The Remains of Authoritarianism: Bureaucracy and Civil Society in Post-Authoritarian Greece
Year: 1995
Type: article
Abstract: The dominant view of Greek civil society is that it is weak compared to the civil societies of other West European countries 1 .At the same time, the Greek bureaucracy is not as strong as its West European counterparts in the sense that the Greek bureaucracy, even after the fall of the colonels' authoritarian regime, cannot resist the incursions of conservative or populist political elites, which, organized around the parties of New Democracy and PASOK respectively, have alternated in power since 1974. 2The topic of bureaucracy and civil society in contemporary Greece presents a theoretically interesting paradox: the relations between the central Greek state and civil society are shaped by state corporatism, which still thrives, although corporatism's favorable political context, authoritarianism, has ceased to exist since the fall of the colonels' regime in 1974 2 .The case of Greece is taken as an example of state-civil society relations which differ from the West European model.While in the West civil societies have generally been able to limit state action or grow in concert with it, in Greece both the bureaucracy and civil society have been permeated by pervasive party factionalism. 3After the transition to democracy in Greece in 1974, the relations between the state and civil society were modified, as the power of the central state, which had reached a peak under the seven-year long military dictatorship, was balanced by the parties of New Democracy and PASOK, which alternated in power forming single-party governments throughout the last twenty years.Yet the authoritarian quality of the relations between the central government and civil society, which has characterized Greek society since the end of World War II, was not effaced.4 Post-war Greek society bore the legacy of the Civil War between the right and the left (1944-1949), which, until the breakdown of democracy in 1967, meant that organizedThe Remains of Authoritarianism: Bureaucracy and Civil Society in Post-Author...
Source: CEMOTI
DOI: 10.4000/cemoti.1674
Author: Dimitri A. Sotiropoulos
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4253136740