Towards a New Social Contract in a Debt-Ridden Southern Economy? The City of Athens Perspective

While the question of whether cities can change the world feeds passionate debates and initiatives around the world, the challenge for Greece’s capital city is rather less ambitious. How can Athens cope with the social impact of the economic crisis in a sustainable way? Indeed, this is a crucial question when one bears in mind the severity of the crisis, on the one hand, and, on the other, the metropolitan size of Athens, which gathers approximately 660,000 registered residents. The fact is that Athens, Greece’s administrative and economic center, has symmetrically suffered from the socioeconomic decline. All these happen in a country where, admittedly, family solidarity can smoothen the crisis’ social impact in rural areas, but not so much in big urban centers, like Athens.

Who is to Blame for Austerity and its Consequences in Greece?

By the end of the crisis, Greece will have lost about 27-30% of its economic output. This sort of disaster is usually seen only after wars and biblical events –but who is to blame in this case since God and the generals had presumably nothing to do with it? A popular cause is “austerity forced upon Greece by international institutions”. This is doubly flawed.

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.