Abstract: Hinterland
A High-Resolution View of the Hinterland: Local Government Centralization and Rural Development in Turkey
This paper examines the causal effects of Turkey’s 2012 metropolitan municipality reform (Law No. 6360) on rural development. The reform used a province-wide population threshold to expand metropolitan governance, centralize service provision, and abolish village legal autonomy in treated provinces.
I estimate effects with a contiguous-border difference-in-differences design comparing villages along treated-control provincial frontiers, with village and boundary-segment-by-year fixed effects. The paper combines newly reconstructed high-resolution village boundary maps with high-resolution night lights, administrative population registries, a daily VIIRS-based proxy for severe electricity outages, and driving duration to administrative centers.
Villages in newly created metropolitan provinces become about 11% brighter after an implementation lag, while villages in existing metropolitan provinces do not show consistent improvement, consistent with service-delivery dilution in already large jurisdictions. Population retention responds immediately and rises by around 10% in both metropolitan province types. I also find an administrative-center distance penalty in lights and population that fades later in the sample period, consistent with sequenced service rollout.