Policy and Efficiency of EU Pre-Accession Funds in Turkey as Instruments of Multi-Level Governance

This article focuses on multi-level governance in Turkey by examining the governance of the pre-accession funds allocated to regional development by developing an interdisciplinary and multidimensional approach that integrates the vertical and horizontal relations at different levels of governance with the four main principles (concentration, programming, partnership, and additionality) of the EU structural funds. The article analyses the influence of the dual governance structure on the efficient utilisation of EU funds allocated to 191 municipality and local authority projects executed under two different calls covering seven NUTS 11 regions and twenty cities in Turkey, thereby demonstrating the differences in the efficiency levels by using an empirical approach. The results show that the EU pre-accession funds in Turkey promote the formation of a European model of the multi-level governance structure by generating new forms of relations among authorities at different levels.