Citizen‐Centered Public Policy Making in Turkey. By VolkanGöçoğlu, NaciKarkin (Eds.), Cham: Springer Cham. 2023. pp. 476. €129.99 (hardcover); €106.99 (electronic), ISBN (hardcover): 9783031353635; ISBN (electronic): 9783031353642
本书系统梳理了以公民为中心的公共政策理论、机制与案例，重点探讨土耳其背景下直接公民参与（DCP）的实践、挑战与信息技术的作用，适合公共政策与公共管理领域的研究者、学生及从业者阅读。
Despite Turkey's long legacy of public administration for scholars and practitioners over a century of history, we have seen only in the past few decades emerging attention on public policy research (Ertan, 2020; Yildiz et al., 2011; Yildiz et al., 2017). Yet, the progress of public policy and administration fields has been a major field in some parts of the world since the second half of the 20th century. Especially as a milestone in the 1960s public rights movements in the United States of America (USA), citizen participation in public policy making has caught the great attention of public administration and policy scholars ever since (Cupps, 1977; Strange, 1972). Nourishing on almost six decades of scholarly debates, the book Citizen-centered public policy making in Turkey, edited by Volkan Göçoğlu and Naci Karkin, is a great attempt to fill the gap in contemporary applications to the citizen participation in public policy making. The book acknowledges recent developments in ICT and digitalization to promote an understanding of citizen-centered public policy approaches. Moreover, the book's geographical focus provides such a unique case: Turkey, which has a population of more than 85 million and a historically rooted administrative culture; thus, it represents a novel place for the debates on direct citizen participation (DCP). Hence, the book deserves to catch readers' attention, especially in two points. First, the book explicitly highlights nearly sixty years of debate in public policy: citizen participation in policy making. Besides acknowledging the legacy, the book covers this issue in a comprehensive and novel way to merge theoretical frameworks, applications, and case studies. Second, their geographical focus on Turkey, which has a wide range of disciplines, provides thoroughly selected research on the case. The book transcends the current valuable research to contribute to the existing knowledge by sufficiently discussing the benefits, challenges, and theories of the citizen-centered approach in public policy and curating one of the most comprehensive and qualified interdisciplinary public policy research on Turkey. The book presents an excellent collection of research in the public policy literature while prompting its main questions. Covering theoretical frameworks, approaches to citizen-centered public policy mechanisms, and cases from Turkey on different groups of people, including vulnerable groups, this book attempts to address boundaries and challenges for DCP, the role of ICT in public policy making and implementation of DCP, the diverse mechanisms and roles in different fields of public services, and the best practices or lessons learned from participatory public policy. With such goals and structure, Citizen-centered public policy making in Turkey was recently listed in the Selected Books list in the European Commission Library Guide on Country Knowledge: Türkiye. In its current form, the book allows readers to gain a retrospective overview of the debates, which were triggered along with the very first steps of citizen participation in public policy. The book, at the end, would urge curious readers to re-read the participatory debates in public policy during the last quarter of the 20th century on whether it is efficient for public policy or a costly irrational process that could lead public administrators or policy makers to respond to issues in populist or irrational ways (ex: Kweit & Kweit, 1984). To clarify, Göçoğlu and Karkin emphasize DCP, which refers to the direct involvement of stakeholders that also covers citizens in public policy making or implementation (p. vii). The historical pace of citizen participation in public policy and administration inevitably brought various questions regarding its extent, impact, and channels. Amidst the earlier discussions, Riedel (1972, 218) made a thorough point about cultivating the meaning and extent of citizen participation, stressing that it would not be a revolutionary movement if the content of citizen participation only covered indirect participation. Hence, the book would help readers evaluate projections or visions set when citizen participation became a hot topic in public administration and policy research. In line with this, Göçoğlu & Karkin (2023, 9-12) briefly summarize the framework of the evolution in DCP. Although some readers may interpret the book's theoretical emphasis on citizen participation and DCP as too brief about the scholarly concerns, explanations, and provisions on both concepts during the 1970s and 1980s, it is understandable that the authors explicitly attempt to limit the content on the impact of participation in case studies through the remainder of the book. Taking the issue for granted, the authors focus on the DCP approach, essentially taking citizens into account as individual actors of public policy processes instead of participation through mediatory organizations such as non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Hereafter, although it might be refutable, we could assert that the book primarily addresses non-organizational or non-institutional citizen participation in public policy making within the DCP framework. From my perspective, the editors have grasped the evolution of public policy and traditional public administration through ICT and reflected their approach to participation by DCP, which transcends the indirect participation of citizens via NGOs or other institutionalized structures. The unique idea behind this book is to eradicate mediatory organizations or institutions limiting the direct participation of citizens in the public policy making and implementation processes. Accordingly, this interpretation nourishes the earlier definition of direct citizen involvement in public policy, such as the horizontal organization of the policy making hierarchy in favor of citizens (Frederickson, 1982, 505). To provide a comprehensive handbook on public policy making in Turkey and citizen-centered public policy approaches, the book is designed to have three parts and 24 chapters. The editors aim to knit this topic throughout the chapters with theory, concepts, and practices. The book's format of applying these parts and the distribution of the chapters help readers stay focused on the related topics and allow them to proceed step by step to the primary concern of the book when they follow the tracks between chapters. The chapters' contributors also prove this book's extensive coverage of public policy topics and Turkey as a case study. Considering the diversity among 35 authors from 8 disciplines and 17 universities, including their academic backgrounds, geographical diversification, and gender, they all have allowed me to claim the book's representative power in its own field. Besides the preface by editors, their introduction chapter in the first part deepens the citizen-centered public policy concept. Therefore, the first part prepares readers for the conceptual and theoretical aspects of public policy making in a new era. The editors clearly express the book's contribution to the field as promoting DCP. Comprising five chapters, the first part deliberately triggers the readers' a priori knowledge of general public policy processes with the necessary conceptual and practical information to delve into the DCP approaches in later parts. After the informative preparation in the first part, the second part of this book takes the readers into practice. Seven chapters, ranging from social networks to active citizenship, digitalization to women, and nationalism, represent the various mechanisms to achieve DCP or obstacles that result in DCP failure. The part is valuable for public policy, and public administration backgrounded readers to present positive contributions to the concepts and express and highlight the challenges for DCP. That is the third novel contribution of the book that strengthens the link between its aim and objectives to present the nexus between theory and practice. The last part focuses on the public policy mechanisms with DCP from various disciplines and cases. Environment, education, health, security, economics, urban affairs, executive bodies of the government, and local governments are well represented in this part. Beyond this, the part is also supported by chapters discussing COVID-19 impacts on public policies from diverse fields. The contributors in this part have explained using social media, local commissions, and smart city practices as examples of DCP. This part is a great contribution to the practice as various papers also shed light on the idea that technological developments and participation opportunities of our era have brought significant contributions and benefits of citizen participation to public policy in numerous cases (Callahan, 2007; Park et al., 2023; Woodford & Preston, 2013). Although the range of cases from environment to security seems to contribute adequately to understanding the participatory concept, there are several limitations and opportunities for future research. First, I felt one major policy field for Turkey was missing throughout the book. When we dive into policy making in Turkey, international migration and migration policies have been on the first-tier public agenda in the last decade. Being the world's leading refugee-hosting country, public policy research in Turkey concerning migration could be considered a virtually focused field in the current literature. Hence, the content missed this opportunity to present the implementation of a citizen-centered approach to migration policies in Turkey. Future research may draw attention to a citizen-centered approach to public policy making in Turkey within the international migration field. This would greatly contribute to the book's coverage and the migration policy researchers. Second, the book does not provide a separate conclusion part, which would be useful for readers to comprehend the editors' motivation behind the book to wrap up holistic ideas extracted from all chapters. In such cases, some readers might find it hard to establish the links among chapters without an integrated conclusion in edited books. Nevertheless, I believe that the greater volume of the book is good enough to get the main idea of the DCP, its implementation tools, challenges to DCP, and its benefits for policy makers and service receivers. If there is a future edition of this book, the editors might consider adding a conclusion part to the end of the book. It will also be useful for editors to transcend their intention to present this complex issue as a collection of various researchers' chapters. Besides that, the book presents an outsight and interdisciplinary overview of public policy processes in Turkey. Although the editors noted the audience for the book as people with a background in public administration and public policy, I strongly recommend this book to researchers who would like to discover how they could link their fields with public policy making as the book provides both basics of public policy and step by step delving into the citizen-centered public policy approach. Readers who seek concrete cases on citizen-centered public policy and Turkey's particular public policy cases from a multiscale perspective should read this book. Overall, this book contributes to the fields of public policy and public administration research with the theoretical and conceptual frameworks of citizen-centered approaches. Considering the new era of public policy and administration research, the book has great potential for the audience and existing literature to add their non-organizational and non-institutional citizen participation as DCP. Therefore, public administration and public policy scholars, students of these fields, and practitioners could benefit from this book to add new perspectives on their interpretation of citizen participation in public policy processes. I encourage future researchers to delve more into the DCP framework for different cases to enhance the development of ICT and its linkage with direct participation in public policy. In this direction, citizens would have a more solid position not only as public service receivers but also as integrated into policy making and implementation mechanisms, which could be considered necessities for a new era of public policy. Last but not least, comprehensive resources on DCP, such as Göçoğlu and Karkin's edition, would enlighten future debates to improve active and effective citizen participation mechanisms. Atahan Demirkol is a PhD candidate and Research Assistant at Afyon Kocatepe University, Department of Political Science and Public Administration. His research specializes in urban studies, international migration, and public policy through utilizing both qualitative and quantitative analysis.