Governing contingencies by proxy: a governmentality approach on social supports in Istanbul under mutual uncertainty

ABSTRACT Contingencies comprise immediate possibilities and aleatory interactions in the form of calculated responses to mutual uncertainties. While contingencies are critically important to governmental policies, yet they have been rarely considered in social analysis. The aim of this study is to analyze how the Covid-19 pandemic as a crisis has been governed both against and through contingencies by investigating the social support measures initiated by the Turkish government and the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IMM). We gathered empirical data qualitatively from 12 in-depth interviews with the officers of local government and NGOs, supplemented by official documents. We found that contingencies are produced and become residual through configurational interdependencies, such as competition between the central and local government, unemployment, inadequate support, standardization, path dependency, and lack of diversification in need assessment. This study revealed that governmental practices are governed through contingent possibilities and interactions under mutual uncertainty and the politics of crisis management and conflict between local and central authority changed social support mechanisms.


Introduction
Uncertainties and crises, such as pandemics, elicit immediate possibilities, temporality, and aleatory interactions. This study seeks to address how crises and uncertainties are governed through temporal measures such as food cards and monthly cash payments, and how governmental conflict and competition are produced through intelligible connections (such as algorithms) and interdependent conjunctures (some as collective action, philanthropy platforms, and WhatsApp groups). Following Foucault's 1 governmentality approach, in this article we refer to immediate possibilities and aleatory interactions in the form of calculated responses to mutual uncertainties as contingencies. In this study, however, we found that some contingencies remained unresolved and uncalculated with the temporality of governmental measures and multiple and complex conjunctions governed in the form of social supports. We argue that strategic and structural concerns (competition and necessity) leave some contingencies behind (e.g. the poverty of lonely old people and working-class poverty).
This article contributes to the field in two important ways. First, prior studies have focused on contingencies in relation to necessity, determination 2 or materiality 3 by emphasizing their definitional relativities. Moreover, prior research has devoted limited attention to conjunctural interdependencies of diverse aspects and instead studied them within isolated realms, for example, by solely focusing on recovery from a crisis or risk 4 , on local government 5 , support mechanisms 6 , the central government's supremacy over the local government 7 , risk management and contingency theory in public organizations 8 , the principal-agent model in local-central government dynamics 9 , political strategy, 10 or risk and innovation in public services. 11 These studies have mostly focused on 'what' questions, such as causal dependencies, conjunctural interdependence, temporal effects, choice happenings and individual agency, and thus disregarded 'how' questions, such as relationships of complex multiplicities of governmental processes connected and operationalized by intelligible mechanisms. This study expands this literature by revealing the breaks in systemic and strategic approach toward poverty alleviation that categorizes, measures, and distributes social care through algorithms. These breaks are governed by random and irregular connections between actors.
Second, contingencies are constituted by intelligible mechanisms that link diverse practices such as databases, algorithms, data collection, and data sharing. These mechanisms become a tool of calculation and rationalization from the multiplicity of diverse processes with a strategic schema 'establishing the intelligibility of the processes … by showing phenomena of support, reciprocal reinforcement, cohesion, and integration.' 12 Although Foucault accounts for the state as the center of this complex governmentality, on the ground, one finds diverse actors and their connections and relationships in the form of strategies and tactics. This study adds a new dimension to this by focusing on the substitutive role of NGOs in social care.

Definitional relativity of contingency
The existing literature identifies contingency in two ways. First, contingency means a rational and categorical reconstruction of reality by being dependent and conditional upon something and immediate possibilities. 13 Something is called contingent because it is dependent on an external ground, a cause, or necessities, such as in our case social support resources as an external ground. Within structural and strategic concerns, contingencies mainly concentrate on causal dependencies, temporal effects (contextual, situational and periodic effects), chance happenings (their arbitrary impacts on collective outcomes) as well as the role of individual agency on collective significance. 14 The peculiar aspect of contingency, in this view, is that contingencies are not accidental or coincidental. Contingency is made probable within its context through indeterminate open-ended conjunctures. For instance, actors struggle to look for new support opportunities (e.g. waitand-see attitude, lobbying, networking) and to improve their particular conditions (e.g. individuals' level of need for support). Second is the conceptual aspect of contingency, which is coupled with multiplicity, irrationality, chance, and randomness without any identified cause and ground with endless differentiation. 15 Such contingency is theorized as a relational configuration 16 and interdependence of interests. We define contingency as immediate possibilities and aleatory interactions in the form of calculated responses to mutual uncertainties.
Given the relativity of understanding of contingencies, this article, in light of the constitutive dynamics of contingencies, reveals the multiplicity of contingencies produced as conditional and interest-based. Therefore, this study unfolds the intelligibility grid/connection between necessities and contingencies. Previous literature considers contingency as the opposite of necessity. 17 Given this distinction, if an event cannot be prevented, it is called as necessity. For instance, social supports are necessary since we cannot stop poverty; in other words, even if social supports are provided, poverty cannot be prevented. This is also what a realist account describes as contingencies by separating contingency from necessity to ensure and promote structural and strategic provisions and make them prerequisites. 18 We argue, however, if contingencies as enablers are freed from necessities, some contingencies cannot be observed and be visible but are endure and remain. 'Possibility and actuality begin in the form of contingency (the 'anything' and the 'whatever'), and end in necessary reciprocity; conversely, necessity begins with what cannot be otherwise, and ends by letting others go free.' 19 Necessities play a role to justify and legitimate contingencies without eliminating the problem of the remaining poor (residual contingencies). From here, it follows that social supports based on the systemic necessities (i.e. calculated vis-à-vis poverty or hunger line), seem to ignore (uncalculated) contingencies, such as the level of household expenses, the number of people living a domicile, job insecurity, the food quality consumed by the family, and the conditions of family members. These residual contingencies are set free and turn into the constitutive element of radical contingencies (i.e. chronic poverty, those who stay outside the support system's algorithms) under mutual uncertainty (crisis conditions). Moreover, such a benchmarking between contingency and necessity also limits the social analysis into a 'what' question and would not reveal the mitigative and constitutive roles of contingencies. In a nutshell, if the provided support does not prevent poverty, it is not relevant whether we define social supports either as contingencies or necessities. The next section explains how contingencies are produced within contested intelligible mechanisms of governmental multiplicity (a plurality of agencies).

Social supports as intelligible mechanisms in governing contingencies
In Security, Territory, Population, Foucault defines the concept of governmentality as an 'ensemble formed by institutions, procedures, analyses and reflections, calculations, and tactics that allow the exercise of this very specific, albeit very complex, power.' 20 This concept has also been addressed in relation to not only public bodies but also NGOs which employ 'a variety of techniques and forms of knowledge,' in terms of 'a plurality of governing agencies and authorities, of aspects of behavior to be governed, of norms invoked, of purposes sought, and of effects, outcomes and consequences.' 21 As 'the function of intelligibility of the state' to make it 'rational, necessary, to govern,' contingencies are introduced and governed 'rationally according to necessity.' 22 We argue that within the multiplicity of complex governmentalities, contingencies are governed through intelligible mechanisms, which also have a contingent character. Social care entails 'a cluster of intelligible and analyzable relations,' a la Foucault, 23 that enable diverse elements to connect each other designed to operate the current system (i.e. social care) as it is, without changing 'any given phenomenon' (i.e. poverty) or individual conditions (i.e. means-test below poverty or hunger line, lonely old people, single mothers, disabled people) but only intervening (i.e. by social supports) 'at the level of their generality.' 24 However, such an intervention is just to contain the phenomena rather than prevent it. 25 Therefore, contingency is not something external but is found within both immanent and contingent streams in the art of government that do not take social support as its core public service but leave it to become as residual. 26 By rendering the circulation of aleatory flows of interactions which are calculated and measurable, contingencies also generate economic, social and political value through social supports. Intelligible tools and techniques of governmentality appear here in the form of aleatory transactions and exchange of supports and this is how contingencies become 'the principle of a political rationality.' 27 Social supports under uncertainty produce contingent calculations, categorizations, and payments, and the different configurations of these processes, which are short term and temporal, calculated, random and aleatory, and interest-based.

Social supports in the Turkish context
Turkey's social assistance is considered to have corporatist characteristics 28 targeting different socio-economic challenges. The transformation of the welfare regime converged with the neoliberal paradigm with the retreat of the state 29 and led to intense paternalist relations. 30 The rising competitive authoritarianism, 31 besides being entangled with 'religious forms of governmentality,' transformed the neoliberal aspects of the country into a new form that ensured that the welfare regime was based on neoliberal social policies and delegated to faith-based voluntary associations. 32 Moreover, Turkey has followed a residual approach to social policies in which the state provides social care only if the family members lose their capacity to provide selfcare. 33 The social support mechanism in Turkey is characterized as a form of social neoliberalism, which lies between orthodox neoliberalism and social democracy. 34 The concept of social neoliberalism points to the synthesis of market-oriented policies and 'state-interventionist and inclusive social policies.' 35 By distinguishing social neoliberalism from regulatory neoliberalism, the Turkish welfare mix illustrates the key factor of electoral success with respect to formal and informal redistributive mechanisms. This success is recognized as the 'conservative, center-right neo-populist response to neoliberalism,' 36 associated with leadership style and 'personalistic ties to the impoverished masses while pursuing neoliberal economic policies.' 37 Such redistributive mechanisms under social neoliberalism, which target the family in operationalizing these policies, have emerged as a strategy to alleviate the destructive outcomes of neo-liberal policies and protect citizens from market-oriented reform. 38 Following the 2000-2001 economic crises, the neoliberal turn in urban governance had conjunctions with regulatory neoliberalism under the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) stand-by agreements, which lasted until 2008. 39 Neoliberal reforms had been applied by local governments that strengthened the corporatization and marketization of municipal services 40 , especially via municipal companies. These reforms were preserved under the auspices of the stable political environment created by the efforts to adopt and implement these reforms. The 2008 financial crisis created a shortage in capital inflow 41 , which was linked to rising authoritarianism entangled with 'religious forms of governmentality' 42 in Turkey. The neoliberal aspectes of urban governance also shifted towards new forms of neoliberal social policies and delegation to faith-based voluntary associations. 43 This new 'welfare mix' and neoliberal urban governance also reconfigured state-civil society relations. 44 This transformation has been labeled in various ways, including competitive authoritarianism 45 , neoliberal authoritarian regime, 46 authoritarian neoliberalism 47 , neoliberal populism 48 , and social neoliberalism. For example, Dorlach pointed to the synthesis of marketoriented policies and 'state-interventionist and inclusive social policies.' 49 More recently, following the outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic and in the absence of comprehensive government support, civic organizations stepped in to provide social support to those who lost their income and were not under any safety net during the lockdown. 50 Different studies highlighted civic organizations agility and collaboration with local authorities. 51 Other studies showed how some select organizations began to shift their attention to urban poverty while developing a broader critique of economic models. 52

Research methods
We undertook a case study of central and local governments in March 2020 and March 2022. We analyzed the analytical and performative mechanism 53 of contingent policies during the Covid-19 pandemic through multiple, temporal, complex, 54 contingent, 55 and co-constitutive phases. By adopting a performative approach, the study aimed to reveal how these phases have certain outcomes 56 and to link open conjunctures 57 and observed outcomes. 58 These phases were operationalized in narratives and contingencies, such as different governmental forms and multiplicities.
We gathered empirical data qualitatively from 12 in-depth interviews with local government officers and representatives of NGOs (see Table 1). We selected these groups through snowball sampling because they are among the most active and prominent ones in the field of social support and they work closely with each other on the ground. We asked questions regarding the problems and challenges of social support mechanisms, barriers and obstacles to inclusive support measures, and conflicting and converging interests of agents. We supplemented these with secondary data, including official documents and policy documents, including government and NGO papers, policy reports, public statements, speeches from leaders of state institutions and local governments, transcripts of local council sessions, transcripts of live broadcasts of politicians and technocrats, statements made by local councilors to newspapers, official budget data, official Twitter and Instagram accounts of public authorities and local councilors, and relevant laws and decrees. The data was enriched by detailed narratives, visual aids, and direct quotes from key public authorities. For clarity and consistency, we limited our analyses to the social supports provided by the central government and the local government in Istanbul.
The data analysis was conducted in two steps by using NVivo software (see Table 2): (1) data reduction, in which the initial themes, such as structural changes, governmental strategies, and the competition between local and central governments were identified; and (2) data interpretation, during which the initial themes were contextualized into analytical themes, such as those of structured, strategic and performative approaches to social space analysis. 59 We also explored the practical implications of the connections between social supports and governmentality to guide policymakers on the possible interactions available to manage contingencies under uncertainty. At the same time, the analysis aims to inform them of the strategic logic that requires focusing more on permanent, institutionalized policies rather than short-sighted, conditional, and provisional ones.

Findings and Discussion: Multiple governmentalities of contingency
In this section, contingency is unfolded in two approaches in order to reveal its diverse attributes, connotations, and impacts (Table 3). We argue that contingencies, which are limited to the appropriation of economic necessities, ignore the constitutive and performative dynamics that render contingencies as 'becoming.'

Contingencies as economic necessities
This section depicts how contingency is used to govern with intelligible mechanisms that connect diverse practices of actors, processes, and regularities with aleatory connections. According to Foucault, governmental instruments include (1) the management of dangers and the implementation of mechanisms of security; (2) disciplinary controls; and (3) interventionist policies. 60 In parallel to these instruments, Turkey's central government's attempt to cope with the pandemic can be delineated into the following four governmental aspects: 61 (1) ensuring physical distance (disciplinary controls); (2) guaranteeing the smooth functioning of the health system (management of dangers), (3) preserving production, supply, and retail chains (interventionist policies); and (4) maintaining public order (interventionist policies). The motto empowered by the Turkish government, 'Let people live so that the state will live too' (İnsanı yaşat ki devlet yaşasın), corresponds with what Dillon suggests as governmental mechanisms that aim to 'make life live' not against but through contingencies. 62 As such, contingencies represent the circumstances of immediate possibilities, such as disciplinary controls (i.e. over local government's practices) and interventionist policies (i.e. social support measures). Additionally, these contingencies were becoming calculable and calculative, with an emphasis on numbers and institutions (i.e. the Vefa Social Support Groups 63 ).
Public order will not be disturbed. Our police, our guards, our gendarmerie perform their duties devotedly by contributing to the Vefa Social Support Groups as well as ensuring public order and all its elements. To date, over 3 million citizens have been served through the Vefa Social Support Groups. 64 The governmental instruments employed to manage the Covid-19 pandemic are one way of measuring contingencies. This is, as Dillon noted, how contingencies become commodified by '[making them] calculable and  67 The Covid-19 package was described as a 'social protection shield' by emphasizing the quantities, numbers, and figures of support provided for citizens. However, the contingent forms of social supports included short-term work allowances, furlough paid for by the state, and the prohibition of contract termination. Table 4 summarizes contingent measures that were put in place, which were mostly indeterminate and temporal. Conditional support measures based on certain application criteria were initiated in March and April 2020, and the laws and regulations have since been amended several times, representing and revealing further emergent contingencies. On April 2 2020, President Erdoğan announced, 'Remember … all is temporary. After these days come and go, our services to our country and cities, the support we give to our nation, will remain behind.' 68 Therefore, the politics of contingency aimed to eliminate the impacts of the crisis, although this was simply an attempt to govern the space of unknowns and form measures that contained new calculations and disciplinary and interventionist constructs.

Contingencies as part of political competition
The conflict and competition between the central and local governments restricted local governments' policy decisions and paved the way for them to seek for other alternatives, such as social support campaigns initiated by the local government. On March 30 2020, the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IMM) announced a donation campaign to support citizens during the pandemic. One day later, the central government launched the National Solidarity Campaign to help those in need, and it was announced that the money collected in this 'We Are Enough With Us' campaign would be distributed to needy citizens through the Social Assistance and Solidarity Foundations. 69 On the same day, the Ministry of the Interior published Circular No. 6051 and blocked the donation accounts of the IMM in state-owned banks. 70 The main opposition party, the Republican People's Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, CHP) filed lawsuits in both Istanbul and Ankara to overturn the government's decision. The power conflict and partisan interests gave municipal leaders reasons to do more than what the central government required and mobilize and empower civil society actors as innovative forms of urban governance. On April 1, the mayors of 11 metropolitan municipalities issued a joint statement on the illegal suspension of the donation campaign. The statement emphasized the need to treat the issue non-politically and not to be conflictual. 71 On May 25, the act of providing March 2020 Advance payments of pension salaries and bonuses. vii One-time. April 2020 $9.8 million sent to nursing homes, and nursing home fee will be not charged from those who will remain on leave with their relatives. viii Temporal. April-June Income criteria and severe disability requirement for the elderly and disabled who need institutional care were temporarily lifted for three months. ix One-time.
March 2020 The Istanbul governorship announced that 50,000 people over 65 years old would be provided with food parcel support. x Permanent.
March 2020 Article No. 6. The old-age pension was paid to those who continue to work among the disabled and war-disabled people on a monthly basis, with a minimum of 20 years of insurance period and 5,000 days of premium. It was announced that over 805,000 citizens of over 65 years old who did not have social security would receive 103 USD of their old age salaries per month. xi Permanent.
March 2020 Article No. 47. The monthly minimum payment amount, which was projected as 154 USD for retirees and rights holders who receive old age, invalidity, and death pensions, was increased to $230. xii Permanent.
April 2020 Conditional Health Aid, Conditional Puerperience Aid, and Conditional Pregnancy Aid were increased by 29 percent. xiii Permanent.
April 2020 The  Ibid,68. citizenship-based assistance (without the requirement of a background check) was rejected by opposition parties in the IMM Council. 72 The municipality announced that it would not be able to receive requests for assistance as it would delay decisions on the applications.

Contingencies as 'becoming'
With the pandemic, immediate contingencies emerged as a result of the lack of pro-active and quick response, inaction, delays, short-term measures, and unanticipated events. Just after fifteen days of the curfews, individuals tried to reach NGOs enumerating numerous problems, such as saying there was no water or baby food in their house. Even though many also called the municipality and/or the governor's office, they could not get any support in the beginning of the pandemic.
At first, they [public institutions] perceived the pandemic as a normal situation. People called me and reached the municipalities yet they could not get what they wanted because the public did not really feel how severe poverty and hunger conditions were. They did not expect it to take this long. They didn't feel it for, like, six months. 73 Contingencies produced through governmental gaps and temporality, caused by factors such as local-national competition, unemployment, standardization, path dependency, lack of diversification (among disabled people, gender, age of family members, need assessment), and short-term applications (one week or one month), resulted in rapid impoverishment. NGOs tried to intervene into providing greater social welfare, but the gap in services could not be fully filled. The main result of these contingencies was accelerating and rapid impoverishment.
… they had no money. They could not go out either. They were sick. Shall they die? Other people's health was also in danger because after the curfew they went out and tried to do something. Poverty increased a lot at that time. 74 On May 4 2020, the IMM launched the Pending Bills campaign with the hashtag #wewillsucceedtogether to create 'possible connections' 75 between philanthropists and those who were in need and could not pay their water and natural gas bills of the IMM-owned municipal companies, the Istanbul Water and Sewerage Administration (İSKİ) and and the Istanbul Gas and Natural Gas Distribution Inc (İGDAŞ). At that point, corporate interests became 'operator[s] of the art of government'. 76 Within three weeks, more than one million families had applied to the municipality for social assistance due to economic difficulties and employment problems as a result of the pandemic.
The hand that gives does not see the hand that takes … and Istanbul is demonstrating impressive solidarity. … With our Pending Bill application, invoices of 2,073,580 liras were paid for 16,100 families in need within seven hours. No one will be in trouble in this city; we are here, and we are all together. 77 As a technique of combination, pending bills could be searched for by philanthropists who could select the bills by the amount and by the institution. 78 Those who applied with pending invoices were citizens who declared during their online applications to sosinc.ibb.gov.tr that their monthly household income per capita was 940 Turkish liras or less (in parallel with the increase in the 2021 minimum wage), and it was not possible for those with an income above this figure to apply for a pending bill to be paid. This campaign evolved into the 'Pending Support' campaign. The social supports provided by the IMM spilt into three more campaigns, namely the Mother-Baby Support Campaign, Family Support Campaign, and Education Support Campaign. In addition, within the scope of the 'invoice brotherhood system' for high-priced İSKİ and İGDAŞ invoices, a selected high-value invoice could be paid to the level 'deemed appropriate' by the benefactors, and the remainder could be left for other benefactors to pay. As 'risk commodifies contingency by making it calculable and fungible,' 79 events and eventualities are measured within a generalized measure of account, then correlated with projected outcomes. As such, individuals give a score and take a chance on that score; 'in simple terms, they bet.' 80 Indebted citizens were, thus, put in a position in which they needed to wait for someone else's 'bet' to pay their bills.
In 2020, the IMM also launched a new social support database. Due to this transition, some families were excluded from the system. NGOs that recognized this problem shared the family's identification numbers and phones with the public, and ensured that the family received the social review again and the family could get food cards and social support. They have attempted to situate the social supports assistance as a matter of social right rather than grace. They studied the outreach algorithms developed by the Istanbul Planning Authority (IPA) while collecting aid requests and attempted to measure household poverty not just by income axis but by adding new data, such as demographics, unemployment status, disability, and applied mapping method. Therefore, they started to diversify the supports in accordance with the needs of the households (cash aid, nutritional aid, baby care aid, education aid, and so on). This diversification deepened and stratified the different types of deprivation of poverty. A new social support algorithm enabled the understanding of the detailed needs and demands, yet the multi-layered poverty still persists. Furthermore, the IMM initiated a system of graduation happening 'when and if the recipient is employed through the Regional Employment Office or if his/her income exceeds the hunger line.' 81 During the pandemic period, 2 million households (out of 4.5 million) in Istanbul applied for social support from the municipality. Up until September 2021, the IMM provided support assistance based on the poverty line.
However, due to the deteriorating economic situation and the unemployment triggered by the pandemic process (causal dependence), the poverty line has widened. The IMM's social assistance had to take a strategic, measured action (temporal effects) and provided assistance only to the 'most' disadvantaged peopleprimarily considered as those at risk of hungeras opposed to the larger number of people living below the poverty line. 82 Contingencies are produced and maintained, and yet cannot be contained, prevented, and eliminated. Hence contingencies become residual. By centering on multiplicities of interdependent conjunctures, we found that contingencies become immanent in social care through intelligence mechanisms (i.e. a connection between strategies, tactics, and interests). We, therefore, propose that structural and strategic thinking that consider contingencies as necessities render them residual (i.e. the remaining poor). There is a need to address the residual contingencies in order not to leave anyone behind. Since contingencies are rely heavily on causal dependence, temporal effects, and chance happenings in the maintenance of social order, such governmental rationality produces further contingencies with respect to residual groups who are not qualified as poor. This process also reveals contingencies as 'becoming' by making individuals more dependent and residua as objects of the support system. Competitive conflicts of interests also enable other actors (i.e. NGOs) to acquire both residual and pivotal roles that can help close the gaps/bugs in the system.

Conclusion
This study revealed that governmental practices are governed through contingent possibilities and interactions under mutual uncertainty and the politics of crisis management and the conflict between local and central authority changed social support mechanisms. Contingencies during times of crisis are materialized in the form of social supports with temporal and marketized interventions. Innovative solutions create aleatory characteristics (for example, a benefactor could choose to pay a pending pill of a specific citizen); and employed interests (via municipal companies' corporate interests, as well as political, economic and social interests) to drive government policy. Due to the competition between local and central governments, social support become a competitive device.
We found that contingencies render the circulation of social supports as a domain of calculability. Therefore, governmental rationality pursues social support, as a 'vehicle for a movement', based on 'the effect that it occasionally exerts in a state of repose arises out of an anticipation of its further motion.' 83 Anything that is not in motion 'is completely extinguished' 84 and becomes temporal and a one-time occurrence. With its Pending Bills campaign, Istanbul's local government '[sought] ways to offset exposure to contingency through the operation of a generalized system of real-time accounting of exposure to contingency.' 85 This study informed the enabling roles of contingencies as calculating, measuring, and circulating. 86 We observed that the social care processes involve aleatory events and interactions that pair and link together intelligible 'connections between disparate terms which remain disparate.' 87 In these processes, contingencies are governed not only to prevent and mitigate them but at the same time by or through these contingencies in intelligible ways, such as technology, background check, need assessment, social review, and competitive grids. 88 Therefore, contingency creates disparate forms of governmentalities functioning at the local and central levels. As the political arena becomes vulnerable to manipulation as a result of uncertainty, such a process also reconfigures new areas of politics, which enable political actors to mobilize redistributive mechanisms through new social provisions at the local and national levels of government. In this way, contingencies are embodied as new techniques, tools, and governmental technologies in the form of social supports in a temporal or one-time and indeterminate manner.
Our findings show important ways in which contingencies can be minimized. These include keeping the databases up-to-date, collecting detailed information in social support applications, consistently updating system revisions and algorithms in view of the changes in the field, making social support impact analyses comprehensive and inclusive. At the same time, there is a need for identifying the residuals and those that had received support but not anymore. Finally, social support criteria, as well as the algorithms, should be democratic, transparent and participatory.
Our findings are similar to those of previous studies, in terms of the residual character of Turkey's social policies and lack of institutional and formal approach taking social care as a core public service. Our study contributes to the existing literature in several respects. Firstly, it reveals the constitutive dynamics of this residual approach by unfolding residual contingencies that enabled us to see the gaps and breaks in the system. Secondly, although the means-tested social assistance scheme provided a monthly allowance to the elderly and disabled who had no legally responsible relatives, we found that, today, the remaining poor endured surrounded by residual contingencies are primarily the elderly living alone and workingclass poor.
Contingent interventions in crisis are presumed to be indeterminate in co-constitutive processes where contingencies and necessities produce each other, and where new areas of politics and intervention emerge. These forms of politics and power areas are mutually co-constituted through contingencies in times of immediate crisis. The co-constitution process enhanced existing governmental ties (i.e. social provisions delegated with local associations; Vefa Social Support Groups organized by the Ministry of Interior, the increase of monthly transfers to Social Assistance and Solidarity Foundations). It also created new contingencies as governmental rationalities and strategies with conditional and residual forms.
Contingencies are eventual and constituted by events and eventualities, which are, as Dillon posits, 'allocated probabilities based on the assessment and measurement of agents and the self-governance.' 89 The calculative and measurable supports provided for millions of people in Turkey were conditional and aleatory. Contingencies are co-produced in between processes by overcoming contingencies and producing new ones; for example, the unpaid leave support of $180, which was almost 50 percent of the proposed minimum wage and left employees in unsecured conditions. Moreover, supports were indefinite and based on decisions made every three months. This shows how support measures are materialized by contingent actions that enable flexibility in support policies through contingent factors that make residuals invisible and unknown. This process is shaped by aleatory and causative will, events, tools, and interests.
The factors that increase residual contingency need to be addressed by an integrated and diversified tracking system, institutionalized and standardized review criteria and measures, and the sustainability of support mechanisms. Residuals are co-causative and constitutive of contingencies due to the lack of pro-active and quick response, inaction, delays, temporality. Residuals are also taken for granted and intrinsic to structure. As a result, the transferred poverty cannot be prevented and the poverty continues to be passed on to the next generation.
Finally, it was beyond the scope of our study to examine different locations. We sought to mitigate this limitation by focusing our study on Istanbul, which is the largest city in Turkey and where we could observe diverse contingencies during the Covid-19. Future research should undertake comparative analyses of multiple cases to understand the linkage between governmental processes at different levels and contingencies during times of crisis to reveal the diverse outcomes of this linkage. Notes 88. Dillon, "Governing through Contingency." 89. Ibid, 320.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).