A New Institutional Sustainability Index Regarding Local Governments: The Case of Istanbul

Abstract

The literature on institutional sustainability has largely focused on global-based analysis, and it has generally ignored to examine local-based analyses. The main purpose of this study was to measure the institutional sustainability of local governments. In this research, the intention was to develop an institutional sustainability index based on the district municipalities in the province of Istanbul, which is one of the most significant metropolises in the world. A total of 48 variables were used in the calculation of the General Institutional Sustainability Index (social dimension with 26 variables, economic dimension with 15 variables, and environmental dimension with 7 variables). The index consists of 3 sub-indexes comprising the general institutional sustainability index. The social dimension was examined in 6 sub-dimensions, the economic dimension in 5 sub-dimensions, and the environmental dimension in 4 sub-dimensions. The results indicate that Istanbul municipalities achieved low economic and environmental sustainability index scores. Decision-makers will be able to assess the general institutional sustainability index results for their own municipalities and to observe strong and weak aspects with the sub-indexes. In the process of developing the index, missing value analysis, cluster analysis, principal component analysis, and the composite index calculation methods were applied to data from 39 district municipalities in the province of Istanbul.