The GPPF 2011 Oxford Forum

European Institutions in Crisis
Greece in Context

GPPF Oxford Forum, 23-24 June 2011

Full Programme 

Redesigning the Architecture of Greek Local Government

The ongoing European debt crisis has singled out the peripheral economies of the European South by shedding light on their latent pathologies and malfunctions. Often viewed as an epitome of a ‘Mediterranean’ model of political and economic organization, Greece gave utmost expression to those ills pertaining to a weak and inefficient social contract. The Greek post-dictatorial political economic system has been marked by an explosive mix of statism, welfarism, and popular distrust of public institutions that eventually gave way to a downward spiral of state degradation and social degeneration. The country has thus been trapped in a self-enforcing vicious cycle of low state (fiscal and legal) capacity, high policy implementation costs, and depreciating social capital.

Reforming Greek Industrial Relations: Towards a Better Social Partnership

The Problem

Greek industrial relations have been plagued by imbalanced state interference and weak representation which have significantly hindered the development of a vibrant, strong and similar to other EU countries social partnership. Historically, Greek social partners have lacked independence, failed to adequately represent Greece’s working population and had a very narrow set of priorities. These features of the Greek employment relations system exacerbate social injustice, socioeconomic inequalities and pose additional challenges to Greek democracy. This proposal seeks to suggest novel policy measures to strengthen both quantitatively and qualitatively Greek social partnership.

Transnational social space between Greece and Germany

The theories about transnationalism are since twenty years a new attempt to approach migration and diasporic phenomena. The intention to explore different kind of transnational relationships, contacts and ties, which cross the lines from the nation-states and to focus on the transnational agents, networks and organizations, are the primary research field of the transnational migration studies. In continental Europe these field is developing in the last 10 years.

The conditions of the Greek migration to Germany in the sixties allowed the establishment of a transnational social space between the two nation states. This space nurtured not only by the bidirectional mobility of the Greek migrants in this period, but mainly through compatible and comparable sociopolitical developments between the two countries. This allowed the emergence of social and political issues and concerns in the transnational social space, which could be capitalized and were transferable between the two countries.

“Αλλάζοντας το μη ορατό”: Η ελληνική εθνική αφήγηση και κυρίαρχη ιδεολογία ως αιτίες του ελληνικού προβλήματος και μια πρόταση για τη μετατόπιση του σημείου αναφοράς τους

“An event has happened, upon which it is difficult to speak, and impossible to be silent.” Edmund Burk, Parliament, May 5^th 1789.

Στην ιστορία της Ελλάδας είναι ιδιαίτερα σπάνιες οι στιγμές που τόσοι πολλοί συμφωνούν σε κάτι τόσο θεμελιακό. Η χώρα πρέπει να αλλάξει. Το ερώτημα είναι “προς ποιά κατεύθυνση και με ποιόν τρόπο;” Οποιαδήποτε απόπειρα απάντησης αυτού του ερωτήματος έχει ως προϋπόθεση την εξέταση της υποκείμενης αιτίας, ενός αρχικού “γιατί;” της συλλογικής μας αποτυχίας.

Changing Things Unseen: The National Narrative and Dominant Ideology as the Cause of the Greek Problem; A Proposal for Transferring its Center of Gravity

“An event has happened, upon which it is difficult to speak, and impossible to be silent.” Edmund Burk, Parliament, May 5^th 1789.

All across Greece, something is stirring. It is one of those rare moments in history where so many agree to something so fundamental. The country must change. The question is: “To which direction and how?” Any attempt to answer this question has as its prerequisite the examination of an underlying cause, of an initial “why” of our collective failure.