How Does Patrimonial Populism Shape Institutional Backsliding in Central Banking?

Public Policy and Administration scholars recently called to unpack the critical role of politics, power and political regime in public policy research. This paper offers an institutionalist response to this call. It examines how populist-patrimonial pressures in a world of democratic backsliding can influence institutions and organizations of central banking. It builds on the comparative analysis of institutional change in central banking over the last two decades under the Turkish political transition from liberal democracy to illiberal democracy. Drawing on elite interviews and written sources, it examines how political pressures that result from the shift in political regime from the parliamentary system of government to the presidential system of government generated the de-legitimation of orthodox central banking logic, and its rules, norms and practices. It shows how regime elites employ various repression and cooptation instruments that selectively displace existing institutions with new preferred and desired ones leading to poor policy outcomes and administrative capacity.