Saglam, Erol;
(2022)
Bureaucracies under authoritarian pressure: legal destabilisation, politicisation and bureaucratic subjectivities in contemporary Turkey.
International Journal of Law in Context
, 18
(3)
pp. 288-302.
10.1017/s1744552322000234.
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Abstract
Drawing on ethnographic research across two street-level bureaucratic institutions in Istanbul, Turkey in the late 2010s, this paper traces the causes and implications of the politicisation of bureaucrats in the context of authoritarianisation. It argues that politicisation of bureaucrats cannot solely be taken as a reflection of the erosion of bureaucratic autonomy and capacity but must be explored further to reveal how bureaucrats cope with authoritarian pressure as well socio-legal destabilisations to preserve their institutional ethos. To this aim, I demonstrate how bureaucrats get politicised in response to authoritarian policies and, in turn, labour to uphold the rule of law despite politico-legal risks. The paper particularly focuses on how bureaucrats weave political solidarity and circulate anti-government discourses and how they use their knowledge of the legal-regulatory repertoire and archives to deter and ‘correct’ unlawful practices through their everyday work. The paper generates insights into the fashionings of political subjectivities and agency by bureaucrats through their labouring in the face of authoritarian interventions, legal disruptions and the increasing interactions with the citizenry. In doing this, my objective is to shed light on the everyday workings of authoritarian state and to get a better picture of the way the law is ‘made real’ (Latour, 2002) across mundane encounters between bureaucrats and the citizenry.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Bureaucracies under authoritarian pressure: legal destabilisation, politicisation and bureaucratic subjectivities in contemporary Turkey |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1017/s1744552322000234 |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1744552322000234 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third-party material in this article are included in the Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
| Keywords: | Bureaucracy, state, subjectivity, politicisation, Turkey |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of the Built Environment UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of the Built Environment > UCL Institute for Global Prosperity |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10198921 |
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