Greek Bureaucracy and Public Administration: Th e Persistent Failure of Reform

CONTENTS 24.1 Introduction .........................................................................................................395 24.2 History of Bureaucratic Reform .......................................................................... 397 24.2.1 Birth and Growth of Bureaucracy in Greece: Th e Early Years ............... 397 24.2.2 Transition Period .................................................................................. 398 24.2.3 Th e Postwar Years ................................................................................. 399 24.3 Analyzing the Failure to Reform ..........................................................................401 24.3.1 Societal Considerations ..........................................................................401 24.3.2 Individual Perceptions ........................................................................... 402 24.3.3 Institutional Imperatives ....................................................................... 403 24.4 A Parting Word .................................................................................................. 404

References ...................................................................................................................... 404

24.1 Introduction Administrative reform, that is, “the artifi cial inducement of administrative transformation against resistance” (Caiden, 1969:1), has been a much talked about subject by Greek political leaders of almost all ideological dispositions for many decades. In his 1952 Report on the Greek Economic

Problem, the minister of fi nance Kyriakos Varvaressos bluntly stated that “we must not expect any real improvement in the country’s situation, as long as we do not deal with the fundamental problem of the inadequacy of its administrative machine” (cited in Argyriades, 1968:345). Fifteen or so years later, George Papadopoulos (1968), head of the military regime (1967-1974), referred to Greece’s bureaucracy as “an unbridled organ that has all but ceased being servant of the public.” A similar line was struck by the conservative Constantine Karamanlis, head of the civilian government that succeeded the fallen Junta, who stated that one of his government’s major goals would be to modernize the nation’s administrative system by strengthening its “moral,” “human,” “material,” and “structural” bases (Shinn, 1985:238). Th e socialists under Andreas Papandreou in their 1981 preelection literature identifi ed favoritism and excessive centralization as the main culprits of administrative inadequacy and promised to place bureaucratic reform high on their list of priorities (Pasok, 1981:103-105). Finally, the conservatives under Costas Karamanlis (nephew of the former) returned to power in 2004 and decided to up the rhetorical ante promising “to reestablish the state.”