Bureaucracy and politics in the Greek public administration

Abstract

This study is about the current operation of the Greek Public Administration (G.P.A.) and the effects of political interference in this operation. It examines how political involvement affects bureaucratic procedures and how reinforces dysfunctions which are generated by the nature of bureaucracy itself. The study analyses several aspects of the bureaucratic process such as selection, promotion, or allocation of employees in relation to both bureaucracy and politics. In so doing, it draws on sociological theories of bureaucracy and empirical data collected from public services within the G.P.A. Historical factors and cultural traits are also considered as variables which contribute to the configuration of the workplace culture. The research findings indicate that the nature of political influence on public administration in Greece is detrimental to its operation; at the same time it increases ones analytical ambivalence about the identification of bureaucracy with efficiency. Furthermore these politics seem to enhance bureaucratic control while bureaucracy through its structure allows an increase of politicization of the G.P.A. The consequence of this double-edged relation is an extensive inefficiency and ineffectiveness of the G.P.A. which in turn has detrimental effects on the socio-economic status of the state. It is evident that it, the G.P.A., is to be reformed it needs to be transformed on the basis of more humanisation and less Politicisation. However, one is ambivalent as to whether or not political forces will cease to be involved in the bureaucratic process of the G.P.A. and whether or not it is feasible that the Greek bureaucracy can adopt humanistic principles. That is because political power draws sustenance from the control procedures that the bureaucracy facilitates. This bureaucracy, in turn, has until now not seemed willing to learn from its own errors. The impasse, dysfunctionality and administrative malaise seem unbreakable under the present political conjuncture.