The financial crisis has badly damaged the Greek and Portuguese welfare states

Several European states have pursued austerity policies in the aftermath of the financial crisis, but how have these policies affected welfare states? Sotirios Zartaloudis writes on the impact of the crisis in Greece and Portugal. He argues that both countries have had to pursue unprecedented spending cuts, tax rises and labour market reforms and that the crisis has had a significant negative effect on their welfare states

Greek elections 2015: the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning?

SYRIZA’s recent electoral victory attracted global attention. This commentary will try to explain SYRIZA’s surprise move to form a coalition government with the far-right party ANEL arguing that both parties share a worldview that explains their co-operation

Wielding soft power in a world of neglect: the impact of the European employment strategy in Greece and Portugal

The thesis investigates under what conditions the European Employment Strategy (EES) can influence the domestic employment policy of European Union member states. It aims to answer the question by examining two critical or ‘least likely’ cases: Greece and Portugal by focusing on three key areas of employment policy: public employment services, gender equality policies (mainstreaming, reconciliation and pay gaps) and ‘flexicurity’. The thesis employs the ‘Europeanization’ approach and tests the hypothesis that ‘if the EES altered Greek and Portuguese employment policy at all, it did so through one of three main Europeanization pathways: (i) policy learning; (ii) the domestic empowerment of policy entrepreneurs; (iii) financial conditionality.’ In examining the domestic impact of the EES the thesis does not presume an Europeanization effect a priori. Rather, the research begins from the domestic level (in a process-tracing method) and investigates whether, how and to what extent the EES had a role in the Greek and Portuguese domestic policy. The possibility of other variables, either external or internal, being pre-eminent is examined. The empirical study sought to triangulate a wide range of methods and sources. Although Greece and Portugal share a number of characteristics that may inhibit Europeanization in this type of area, empirical evidence largely supported the research hypothesis and suggested that two key conditions were conducive to the EES having a domestic impact in these cases: the existence of successful policy entrepreneurs who would actively use the EES as a policy window to promote their agenda and -when these were absent or lacked access to power and resources- the existence of the European Social Fund financial conditionality. Thus, soft power can be wielded in the world of neglect without policy learning which is considered the main ‘soft’ mechanism of domestic change in the literature

Greece and the recent financial crisis: meltdown or configuration?

The recent financial and subsequent sovereign debt crisis caused shock and awe in Greek politics. For the first time since the restoration of democracy in 1974, Greece entered a period of prolonged recession from 2008 onwards. After signing up to the Troika (European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund) bail-out in 2010, the recession intensified and was coupled with significant and widespread cuts in public spending and benefits along with big tax rises. Greece also had to implement a series of unpopular labour market and welfare reforms, restructure its state apparatus and proceed with mass scale privatisations. This economic and policy shift affected Greek politics immensely. The immediate impact of the crisis was a dramatic rise in protests, strikes and public discontent. The long-term impact seems to be the extensive reconfiguration of the post-1974 political system: in the June 2012 elections Greece’s two major parties witnessed a dramatic decline in their vote share, while - for the first time in Greek history - extreme-left and extreme-right parties’ popularity rose considerably

Using refugees as leverage? Greece and the instrumentalisation of the European migrant crisis

How does forced migration feature in the foreign policy approaches of EU member states and how does it affect their bargaining strategies? Drawing on a new study, Gerasimos Tsourapas and Sotirios Zartaloudis assess the foreign policy response of Greece during the 2015-16 migrant crisis. They detail how the Greek government first adopted a ‘blackmailing’ strategy focused on threats, before shifting to a ‘backscratching’ strategy of co-operation once the numbers of asylum seekers within its territory were reduced

The impact of the fiscal crisis on Greek and Portuguese welfare states::Retrenchment before the catch-up?

This article examines the impact of the ongoing (2008–13) economic crisis on Greek and Portuguese welfare state reforms in a comparative perspective with a particular focus on the public sector, labour markets and social protection. It is argued that the recent crisis caused ‘shock and awe’ in Greece and Portugal resulting in an unprecedented wave of cuts, tax rises and labour market reforms. In particular, public sector remuneration and jobs were cut, pensions were significantly curtailed and pension rights significantly restricted, successive tax hikes were implemented and welfare benefits became less generous and more conditional. It is argued that these reforms constitute a critical juncture and a considerable effort towards welfare retrenchment, which is which is implemented before converging with the more advanced welfare states of the EU15. Both countries appeared to be significantly more vulnerable to the crisis than the richer countries of Northern Europe (e.g. Germany, Austria, Sweden, Finland and the Netherlands) and their larger Southern counterparts (Italy and Spain). Yet, the latter had to implement similar measures, albeit in a less abrupt and extensive fashion. In other words, it may be that size is less important than economic and political power for coping with the effects of the current crisis

Lower levels of clientelism in Portuguese politics explain why Portugal handled austerity better than Greece during the crisis

Greece and Portugal were two of the worst hit countries by the Eurozone crisis, yet the domestic political reaction within each state was notably different. While in Greece there were difficulties agreeing to austerity policies and the party system underwent substantial change; Portuguese parties negotiated a broad political consensus over reforms and the mainstream parties largely retained their support base. Alexandre Afonso, Sotirios Zartaloudis and Yannis Papadopoulos argue that the key reason for this difference relates to the varying levels of clientelism in each country, where political ‘patrons’ provide goods or services to their backers in return for political support. They write that the fact Portugal had lower levels of clientelism before the crisis ensured that Portuguese parties were more capable of backing austerity policies without alienating their supporters