ONLINE ONLY: The Curse of Sisyphus: Clientelism and the Greek State

Date: Thursday 20 April 2023 @ 7pm Melbourne | 12pm Athens | 5am New York
Location: Online Only - YouTube or Facebook
Presenter: Dr Aris Trantidis

Language of Presentation: English
Entry: FREE

Synopsis

With its deep economic crisis and dramatic political developments Greece has puzzled the world. What explains its long-standing problems?

Dr Trantidis has extensively studied the challenges and crises facing modern Greece. His research has identified the main 'culprit': clientelism, namely the allocation of selective benefits by political actors (patrons) to their supporters (clients).

Clientelism is widespread and embedded in Greece's party system. It is responsible for Greece's deficient state capacity and economic malaise. Greece's system of power has been occupied by clientelist network(s) with strong and deep connections with the state, whose removal is extremely difficult if not impossible. Governments avoided implementing reforms against this practice and had no incentive to create a functional Rule of Law system. As a result,, periods of unavoidable austerity have been succeeded by periods of fiscal profligacy and costly corruption.

Like Sisyphus, Greece falls down to crisis again and again after a small period of relative growth and consolidation. But the Greek case is not unique. Using game theory, Dr Trantidis explains why similar developments can happen in advanced economies and consolidated democracies, like Australia, and argues that countries that follow that path are unlikely to escape from this situation

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Bio

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Dr Aris Trantidis is a Senior Lecturer in International Relations and Politics at the University of Lincoln. A Greek immigrant in the United Kingdom, he previously held research and teaching positions at King’s College London, the European University Institute (EUI) in Italy and George Mason University in the United States.

Dr Trantidis has worked on key problems for democracy, such as corruption, clientelism, autocratization and crisis management, and has published in leading international journals such as Politics, the Journal of European Public Policy, the British Journal of Politics and International Relations, Polity, Review of Behavioral Economics, South European Society and Politics, Constitutional Political Economy and Democratization among others. He is also the author of the book Clientelism and Economic Policy: Greece and the Crisis (Routledge, 2016).

Dr Trantidis has an interdisciplinary background with studies in law, politics and political economy and degrees from King’s College London, the London School of Economics, the University of Surrey, the University of Athens and the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He is currently working on a research agenda on democracy and climate change.

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How to Participate

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This is an online-only event.
Join us this Thursday on YouTube or Facebook.

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Sponsors

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