No abstract

For the past 25 years in Greece, welfare-state reforms have been the result of the interplay between domestic politics and European influences. While pension reform has been aborted, some targeted and smallscale reforms have proven more successful. Wholesale changes of the welfare system have met with strong resistance from private interests and bureaucratic mechanisms. The EU’s impact has mostly been felt in the policies of employment, vocational training, regional development and, less so, social assistance. Other welfare-state reforms have remained mostly on paper. However, the Greek welfare regime is gradually undergoing a cognitive change, manifested in the diffusion of social rights, and has adopted EU-driven policy tools for consultation and decision making. Throughout, path dependence has interacted with reform dynamics, flowing from the country’s integration into the EU.

In Greece, two distinct reform paths led to institutional building and economic managerial types of reform. These two reforms, with the exception of the period 1996–2004, when both institutional and economic reforms were attempted, did not attract the same degree of attention. Institutional reforms were more successful than attempts at managerial reforms; reform implementation on the other hand varies. Economic and managerial reforms can be observed with regard to economic competition, the opening up of the market, and reducing the size of public sector, all areas where pressure from the EU has been stronger. Decentralization reforms were more important politically than administratively. Citizens' rights and service delivery were conceived as reforms of democratization and modernization rather than as managerial reforms. ‘Agencification’ amounted to circumventing existing ministerial structures. Change was incremental, and reforms were minimally guided by the New Public Management paradigm, because of little emphasis on changes imbued by managerial and economic values. Reform dynamics benefited not only from outside pressures but also from the operation of internal, ‘modernizing’ forces.

Before the economic crisis erupted, the public bureaucracies of Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain had embarked on public administration reforms reflecting Neo-Weberian and New Public Management influences. After the onset of the crisis, which functioned as a critical juncture, reforms of public administration and the structures and functions of government decision-making were hastily effected. Administrative reforms reflected almost exclusively New Public Management concerns, whereas reforms of government indicated a rapid concentration and centralisation of power at the summit of the executive. A combination of ‘goodness-of-fit’ and historical institutionalist theories and fiscal pressures exerted by the international economic and institutional environment may explain the abruptness, extent and direction of reform. Southern European governments and public bureaucracies have preserved only some of the historical legacies of government and bureaucratic organisation, but have hurriedly adapted to externally induced pressures to reform.

Governments of countries undergoing a post-communist transition face the dilemma of balancing conflicting demands for greater economic efficiency (to achieve a successful transition to a market system) with demands for enhanced social protection (to legitimize regime change through a visible improvement in living standards which includes vulnerable groups). This paper analyses the transition in Bulgaria and Romania. Unlike other European countries, these countries did not embark on retrenchment policies until the mid-to late  s, so convergence with policies of spending constraint elsewhere in Europe was belated and partial. The social problems created by strict economic policies, exacerbated by a determination to reorganize the post-communist welfare states along the lines promoted by international organizations, are now being recognized. Postcommunist governments in South-eastern Europe have belatedly started to address the social aspects of transition to democracy and the market. This probably reflects the process of regime change in Bulgaria and Romania, which has been characterized as a "two-step transition to democracy", with liberal governments only succeeding transformed communist elites in power after a protracted transition.