Policy responses to the Eurozone crisis: A comparative analysis of southern European administrations

Abstract

The Eurozone crisis has worked as a forceful external factor for activating a series of fiscal and structural adjustments in the countries of the EU periphery. Public administration was a key reform area and has undergone notable transformations under the fiscal consolidation programmes. This paper aims at identifying the impact of the crisis on public administration with a focus on southern Europe. It reviews and compares the goals and the outcomes of the administrative reform programmes that were implemented in Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain during the crisis. This cluster forms a distinct administrative paradigm emanating from the Napoleonic state tradition. The relationship between administrative tradition and administrative change or persistence is explored in a historical institutionalist perspective. The findings identify similarities, divergences and variations across and within the Southern countries, also suggesting that while certain changes occurred, the Napoleonic features of the southern administrations remained largely untouched by the reform programmes.

Bureaucratic policy work and analytical capacities in central administrations in Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain: The results of a comparative survey

“…Moreover, most of the literature on the impact of the waves of administrative reforms in the analysed countries is not helpful because these studies were not focused on the dimensions highlighted by our analysis. In any case, these differences contrast with the very common explanation that these countries' resistance to relevant changes depends on their administrative traditions (Lampropoulou, 2020). At the same time, these differences show how the negative assessment given to the impact of the periodic waves of reforms in the capacities of Spanish administration (Alonso et al, 2016) should be rethought to better understand the different performance in terms of analytical capacities and characteristics of the policy work.…”

"Public Administration Reform in Romania: Assessing the Past and Looking Into the Future"

“…We believe that in the case of Romania the new dimensions of the transformation process emphasize the need to integrate and capitalize on good governance in the institutional architecture fairly and efficiently, in order to boost the quality of public services and institutions, and to optimally manage the available resources (Raiu, 2013. As a catalyst for economic growth, the transformation process at the central and local level needs to be adapted to both changes in the global economy and sanitary and security challenges (Liou, 2001;Lampropoulou, 2018).…”

Digitalization of public administration in EU member states in times of crisis: the contributions of the national recovery and resilience plans

“…Over the past three decades, reforms in the public administration (digitalization being part of this process) have originated not from some political visions or social and institutional needs, but rather as reactions to economic, sanitary, security or technical deadlocks of the public sector policies (Liou, 2001). One instance of that has been the European sovereign debt crisis of 2008; its outcomes have been translated into reform programs later implemented in the public sector (European Central Bank, 2011; Lampropoulou, 2018). We believe that two other, more recent events should be considered similarly important catalysts for rethinking, accelerating, implementing, evaluating and monitoring coherent public administration reforms that will boost digitalization (Boin and Otten, 1996; Hogan et al, 2022; Mintrom and O’Connor, 2020): the COVID-19 outbreak and the military conflict in Ukraine.…”