Measuring Welfare Stateness in Developing Countries: Implications of the Turkish Case for Comparative Welfare State Research

This paper questions the validity of welfare state typologies in the context of developing countries by analysing the Turkish welfare state with the tools laid out by conventional welfare state research. Turkey has remained as a terra incognitain research that maps welfare capitalism. Yet,such neglect might mean more than excluding just a single case, considering that Turkey stands at the intersect of the developing and industrialised world. Given this peculiarity, situating Turkey into welfare typologies appears particularly worthwhile to understand whether underpinning assumptions of existing research bear explanatory power outside the context of old welfare states.

Pertinence of these datasets for grasping the degree and scope of welfare states in the developing world begs for closer scrutiny as developing countries, first, may employ different means to attain welfare ends and, second, are marked by high degrees of informality.This study gauges the validity of the way in which SCIP and CWED datasets measure welfare stateness by comparing quantitative results drawn from the inclusion of the Turkish case to the datasets with qualitative information gathered from the in-depth analysis of social protection legislation.

In the first stage, Turkey's welfare stateness will be measured by using indicators postulated by the datasets. Then, Turkey's welfare stateness will be assessed qualitatively with specific attention to unconventional instruments of social protection. Finally,these qualitative and quantitative results will be compared to show whether SCIP and CWED datasets are susceptible to grasp welfare stateness in developing countries or else what kind of supplementary tools should be developed.