The research covered only metropolitan municipalities led by popularly elected mayors in Türkiye. As such, twenty-seven of metropolitan municipalities out of thirty have been analyzed and evaluated. The maximum score that could be achieved is 100. Ten groups have been formed to communicate the findings of the research.

The results reveal that the quality of good governance in metropolitan municipalities is at the intermediate level. In other words, there is an important area of improvement for metropolitan municipalities to improve the quality of their good governance practices. If they act in the short term, the level can immediately increase.

The findings acknowledge that metropolitan municipalities use governance rhetoric. However, the presence of this language does not necessarily ensure implementation of good governance practices in their resource utilization, operations and activities, and goal setting processes. Recommendations for improvements are in the following section.

Metropolitan municipalities are public institutions with elected and appointed officials. Their main aim is providing services, making investments, and developing policies for improving the quality of life for their citizens. Some important responsibilities could be stated as follows: transportation, protection of the environment, infrastructure investments, supporting art and cultural activities, and setting social policies. The responsibilities serve for urban development, citizen satisfaction with their municipalities, and preservation of the city and its heritage, and the wellbeing of citizens.

The metropolitan municipality is a large and important administrative structure in the public governance system. Urbanization and population density have increased in metropolitan cities. These factors shaped cities into centers for education, social activities, industry, and political competition. Global crises of climate change, immigration and the pandemic have evidenced the need for metropolitan municipalities to play an important role in crisis management cases. Metropolitan municipalities have an important effect on improving the quality of life and supporting sustainable development efforts.

Turkish laws and regulations for municipalities require the alignment of the plans of metropolitan municipalities with national and regional plans. It is also stated that metropolitan municipalities’ and district municipalities’ activities be coordinated so as to improve efficiency and effectiveness of services. Therefore, metropolitan municipalities need to conduct planning, resource utilization, and decision-making processes in a holistic, participatory, and evidence-based manner. Such an approach calls for good relations with all internal and external stakeholders on the basis of consistency.

A detailed current state analysis including an analysis of good practices and quality of life is a necessity for good governance. Considering diverse geographical scales such as districts and neighborhoods and diverse social groups as part of the current state analysis is important especially in metropolitan cities. This can be accomplished in an evidence based and participatory manner. A fair and inclusive social policy, for example, means that the needs, expectations, and demands of each of the social groups in the city are recognized. Accordingly, good governance requires short, medium, and long-term goals and a resource utilization approach, and the identification of KPIs for effective monitoring of policy implementation.

MMGS indicators could help make recommendations for improving the quality of life and supporting sustainable development efforts for the city. The quality of life is related to issues such as education, social services, health care, and employment. Some of these are not under the responsibility of metropolitan municipalities. However, activities, investments, and services provided by the metropolitan municipalities can affect the quality of the lives of its citizens. Metropolitan municipalities conduct services and develop policies for children, women, elderly, the unemployed, the disabled, the homeless, immigrants, and any disadvantageous groups; these municipal actions would improve the quality of life in the city.

The findings demonstrate that metropolitan municipalities have activities for diverse social groups. The findings also point to areas of improvement. Strategic plans must be prepared in an evidence-based manner with the participation by different social groups to make effective resource utilization and design effective social policy goals. Similarly, research findings illustrate that only 9 out of 27 metropolitan municipalities have shared information stating that they have conducted current state analysis by considering the needs, demands, and expectations of different social groups.

Integrated and holistic governance perspective also requires the evaluation of performance and impact in an evidence-based manner. Performance evaluation is important to understand the effectiveness of decisions taken, service delivery, and ascertaining if goals are met. Performance evaluation and taking necessary measures for reaching goals or revising goals accordingly would help to improve trust in the municipality and strengthen institutional capacity.

Adoption of evidence based current state analysis and goal setting practices could help improve activities related to fairness and inclusiveness principle of good governance.

Sustainable development is an important enabler in improving the quality of life. Metropolitan municipalities could play an important role in supporting sustainable development. SDGs provide a detailed guide regarding sustainable development activities.

The findings demonstrate an area of improvement in the alignment of metropolitan municipalities’ goals, activities, and budget with global goals. Establishing relationships with SDGs which are also recognized in the national policy documents would not only guide municipalities for metropolitan governance but also help them build international cooperation.

Metropolitan municipalities need to prepare plans in a holistic perspective combining urban and rural development and developing policies for different group that have a role in development activities. Relations, cooperation, and coordination of activities with district municipalities are vital for effective service delivery by metropolitan municipalities; it is a requirement of the regulation. However, research findings reveal that no metropolitan municipality has conducted a current state analysis at district level.

Good governance practices could help to improve the quality of life if institutions adopt holistic, evidence-based decision making and continuous development perspectives. Institutions need to form mechanisms for monitoring, data collection, performance measurement, and evaluation systems.

Good governance in metropolitan municipalities could be achieved by implementing the inclusive and meaningful participation of stakeholders such as citizens, CSOs, public institutions, the private sector, and academia. Inclusive and meaningful participation could help to ensure to improve the quality of life through making plans that consider the needs, expectations, and demands of stakeholders.

Even though the above findings illustrate a positive picture, under closer examination areas of needed improvement exist.

City councils have been formed to support and participate in the decision-making process of municipalities. One of the most important participation mechanisms of city councils is providing recommendations and giving proposals to municipal councils. The findings of the research reveal that only four city councils have reported that they have made recommendations and given proposals to the municipal council. Only two of these city councils have reported what has been proposed and what the results of discussions at the municipal council were. These findings signal a need for improvement of the institutional capacity and processes of city councils. Transparency, inclusiveness, and accountability of city councils need improvement. The research findings observe that only six city councils out of twenty-one have prepared Annual Reports.

The findings reveal that relations with CSOs and the mukhtars need to be conducted in a holistic and more transparent manner. Information sharing regarding the meetings is important for understanding the quality of engagement. Although they contact CSOs and mukhtars, metropolitan municipalities have not shared detailed information about the meetings and partnerships with these stakeholders. Therefore, citizens are not able to understand and evaluate the use and benefit of this cooperation from their point of view.

Findings further stress that an area of improvement exists for metropolitan municipalities in conducting participation processes. In participatory strategic planning, defining vision for the next five years matters. Therefore, improving the quality of participation in strategic planning process would enable the development of policies to find solutions for a wide spectrum of issues. The quality of participation could be improved by encouraging all related stakeholders (citizens, CSOs, public institutions, business, academia, etc.) so as to participate in a planning process by implementing an inclusive participation process. Such an approach would ensure a balanced and representative participation. Academia needs to be considered as an important stakeholder since their knowledge base could be useful in developing vision and finding solutions for particular issues. Business and labor unions are other important stakeholders to be considered in participation processes. Different engagement techniques could be implemented according to the characteristics of the groups such as face to face interviews, in depth interviews, focus groups, workshops, digital means, neighborhood meetings and so on.

The first step of the participation process needs to be the identification of all related stakeholders. All related stakeholders must be invited to the participation process to ensure the representation of all different groups. Such an approach enables the design of policies and setting of goals by considering all views and recommendations by all relevant stakeholders. All participating stakeholders need to be informed regarding the discussion topics. Information sharing needs to contain background information related to the engagement topic in an evidence-based manner prior to engagement. After the engagement, stakeholders need to be informed as to the rationale or reasoning as to why or why not a particular recommendation was considered or rejected. After the completion of the decision-making process, stakeholders need to be informed about the decision. Information sharing needs to continue during the implementation of decisions. Indicators related to complaints, the right to information, satisfaction, and trust level could be useful to understand the quality of participation and engagement processes. Transparency in the participation processes is important to gain the trust of stakeholders and encourage their participation in future engagement processes.

The number of city councils could be increased. Action plans could be created for increasing the effectiveness of city councils. Targets need to be set; KPIs to be determined; and budgets, to be allocated so as to improve the effectiveness of participation in order to support, measure, and evaluate participation processes. Measurement and reporting the performance of participation processes to the public would help improve the quality of participation processes. Reporting would help stakeholders to understand why participation processes are useful and beneficial for them.

Participation processes need to be improved in a continuous manner. Such a goal could be achieved by monitoring, measuring, and analyzing the data as well as evaluating the analysis results. Some questions useful for evaluating and improving quality of participation could be:

• In which areas has participation been conducted? Is there any area that needs to be added to the participation process?
• How many have people participated in the process?
• To what degree were the recommendations used to shape the final decision?
• Is there any information sharing made to stakeholders about how their recommendations have been used and about the final decision?
• How much resource has been allocated to improve participation processes and participation quality?

Metropolitan municipalities need to consider designing a participation strategy, identifying participation areas, showing benefits of participation, and measuring the effectiveness and impacts of participation as a policy initiative.

Transparency and accountability could be achieved by information access. Access to information is a fundamental right for a citizen. Information could be shared through instruments such as strategic plans, annual reports, websites, social media, billboards, bulletins, and other means of communication by the metropolitan municipalities. Some other instruments such as participatory budgeting, citizen scorecards, and a citizen budget could be instruments for information sharing.

Information sharing improves trust. Improved trust could encourage participation and cooperation with stakeholders. Information sharing regarding plans, goals, activities, budgets, financial information, and performance in an understandable manner enables citizens to monitor and evaluate their municipalities. Data-based governance further support measurement and evaluation processes that are necessary for institutional development. Evaluation of any deviations from targets would guide an organization in revising plans and management processes.

One of the important findings of the research relates to the right to information. As a part of this research (See: Exercising Right to Information), volunteers applied to twenty-seven metropolitan municipalities for exercising their right to information. Only 12 metropolitan municipalities responded to them within the limits of the legal response period and in a relevant way. 3 metropolitan municipalities shared information about the content of the right to information demands in their annual reports. The results suggest that the right to information is an area of improvement, considering it as one of the most important mechanisms for transparency and accountability.

One other important issue regarding financial transparency is sharing the performance of goal-based budgeting. Each municipality makes goals-based budgeting when preparing their performance program(s). However, only 8 metropolitan municipalities shared comparisons regarding budgeted and realized figures.

Meaningful and understandable information sharing with stakeholders on fiscal governance improves trust in organizations. Graphical (tables and figures) presentations and citizen scorecard tools could be useful for sharing understandable information. However, we see that a limited number of metropolitan municipalities use graphical tools, and no metropolitan municipality has a citizen scorecard.

In addition to citizen monitoring, internal audits are necessary for sound financial governance and management. Only 2 metropolitan municipalities have shared information related to internal audit findings. 23 metropolitan municipalities have an Ethics Commission. However only 3 metropolitan municipalities have shared ethics commission reports.

The information provided by metropolitan municipalities offers only a limited opportunity to compare and evaluate these municipalities in a detailed manner. The limited volume of financial information appears to be the least understood part of information sharing. Metropolitan municipalities may need to work on the quality of improvement in information sharing so as to provide comparable and understandable information sharing with the public. The ethics commission, internal audit, and right to information are the areas where improvement in information sharing is needed. Citizens budget and citizen scorecard tools may help to improve transparency and accountability of institutions. Publicly available information, reports and financial tables need to be prepared in an evidence based, understandable, simple, and comparable manner. Improvement in the content of information sharing in line with the appropriate regulation would improve trust in institutions. Meaningful information sharing would help illustrate the contribution made by metropolitan municipalities to improve the quality of life.

Institutional capacity is important to implement decision making, resource utilization, conducting operations, monitoring and evaluation processes. The quality of institutional capacity is related to institutional culture and a perspective geared towards continuous. Internalization of a good governance culture would enable effective and efficient operation. Internalization of a good governance culture would also ensure the prioritization of evidence based, meaningful information sharing, measurement, and evaluation perspectives. Such an approach would strengthen the institutional capacity.

The development of institutional capacity and culture would support improved performance in stakeholder engagement processes, human resource management, financial management, innovation, management information systems, and citizen satisfaction.

Consistency is yet another important principle for the development of institutional capacity. Metropolitan municipalities need to have a mechanism to monitor processes with a holistic approach and have tools for measurement and evaluation of performance of processes with a perspective directed towards consistency. Consistency ensures the alignment of planning and processes of metropolitan municipalities among different units of the municipalities and with international, national, regional plans and priorities.

The above findings convey the need for adoption of a holistic perspective especially in the financial management processes of metropolitan municipalities.