Conclusion

The mission of Argüden Governance Academy is to improve the quality of life, democracy, and sustainable development in the world by strengthening good governance. The Academy conducts training and research and communicates the findings of their research globally. The Academy’s main priority is to improve good governance practices by measuring and supporting continuous learning through benchmarking in the organizations. Metropolitan cities become more and more important with increasing urbanization. We believe that good governance practices would help to improve the quality of life, democracy, and sustainable development in metropolitan cities. Based on this perspective, governance in metropolitan municipalities is very important to achieve the above goals. Argüden Governance Academy has decided to develop the Metropolitan Governance Scorecard Model, which is an innovative global model, so that it will support the efforts for improving good governance culture and practices in metropolitan municipalities.

The model helps citizens to evaluate metropolitan municipalities according to their implementation of good governance practices based on good governance principles through publicly available information. The model enables one to understand how the authority and resources awarded by ballot box have been utilized and how such utilization could be improved through a good governance perspective. Initiatives by those such as the UN, SDGs, OECD Wellbeing Methodology, European Label of Governance Excellence (ELoGE), EFQM, international agreements, and national regulations, have been analyzed and aligned with the model.

The model aims to map and measure the quality of governance practices for each good governance principle through decision making, resource allocation and utilization, implementation, and institutional processes. The model helps to identify the improvement areas in metropolitan municipalities through the lens of good governance practices by citizens, metropolitan municipalities, central government, CSOs and other stakeholders. Related parties could then devise improvement plans for the identified areas.

The model accordingly has been implemented in Türkiye for evaluating 27 metropolitan municipalities’ quality of implementation of governance practices. The evaluations have been made based on 337 indicators. The data related to these indicators have been collected from publicly available information provided by metropolitan municipalities. The findings show that each municipality’s quality of implementation of good governance practices is at a different maturity level.

Most of the metropolitan municipalities’ scores are at a 45–64 level out of 100. This finding points to an important potential for improvement based on the implementation of good governance practices. A good practice of each metropolitan municipality has been identified and collected at a pool for supporting a shared culture of learning. The scorecards and pool of good practices guide metropolitan municipalities in their journey for improvement in good governance practices.

Recommendations have been offered based on the findings and the scorecards of each metropolitan municipality. Recommendations contain tips for citizens, metropolitan municipalities, central government, CSOs and other stakeholders.

The findings of the model help to evaluate and improve the quality of good governance practices in metropolitan municipalities. Findings advocate the application of the model as a useful tool for improving democratic practices, efforts for sustainable development, and quality of life in metropoles. We hope that MMGS Model will be considered and implemented in other countries as a good practice on a global level.