No. 13: A Political Economy Perspective on Achieving Contraceptive Self-Reliance in Turkey Jeffrey Sine, Maureen E. Clyde, and Zerrin Baser (October 2004)  Full Document (English)      Order for free      email to me  In 1994, after three decades of donor support to Turkey’s national family program, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) announced its intention to phase out assistance. On the eve of donor phaseout, Turkey’s public sector program was serving nearly 60 percent of the market for modern family planning methods, including many nonpoor clients. During the transition period, the Ministry of Health was challenged not only to obtain new resources to replace donated contraceptive commodities but also to assume new technical responsibilities for the program. The story of how the ministry succeeded is often told in technical terms (e.g., number of procurements, budget trends, pilot project design, etc.). An equally important part of the story is the political and institutional context within which success was achieved. Examining how the MCH-FP Directorate overcame challenges to put in place a sustainable strategy for the public sector family planning program reveals the political dimensions of the process. Using a political economy framework, this paper examines the processes that led to implementation two central components of Turkey’s national self-reliance strategy: obtaining annual budget allocations for contraceptives and targeting free services to the poor. The framework used here to analyze the process of formulating and adopting Turkey’s contraceptive self-reliance strategy has five components: stakeholders’ characteristics, institutional characteristics, contextual conditions, process characteristics, and reform characteristics.