The effectiveness of parliamentary budgetary rights in single-party regimes: the case of the Turkish Grand National Assembly Budget Committee (1925–1950)

The budget constitutes a core institutional mechanism through which legislatures exercise control over the executive. This article examines the Budget Committee of the Turkish Grand National Assembly between 1925 and 1950 to reassess parliamentary budgetary rights spanning single-party rule and the transition to competitive multi-party politics. Contrary to regime-type assumptions that equate limited electoral competition with weak legislative oversight, the study argues that oversight was reconfigured and concentrated at the committee level. Through procedural centralisation, information-forcing practices, and enforcement of classical budgetary principles-unity, annuality, balance, and sincerity-the Committee exercised measurable influence over executive proposals. Combining qualitative process tracing with quantitative analysis of amendment patterns, the article demonstrates that committee-stage modifications were recurrent and frequently preserved in enacted budgets. Committee-stage modification occurred without requiring observable floor-level partisan confrontation, suggesting that legislative influence operated through institutional specialisation and incremental consolidation.