Efficiency commonly declines with distance from - or rather with difficulty of communication with - the centre. Such a decline is inevitable, the more so with a highly personal and ad hoc system. Moreover, all officials hate rural isolation and scheme for transfer to greater comfort and urbanity. If we may assume some correlation between success and efficiency, then on average the more remote the post the less efficient the incumbent, from valis down to village schoolmasters.
The dependence on personal authority and the decreasing efficiency as one moves away from contact with the bright lights mitigate against the effects of a highly centralised system. The more foolish or tactless rules and regulations promulgated by the centre may be unknown, and if known safely ignored, by dozens of local officials and local communities. Indeed, it is surely this built-in inefficiency, which was greater in the nIneteen-twenties, that saved the revolutionary reforms of Ataturk from provoking effective opposition. People did not know, or did not understand, or did not care what the central government was doing.