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.