Does public service mean “ask what the country can do for you?”

In seeking to inject a public ethos into people, US President Kennedy famously once said: “ask not what the country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” The idea is to inspire people to selflessly contribute to public service for the good of all. Amidst the current crisis, the point is completely lost in Greece. Instead, politicians, with few notable exceptions, appear to equate public service to their own private gain

Greek leadership and symbolic reforms

Why does Greece seem to be mired in a cycle of continuous reforms while creditors are convinced it has not done enough? The problem is leadership, but not how one may surmise. Greek leaders certainly share much of the blame for precipitating the crisis that has engulfed the country, but they should not be wholly blamed for reform failures

Do we need to kill higher education in Greece in order to save it?

The Greek higher education system is in turmoil. The proposed new law promises many drastic changes, some of which are strenuously opposed by all those affected—presidents, faculty, students, and others. Opposition is to be expected; every change yields an equal and opposite reaction although in Greece it seems that one is not proportionate to the other. Every attempt to change is battered by various groups with such ferocity that would stun even gladiators in Rome. The latest example is the decision by the senate of the University of Athens not to implement the new law if it is passed by parliament. And all that in the name of maintaining what they call a “democratic university.

The paradox of reform

Crises are both risks and opportunities. They create uncertainty and ambiguity not only because they tend to bring about change but also because they simultaneously point to different directions of policy. Politicians are torn between two opposing forces. They face the challenge of urgently needing to respond to the exigencies of the moment while being tempted by the opportunity to implement long awaited reforms. Response is defined as the short-term effort – e.g., tax increases and spending reductions – to return things back to “normal.” Reform makes deep, structural changes in policies – e.g., tax collection and public employment – to bring about a new “normal.” There are incentives to move in both directions at once which are periodically updated by elections. However, quite often politicians end up using crisis rhetoric to undermine reforms and return back to the same policies that caused the crisis in the first place. Following the Euro-elections, the Greek government of Antonis Samaras appears to be heading in precisely this direction

Of taxis and men…

The recent strike by taxi owners and drivers has brought into light some of the worst aspects Greek society has to offer. After receiving word by the former minister of transport that their demands for special treatment, i.e., exceptions from full deregulation with fewer or no new licenses in the major cities of Athens and Thessaloniki, the taxi owners were stunned by the new minister’s refusal to honor this “agreement.” The end result is that deregulation will proceed without exception. In response, taxi owners throughout the country decided to respond by striking and closing off the roads to airports, ports, toll booths, and other transport hubs in order to bring the country to a standstill, hoping, I presume, to show the government they mean business when they demand exceptions. Not surprisingly, the government says it will not budge, we’ll see about that, and the opposition, in its own populist way, has declared everything to be the government’s fault. If only they were in government, things would have been handled differently. Well, they were in government and we all know what happened; so for the time being let’s set aside this aspect

Tax evasion and self-flagellation in Greece

There is a public ritual in Iran where pious Shiites commemorate the martyrdom of Imam Hussein. They walk the streets chanting, beating their breasts in penance, cutting themselves with daggers or swords, and whipping themselves in synchronized moves. Recounting such “Passion Play” honors martyrdom, brings catharsis, and indirectly begs for absolution

Long live public employees!

There is a widespread perception that the public sector in Greece is inefficient. This is because civil servants and generally employees of the wider public sector, which includes trains, buses, etc., are lazy, powerful, and inefficient. Agencies are considered to be overstaffed, but no one knows to what extent. For this reason, the minister of the interior conducted a census last year to find out precisely how many civil servants are currently employed in Greece. Yes, it has taken a crisis of gargantuan proportions to finally conduct such a census so that the government accurately knows how many employees it has on payroll; better late than never. The results showed a little over 720,000 without counting employees of the wider public sector, who are significantly fewer

Policies that Succeed and Programs that Fail? Ambiguity, Conflict, and Crisis in Greek Higher Education

Why do some policies adopted by a wide margin fail to be implemented? Highlighting the role of policy entrepreneurial strategies within the Multiple Streams Approach (MSA), we examine the implementation of Greek higher education reform in 2011 to argue that when policies adversely affect the status quo, successful entrepreneurial strategies of issue-linkage and framing, side payments, and institutional rule manipulation are more likely to lead to implementation failure under conditions of crisis, centralized monopoly, and inconsistent political communication. The findings clarify MSA by specifying the conditions that increase the coupling strategies’ chances of success or failure and illuminate the role ambiguity and conflict play in policy reform and implementation

Reforms in health policy during the Greek bailout: what makes reform successful and why?

Despite consecutive MoUs (2010, 2012, 2015), Greek health reforms have been slow-moving with some successes and failures. Why did some reforms succeed while others failed to be implemented? Using the Multiple Streams Framework (MSF), this working paper presents evidence collected from interviews with health policy-related elites and stakeholders in Greece and traces the process of implementation to identify sticky points and configurations of pro- and anti-change coalitions. We hypothesise implementation outcomes are due to three factors: the strategies and power of the main non-state coalition partner (the medical profession), the size of resources needed for successful implementation, and the ability (or not) of government to mobilise public opinion. We examine three cases: the liberalisation of the pharmacy profession (successful implementation), family doctor reforms (partial implementation), and the referral system (mainly unsuccessful implementation). The working paper concludes with implications about policy implementation and practical lessons for policymakers considering possible implementation obstacles

The strategy of venue creation: Explaining health policy change in Greece

How do policy entrepreneurs affect policy change in environments of institutional instability? The literature has predominantly explored policy entrepreneur strategizing in contexts with established institutional settings. In this paper, we argue that under conditions of institutional fluidity and a weak and politicized public administration, venue creation is the more frequently encountered and the more likely successful strategy. We define venue creation as the entrepreneurial strategy of setting-up institutional arrangements of finite duration, predominantly in the form of committees, delegated exclusively with designing reforms. We test our hypothesis in the Greek health policy sector. We explore two policy instances: the unsuccessful attempt at a public health reform in 1992 and the successful introduction of radical policy change for public health in 2003. We employ a process tracing approach spanning thirty years, processing primary data (elite interviews and documents) applying the Multiple Streams Framework (MSF). We find that under conditions of institutional fluidity and administrative weakness, policy entrepreneurs failed in their pursuit of change using venue shopping in 1992 but succeeded through venue creation in 2003, confirming our hypothesis. We conclude with insights for contingent policy entrepreneurship success, the MSF and patterns of policymaking in Greece