By Kevin Featherstone, Dimitris Papadimitriou
This e-book is worried with a wide query in a single small, yet hugely frustrating case: how can a primary minister determine keep watch over and coordination throughout his or her government?
The Greek process of presidency sustains a 'paradox of strength' at its very center. The structure presents the top minister with large and infrequently unchecked powers. but, the operational buildings, procedures and assets round the top minister undermine their strength to control the govt.. via a research of all major premierships among 1974 and 2009, leading Ministers in Greece argues that the Greek leading minister has been 'an emperor with no clothes'. the prices of this paradox integrated the shortcoming to accomplish key coverage ambitions below successive governments and a fragmented process of governance that supplied the backdrop to Greece's fiscal meltdown in 2010.
Building on an unheard of diversity of interviews and archival fabric, Featherstone and Papadimitriou got down to discover how this paradox has been sustained. They finish with the Greek procedure assembly its 'nemesis': the coming of the shut supervision of its govt by way of the 'Troika' - the representatives of Greece's collectors. The debt problem challenged taboos and compelled a self-reflection. It continues to be doubtful, despite the fact that, no matter if both the exterior process or the household reaction could be adequate to make the Greek procedure of governance 'fit for purpose'.
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Positive working relations—marked by trust, respect, and cooperation—facilitate the implementation of policies handed down from on high (Scheberle 1997: 1, 191–3). Again, the effects of distrust and corruption within government institutions cannot be isolated from the relationship with wider society, as a wide and diverse literature attests. In general, states can influence the ‘construction, maintenance, and destruction’ of different types of trust and government is sometimes crucial in establishing levels of trust amongst citizens that make possible a whole range of transactions (Levi 1998: 82).
Chapter 9 will consider the scope for actors to escape from the systemic constraints. Indeed, the recent debt crisis and the onset of external conditionality and monitoring of the Greek government and its practices have created a potential stimulus to ‘escape’. There is a further aspect here that is closely related to the features outlined above: the organizational fragmentation that is evident across Greek government. This can be seen as sustaining the problems of trust and clientelism already outlined.
In sum, following on from the contrast of the Greek Prime Minister’s formal powers and operational reality, what the comparisons with other systems help to highlight is that the ‘core executive’ in Greece is one of ‘segmented government’ (Elgie 1997) with a ‘solitary centre’ (Goetz and Margetts 1999). These are its key overall features in relation to the problems of control and coordination sought by any individual leader. Analysing Individual Leaderships There is an extensive general literature on the role and relative power of a Prime Minister within the core executive.