Taking the Advantage of the Coercive Effects of Legal Arrangements in Shaping Public Servants' Political Behaviors: The Case of the Hatch Act


KOÇ O., KIRAY A., Gunaydin O. A.

ISTANBUL HUKUK MECMUASI, cilt.78, sa.4, ss.1989-2023, 2020 (ESCI) identifier

  • Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
  • Cilt numarası: 78 Sayı: 4
  • Basım Tarihi: 2020
  • Doi Numarası: 10.26650/mecmua.2020.78.4.0009
  • Dergi Adı: ISTANBUL HUKUK MECMUASI
  • Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI), TR DİZİN (ULAKBİM)
  • Sayfa Sayıları: ss.1989-2023
  • Kocaeli Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of legal arrangements in terms of providing neutrality for public servants, and in this essence hindering them from behaving politically. The main rationale motivating this study is basic propositions about the possible political behaviors of public servants and the necessities of avoiding such behaviors. In fact, it can be assumed that the politics-administration dichotomy has an incredibly deterministic effect in the public administration field. In this scope, some roles have mostly been given to public administrators in terms of just implementing policies and some measures have been taken for providing administrators' political neutrality. One of the best-known of these measures is the Hatch Act in the USA. The Hatch Act has been built as an institutional order in providing political neutrality of federal, state and local employees. In can also be expressed that several coercive measures were established for building and maintaining this order. For analysis, specific archive documents and other relevant texts were collected by using open sources (i.e. legal documents and internet resources). After collecting data, the content analysis technic was used to find apposite answers for the research questions. This study's potential contributions are manyfold. Firstly, it defines political or partizan behaviors or activities of public servants in general and more specifically in the scope of the Hatch Act to some extent. Besides this, many issues such as the coercive effects of legal arrangements in hindering political behavior of public servants, established actors and mechanisms for this aim and produced outcomes in implementation have been put forth in detail. Along with these it also clarifies the maintenance of such institutional orders.