1st Annual GPPF Forum 2012: Executive Summary

“Unfolding the Layers of the Crisis: the Nation-State, Europe, and the World”

1st Annual GPPF Chania Forum, 21-22 September 2012

Executive Summary

The third event organized by the Greek Public Policy Forum took place on September 21 and 22 at the Kiani Beach Resort in Chania, Greece. It was kindly sponsored by Decidendi Consultants, the Economic Chamber of Western Crete, and the Regional Development Fund of Crete. The Chania Forum tried to build upon the foundations laid by the two previous Fora at Oxford (June 2011) and Nottingham (March 2012). The Oxford Forum focused on Greece’s multifaceted crisis (economic, political, and social). The Nottingham Forum tried to examine the Greek crisis in its European context.

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.