The Role of Turkish Civil Society in Political Decision Making

Özet

Öz For consolidation of democracies, political scientists recognize the normative ideal that civil society should be given an enhanced role in political decision-making. Analysis of the characteristics and extent of such role is very central to the study of political science and especially for democratic theory. Civil society involves organized groups which seek to exert political influence for the achievement of either communal or member interests. Therefore, assessing such influence is necessary to understand and make inferences about these organized interests’ democratic participation which involves their level of interaction with the larger political system and its actors, the role played by them in policy making processes and impact of all these over policy outcomes. This paper first examines the content and methods of the literature on the impacts of the European Union (EU) process over the transformation of civil society realm in Turkey. Then, the paper points to lack of empirical research within this literature on the civil society organizations’ characteristics of involvement to decision making processes. In this respect, the paper reveals the convenience of the methodological approaches of the literature on interest group influence and demonstrates how the literature on Turkish civil society can benefit from these contributions. The paper draws attention to the need for future studies to empirically assess the characteristics and transformation of Turkish civil society’s participation into the decision making processes.