Academic

This thesis examines the impact of bureaucratic purges on public service provision, focusing on the Turkish government's dismissal of nearly 130,000 public employees between 2016 and 2018 following a failed coup attempt. Leveraging novel administrative data on each dismissed state employee, it begins with an analysis of the spatial and administrative distribution of the dismissals. The research primarily moves beyond canonical approaches that view purges as power consolidation through elite purges, and instead captures the broader societal impacts by assessing changes in the state's service delivery capacity post-purge. Using a difference-in-differences model to analyze how varying magnitudes of dismissals affect public teachers on students' standardized test performance, findings reveal a decrease in student performance at the district level, while similar analyses for police dismissals do not indicate crime rate changes. Overall, this study seeks higher external validity by moving beyond limited samples and inherent methodological constraints in prior work on bureaucratic capacity's impact on public services.

Political elites in authoritarian regimes often resort to dramatic bureaucratic purges as a strategy to tighten their grip on power. Yet, despite their growing global frequency, the far-reaching social consequences of such sweeping dismissals remain poorly understood. This study examines the impact of bureaucratic purges on service delivery by analyzing mass public employee dismissals in Turkey following the 2016 coup attempt. Leveraging variation in teachers’ dismissals across administrative units as an exogenous shock, it aims to estimate the effect of the purge on student performance in high school entrance exams. The results show a significant decline in exam scores following teacher dismissals. By bridging research on bureaucratic turnover, state capacity, and education outcomes, this study offers insight into how politically motivated interventions can undermine public service provision.