Local governments can be a force for good or bad within poverty governance and distribution systems depending on the political will present within the local elite as well as the government structure in which these elites operate. One thing that can enhance structural bargaining power is knowledge production, which can lead to an increase in citizens' and political elites’ respective capabilities to achieve more. This study aims to shed light to the perspectives of local government actors in the context of distributive politics, poverty governance and endogenous development potentials by assessing the political will present within local governments in Türkiye upon measuring and assessing poverty through the Multidimensional Poverty Index using a triangulation method with two distinct data streams and three blocks for analysis: legal documents concerning the playing field of the local governance as well as interviews conducted from either main parties for understanding to understand how people on the ground operate them. The research aims to contribute to wider debates around decentralisation for good governance, while also assessing localised developments’ limits. The research proposes that electoral success, political ideology, political objectives can lead to vastly different interpretations of local government’s purpose, jurisdiction and intersection and thus yield in different views on local knowledge production and utilization to overcome poverty and increase citizens’ capabilities.