commission’s reform’s discourse becoming hybrid and combining more features that are part of the NPM/post-NPM coordination, the features of governance, and the European Administrative Space (Aristovnik et al., 2022; Ladner and Sager, 2022; European Commission, 2023). This overlapping reform vocabulary is closer to a hybrid understanding of administrative reform than a move to any single paradigm.

The discursive shift also needs to be interpreted in light of the major institutional developments which redefined the terrain of administration in Türkiye during the study period. The failed coup attempt in July 2016, the ensuing state of emergency and the shift toward a Presidential Government System in 2018 were a watershed institutional turning point which redefined the administrative priorities highlighted in the successive EC reports. Since these events, the Commission started paying more attention to such issues as the rule of law, the institutions’ checks and balances, judicial independence, merit-based public employment and administrative accountability (ECSWD Turkey Report, 2018; ECSWD Turkey Report, 2019; ECSWD Turkey Report, 2020). The observed discursive shift should therefore be understood as a change in the Commission’s evaluative priorities in response to a substantially transformed institutional context.

Accordingly, in the 2015–2017 period, even though reform discourse was built upon instrumental dimensions including administration, e-government, and efficiency in terms of service, similar to NPM (Hood, 1991). Nevertheless, the existence, albeit in this period, of criticisms regarding the narrow scope of policy-making capacity and analytical tools points to the “instrumental reform” boundary of NPM highlighted by literature (Güler, 2005; Howlett and Ramesh, 2014). However, it is important to note that after 2018, with the emphasis on institutional centralization and changes in the structure of governance, the Commission’s assessment of the dimension of public administration reform became intertwined not just with concerns related to the more general restructuring of the political and administrative system. Especially, the establishment of the Presidential Government System and its centralization, along with the restructuring of the decision-making process, constitute a turning point in the reform discourse. In a historical institutionalist sense, this discursive shift is understood in relation to the interaction of institutional continuity with critical junctures, in keeping with the emphasis placed on the political institutions and power structures determining institutional trajectories (Pierson, 2000). The post-2016 institutional context and the transition to the Presidential Government System in 2018 are significant contextual shifts relative to which the Commission increasingly assessed centralization, merit, accountability, and institutional checks and balances. Far from signaling the existence of a given path-dependent logic, the continued resonance of these preoccupations between subsequent reports has led this paper to see the persistence of such concerns in these reports as a form of institutional layering, where new sets of reform expectations are superimposed onto established administrative structures, rather than as a “script-locked” scenario of path dependence. The former perspective on the continued salience of recurring administrative concerns in the work of earlier authors on Turkish public administration reform (Sürgit, 1972; Gökçe et al., 2001) is also supported by recognizing that the very issues evaluated by the Commission changed over time.

A further major finding is that the reform discourse moved gradually along the axis of governance and the rule of law. The post-2021 period focused more on accountability mechanisms, fiscal transparency and oversight compared with other policy areas. This highlights how the debate on reform in the period focused more on issues beyond the area of administrative techniques, such as bureaucratic or technical capacities, to an emphasis on institutional quality. This corresponds with research that illustrates that the EU approach to public administration reform goes beyond administrative capabilities and also focuses on standards of governance (Fukuyama, 2013; World Bank, 2017). In particular, references to aspects such as budget transparency, public procurement, and parliamentary oversight have become the most relevant parts of the fiscal governance dimension of the reform discourse (Allen et al., 2013).

Thematic co-occurrence patterns found in the analysis also point to the fact that the Commission tended to evaluate centralization/merit/accountability in parallel discursive contexts. They signal a tendency toward framing centralization, merit, and accountability as evaluative congruent dimensions of the public administration reform project, though they are not evidence of a causal nexus or true institutional dependency between the Turkish public administration and its other actors. This fits with the discourse of multi-actor/multi-dimensional governance found in the governance literature (Rhodes, 1996; Osborne, 2006). But when it comes to Türkiye, the above multidimensional structure suggests a hybrid governance model that very often goes together with tendencies toward centralization. In this study, “hybrid governance model” refers specifically to the simultaneity of the NPM-focused concern for performance and efficiency, NPM post-structural means of coordination, governance-based means for accountability and transparency, European administrative standards, and historically rooted tendencies toward administrative centralization within the reform discourse of the Commission. It signifies not a specific/integrated but a layered, overlapping reform configuration.

The main results for Türkiye, however, show that the picture is far from a neat sequence from NPM to one unitary conception. Neither, rather, the picture is a seamless linear transition or conversion: instead, as the Commission reform discourse clearly indicates, governance features a hybrid and layered structure that coexists simultaneously with NPM considerations of performance/efficiency, on the one hand, but with post-NPM issues of coordination, governance, and accountability mechanisms, administrative standards and European models, on the other. This has on the one hand NPM-style characteristics, such as those associated with performance and efficiency, and on the other, those related to centralization and the exercise of political control over the administration and has a similar form to the hybrid-multi-dimensional systems presented in the literature on “post-NPM” or “new governance” discussions (Osborne, 2006). The findings here show that the public administration reform discourse of the Commission toward/for Türkiye cannot be accounted for by a single reform paradigm—instead, there is an indication that both managerial, governance, and historically embedded institutional logics simultaneously play a role in the evaluative framework that comprises the Commission’s evaluation of Türkiye.

The findings of the study also indirectly reveal the effect of the EU’s conditionality mechanism on reform discourse. The concentration of reform themes particularly around the axis of governance, the rule of law, and accountability shows that the EU’s normative framework is an important reference point shaping reform discourse. However, the documentary evidence does not allow the extent of this discursive influence to be equated with the depth of institutional implementation. From a broader neo-institutionalist perspective, this finding illustrates the distinction between the diffusion of administrative norms and their institutional internalization (Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier, 2004; Falkner and Treib, 2008; Meyer and Rowan, 1977). Although the greater salience of merit, accountability, transparency and the rule of law, among other concepts, suggests that EU administrative expectations continue to shape reform discourse, documentary evidence analyzed here does not, by itself, allow judgments as to the degree to which these elements of the rule of law paradigm have been fully institutionalized. As such, reform discourse and institutional practice can be seen as analytically related but empirically disjunctive processes. This analytical conclusion fits well with other accounts, which suggest that EU-inspired reforms, on occasion, have not proceeded to deep institutionalization but to only symbolic or rhetorical compliance. The Commission’s public administration reform discourse on Türkiye was not linear, but changed directions throughout the reporting periods; this was accompanied by an increasingly focused discourse on institutional governance and accountability. Whether discursive shifts can be read as matching shifts in institutional realities and implementation cannot be determined based on the documentary material this study covers. That said, Commission evaluations seem to suggest that the framing of public administration reform was never just one of technical matters of arrangement but also the related institutional capacities for action, and the rule of law more generally (Huseynov and Eken, 2026).

More broadly, it complements the literature on comparative public administration by illustrating that longitudinal study of reform discourse can make a distinctive and useful contribution to understanding changing priorities in governance without being confounded by linking discursive variation to institutional change. The present article puts forth a conceptual distinction between narrative variation in reform and institutional implementation of reform, in order to make a contribution to on-going debates concerning Europeanization, administrative reform and neo-institutionalist change.

6 Conclusion

The EC reports on Türkiye (2015–2025) underwent a longitudinal thematic analysis to investigate whether its public administration reform discourse was linear. The findings show that the Commission’s evaluative priorities evolved through several interwoven political, institutional, and governance logics. The results are that the public administration reform discourse on the country at first concentrated on administrative modernization and technical capacity building, and later centered on issues related to institutional centralization and administrative reorganization, then more closely on discursive emphases on normative concerns such as governance, accountability, and rule of law. While the reform discourse moved gradually from instrumental solutions to institutional-quality arguments and discourses on governance quality.

At the same time, the documentary evidence presented here does not determine whether this discursive re-orientation mirrored a like degree of institutional change in practice. While conceptually the discursive reform space was enlarged, it nevertheless continues to focus on the issues of merit, policy-making and accountability, and these themes thus remain as key characteristics of Commission’s assessments. However, the evidentiary base undergirded in this analysis does not decide whether recurrent debate over such matters translates into an un-finished reform process in practice, this would have to draw on additional evidence from domestic legal reforms, implementation data, institutional practices and field evidence.

Another notable finding is that the Commission’s public administration reform discourse on Türkiye exhibited a hybrid structure rather than a pure NPM-style orientation. On the one hand the reform has kept NPM elements like performance, efficiency and fiscal discipline; on the other hand, it continued to exist along with an administrative architecture where tendencies toward centralization gained stronger ground. The dualistic structure shows that the reform did not materialize as a homogeneous transformation, but as a contextualized and incremental restructuring. The study’s findings also indirectly support the existence of the EU’s conditionality mechanism effect on the reform discourse. At the same time, the documentary analysis conducted here does not enable the influence of EU conditionality on reform discourse to be related to its institutional effects in practice. Considering this, supporting the reform process by both external normative frames and by internal institutionalized ownership and sound policy design seems necessary.

Besides its empirical implications, the study advances the comparative literature on public administration by showing that longitudinal analysis of EC reports can give rise to a meaningful analytical metaphor through which discursive change can be interpreted as analytically distinct from institutional change. Further, the study argues that administrative reform in EU candidate countries, rather than being considered on a linear continuum of paradigms, is instead conceptualized as a mixed and context-specific phenomenon influenced by the interaction between external normative pressure and internal institutional constraints. Future comparisons could draw on this conceptualization and extend the study’s insights into a comparative research design which would draw on documentary and domestic policymaking evidence, institutional data and cross-country analysis of this relationship between reform discourse and institutional implementation.

Limitations of this study include the inherent tendency of all findings and conclusions to be a function of the type and scope of documents used. In this case, EC reports are clearly external evaluative documents as opposed to direct (often actual) evidence of institutional practice. Additionally, as a document analysis this study has an inherent limitation related to interpretive coding decisions (this was not validated/supported through interviewing, domestic policy, and/or implementation documents or data). It should thus be read primarily as an explanation for the changing reform discourse as opposed to actual reform implementation.

Other methodological caveats also need to be acknowledged. Firstly, because the analysis is based on EC reports only, which generate a constant longitudinal documentary source, but are external evaluative documents that reflect EU institutional priorities and conditionality framework; assessments can involve interpretive selectivity and cannot be considered as objective representations of administrative reality. Secondly, qualitative coding entails interpretation on the researcher’s part and although the coding frame was critiqued and discussed amongst the authors, the lack of independent inter-coder reliability testing is a methodological limitation. Finally, EC reports are not triangulated with domestic policy documents, legal texts, data on implementation, interviews, or other institutional sources. The result is that the evolution of the Commission’s reform discourse and evaluative priorities are recorded but are unable to independently demonstrate actual reform implementation, institutional effects, or causal mechanisms. Future work could take these elements into consideration through multiple methods or designs (multi-source comparative, documentary analysis combined with domestic institutional evidence, and qualitative fieldwork), thereby separating the evolution of reform discourse from the implementation of reform, offering a road map for future comparative research on how external governance assessments shape administrative reform agendas but may not map onto corresponding institutional outcomes.

This paper concludes that eventually the EC’s reform discourse in respect to Türkiye moved from a discourse of “progressive reform” to one focused more on institutional issues and governance. Despite the shift in Commission-reform discourse toward an increasingly systemic and critical frame of governance, the documentary material here examined does not indicate the degree to which such discursive prioritizing was transferred to institutional practice. For further studies we see merit in analyzing public administration reform not just through international reporting but in mixed study designs involving national policy documents, judicial decisions and the day-to-day institutional work, so that the discursive and practical dimensions of reform processes could be examined in one project. Equally promising would be a mixed study design combining quantitative and qualitative data-gathering strategies, as this would probably uncover the discursive and practical dimensions of reform processes better. Analysis of reform effects on local governments, regulatory institutions and the public personnel system at the micro level would also produce valuable insights for the reform literature. Ultimately, it was argued here that this issue is more about transformation in the process and product of public administration than just technical administrative arrangement; it is a field at the intersection of institutional structure, political power and understanding of the governance process. What will determine the direction of this transformation is the implementation of an integrated governance perspective that moves beyond reform discourse, strengthens institutional capacity, establishes accountability, and secures the principle of merit.

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Footnotes

Edited by: Ionel Bostan, Ștefan cel Mare University of Suceava, Romania

Reviewed by: Adnan Karataş, Atatürk University, Türkiye

Mucahit Bektas, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan University, Türkiye