Institutional manipulation and political control as methods of organizing intergovernmental relations in Greece

Public policies are designed and implemented in parallel at multiple levels, from the national to the local, which are functionally intertwined. It is therefore not easy to distinguish local from central-national jurisdiction. On the contrary, given the interdependence and the need for cooperation between the administrative levels, there is an imperative need for coordination mechanisms. Historically, the emphasis was not on cooperation between levels but on the distinction of their competencies, jurisdictions and responsibilities. Despite the fact that the Greek Constitution, in its part on the state organization, stipulates the exclusive competence of local self-government in local affairs, other constitutional provisions explicitly provide for the pro-state competence of important public policy issues, an inconsistency which confuses the actual scope of competencies and responsibilities of local government. As a result, the Greek political-administrative system, instead of providing mechanisms for cooperation between levels and despite the Constitutional provision, is led to a restrictive listing of the responsibilities of the self-government, essentially seeking to limit its powers. This choice, on the one hand, conflicts from an institutional point of view with the above-mentioned provision of the Constitution and thus alters the constitutional requirement on the management of local affairs, on the other hand, by explicitly separating responsibilities, it breaks down the homogeneity and consistency of policy areas, creating therefore additional coordination problems. Within this vague and contradictory institutional framework, the long centralist tradition of the Greek state and the relevant practices of the central administration claim as much power as possible, marginalizing the local self-government, neutralizing its decisive competence and minimizing its participation in the distribution of the overall political power, turning it finally into a simple executive gear of centralized decision making mechanisms. Thus the central government ends up exerting a constant pressure on the local authorities, both in terms of the scope of power that allows them to manage, determining, even the way it will be managed, as well as in terms of supervision, which in numerous cases goes beyond the control of legality and turns out to be a barrier to initiatives of the local government. Finally, the central government uses its legislative power with the aim of making the local authorities’ dependent, not only at the administrative, but also at the political level. Political dependence is generated due to the fact that the governing political parties seek to impose at the local level friendly authorities, so as to ensure the consent of the local self-government in their priorities and decisions. From the 90's onwards, central parties organize affiliated municipal groups headed by local party representatives and nominate partisan candidates for the municipal elections. In this way the central clientelistic state penetrates the local one as well. This paper, using tools of institutional analysis –both classical and neo-institutional- and the study of clientelistic relations that, traditionally, form the basis of institutional founding and policy making by the Greek political-administrative system, attempts to analyze the negative impact of the lack of effective articulation and coordination between administrative levels.