Abstract
The first two sections of this chapter present the scale of Greece’s problems with tax collection and the nature and basic characteristics of Greece’s public revenue administration at the onset of the crisis. The reform that this book examines is radical in nature in comparison to the status quo ante as well as much of Greece’s public administration. Yet it came about in a country that, according to the prevailing wisdom, has limited reform capacity. The nature of this limited reform capacity and the barriers to reform are examined in the third section of this chapter. The fourth section presents the landscape of the main models of public revenue administrations as they exist in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. The final section brings together the key elements of these sections and outlines the book’s puzzle and central argument. Briefly put, the question that we seek to answer is this: what accounts for the switch from the previous model of direct ministerial control to an independent authority that operates at arm’s length from the government in a country that has limited reform capacity? How did reform-averse Greece come to enact and implement this radically different model—indeed one whose effectiveness and efficiency are not certain and is used by a minority of European Union (EU) member states?
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Notes
- 1.
This does not mean that tax evasion is evenly distributed across social groups. Pensioners and salaried workers would normally find it difficult or impossible to avoid paying income tax when paid via payroll. On the contrary, path-breaking new research estimates that ‘43–45% of self-employed income goes unreported and thus untaxed. For 2009, this implies 28.2 billion euros of unreported income, implying forgone tax revenues of over 11 billion euros or 30% of the deficit’ (Artavanis et al. 2016).
- 2.
This is the view of Prof. Euclid Tsakalotos (Minister of Finance in the post-2015 Tsipras administrations) and Fragkiskos Koutentakis , an academic economist who was also one of the Tsipras administration’s top officials in the Ministry of Finance and subsequent head of the Hellenic Parliament’s Budget Office (Tsakalotos 2010: 10, Figs. 2 and 3; Koutentakis 2018).
- 3.
The two measures relate to the level of taxation and the extent to which a country’s public revenue administration performs close to, above, or below its potential.
- 4.
An average of approximately 1.83 percentage points has been added to the country’s public deficit every election year between 1974 and 1993 (Thomadakis 1997: 55).
- 5.
Statement made at a meeting held in London in January 2018 under the Chatham House rule.
- 6.
On its structure at the beginning of the crisis, see Nanopoulos (2010).
- 7.
Two examples from the 2000s (pre-crisis) are Professors Nikos Christodoulakis and George Alogoskoufis . Two examples from the post-2008 period are Professors Yiannis Stournaras (currently Governor of the Bank of Greece ) and Ghikas Hardouvelis .
- 8.
One telling example is the replacement of all heads of units, deputy directors and directors in the public revenue administration in October 2012. To do so, Finance Minister Yiannis Stournaras in the ‘Grand Coalition’ government led by PM Antonis Samaras changed the selection process and replaced it with one that required only his decision for these appointments to take place (Ta Nea 2012a). He was not the first one to try to do so even after the onset of the crisis (Hadjinikolaou 2011).
- 9.
Indeed, a former government minister went as far as to cite the specific example of Andreas Papandreou who allegedly ordered tax inspections against media companies as a reaction to unfavourable coverage (interview, Athens, 15 February 2017).
- 10.
Appointments to key posts in the public revenue administration were not only based on party political criteria. A range of other influences that were not in the public interest applied. For example, a former government minister mentioned the influence of senior officials of the Greek Orthodox Church in some parts of the country (interview with former government minister, Athens, 15 February 2017).
- 11.
This was calculated on the basis of sectoral coefficients (Perry et al. 2005: 49).
- 12.
Indeed, several examples demonstrate the opposite and include the modernisation of family law (including the introduction of civil marriage) in the 1980s, the liberalisation of banking, the partial privatisation of public utilities and the establishment of an array of independent agencies in the 1990s. In his examination of reform between 1990 and 2008 Christodoulakis finds a strong and positive correlation between growth on the one hand and market reforms on the other (Christodoulakis 2012: 113).
- 13.
The ‘Greek paradox ’ is the difference between promise and performance (Allison and Nicolaïdis 1997).
- 14.
On the concept of rent-seeking, see Krueger (1974).
- 15.
Greece has never had a productive middle class (Kondylis 2011). The local ‘comprador’ bourgeoisie directed foreign capital not towards manufacturing but services (e.g. shipping, commerce and banking) and sat next to a large agrarian sector and a myriad of labour-intensive, low added-value family-owned and family-run small and medium-sized firms as well as a large black market (Mouzelis 1978: 20–21; Zambarloukou 2006: 215).
- 16.
This is so not only in the economic sense but also in terms of civil liberties in a country that was a democracy only in formal terms until 1967 (Tsoukalas 1969).
- 17.
Featherstone notes the example of the transfer of a senior official of the state’s land service in Aitoloakarnania, as a result of the pressure exerted by illegal builders on the Ministry of Finance in July 2007 (Featherstone 2008: 17).
- 18.
A good example is the lack of a genuinely autonomous trade union movement.
- 19.
An emblematic example is the close link that tied the socialist PASOK with ADEDY (Ανώτατη Διοίκηση Ενώσεων Δημοσίων Yπαλλήλων—Supreme Command of Civil Servants’ Unions), the country’s peak trade union in the public sector.
- 20.
This goes some way towards explaining the Greeks’ mistrust of the state, which several previous generations had experienced as little more than an apparatus that oppressed them. This perception seems to confirm Rothstein’s argument that highlights ‘the importance of impartial, un-corrupt and fair government institutions for generating social trust’ (Rothstein 2013).
- 21.
Initial attempts at state building through the centralisation of power tried to reduce the power of local elites but the establishment of captive democratic institutions ended up reinforcing it (Kalyvas 2015: 53).
- 22.
The introduction of liberal market elements aiming to improve Greece’s competitiveness under the bailout agreements, the argument has been made that the country is left with the worst of both worlds, that is, suboptimal economic performance as well as diluted social cohesion (Kornelakis and Voskeritsian 2014).
- 23.
Low trust also helps explain the prevalence of very small, family-run firms in Greece (Lyberaki and Tsakalotos 2002: 101) .
- 24.
Lavdas uses the term ‘disjointed corporatism’ to describe Greece’s system of interest intermediation (Lavdas 1997).
- 25.
One example from the immediate pre-crisis period is the treatment meted out to former Prime Minister Costas Simitis (a socialist) when he warned the ND (Nea Dimokratia) government in 2008 that the country’s public finances were in need of deep reforms in the absence of which the IMF would need to be called in.
- 26.
The reform of pensions is a case in point (Tinios 2012: 127).
- 27.
A case in point is ND’s effort to veto the appointment of the board of Greece’s National Broadcasting Council so as to prevent the SYRIZA -ANEL (Coalition of the Radical Left/Independent Greeks) government from radically reforming TV channel licensing.
- 28.
Clientelistic recruitment has played its part in undermining the first socialist government’s attempt to place public enterprises under ‘social control ’ (Lyberaki and Tsakalotos 2002: 104) .
- 29.
The examples relate to both PASOK and ND administrations, that is, the two parties that have governed Greece almost uninterruptedly between 1974 and 2015.
- 30.
- 31.
Just like many other collective endeavours in Greece, most of them do not operate democratically; rather, they are dominated by the image or reality of a charismatic leader, a figure to be treated like a Messiah. Clientelism operates within these highly personalist parties too, not only between parties and voters (Bermeo 2002: 219). PASOK under Andreas Papandreou is a good example (Spourdalakis 1998).
- 32.
This is not due to the lack of funding. In the run-up to the crisis, all major parties were receiving significant amounts of money from the state, bank loans and other (not always legal) sources. An indication of how much money had been channelled to the two largest parties (Nea Dimokratia and PASOK) is the fact that, together, they owe more than 400 million euros to various Greek banks.
- 33.
This is the core definition of politicisation too (Peters and Pierre 2004: 2).
- 34.
- 35.
This means that the emphasis of administrative action is not on problem solving but how the relevant officials can tick the box and avoid being accused of not acting as they should in terms of the requisite formalities.
- 36.
As a leading constitutional lawyer points out, Greek courts have been too eager to stretch the notion of unconstitutionality of some legal provisions in a way that has blocked reforms, though it is fair to say that some provisions of the MoUs are highly problematic from the legal point of view (Alivizatos 2010).
- 37.
Between 1843 and 2001 the percentage of ministers who had a law degree fluctuated between 29.4% (1936–1941) and 68.2% (1946–1967) (Sotiropoulos and Bourikos 2002, Table 7b, 187).
- 38.
Administrative reform is a good case in point (Spanou 2012: 190).
- 39.
Koutsoukis has counted 589 ministers between 1946 and 1976 (cited in Sotiropoulos and Bourikos 2002: 157).
- 40.
This happens in a country where draconian laws coexist with lax enforcement or as Tsoukalas notes, a country where laws are not always seen as limits that ought to be respected but as obstacles that need to be overcome (Tsoukalas 1993: 23). No wonder a major international comparison of the transposition of EU employment law has classified Greece in the ‘world of neglect’ (Falkner et al. 2005). This attitude towards the law is one of the signs of uncivic culture, alongside a hierarchically organised public life and corruption (Putnam 1993: 115).
- 41.
A recent example of their self-serving attitude as well as power even during the crisis is quite telling. Since 1997 all academic doctors who teach in Greek public universities while also working in their own private practices are obliged to pay into their employing university’s research account a 7% levy on their private practice’s gross turnover. Those teaching in dentistry schools have been refusing to do so and even went on strike—causing major problems for their students—claiming that after nearly two decades of failing to pay the levy, the corresponding amount had become very big, exceeding 100,000 euros in some cases. Education minister Costas Gavroglou in the SYRIZA -ANEL government practically caved in (so as to bring about the end of the strike) and agreed to drop the claims regarding the first 15 years of the law’s operation and offered them the possibility of paying the remainder in instalments. However, Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos (himself an academic, like his colleague in charge of education) vetoed this arrangement partly because other groups of academics (medical doctors) with private practices had already paid the levy (Lakassas 2018).
- 42.
This is the ‘Comparative Information Series’.
- 43.
USB: Unified semi-autonomous body; USBB: Unified semi-autonomous body with formal board or advisory group comprised of external officials; SDMOF: Single directorate in Ministry of Finance ; MDMOF: Multiple directorates in MOF. The OECD has compiled this table on the basis of (a) responses to its survey and (b) research conducted by its own Secretariat (e.g. revenue body reports).
- 44.
This usually takes the form of legislative amendments, i.e. usually short legal provisions that are added to longer legislative texts with which they bear little or no relation (hence the frequently use of the term ‘and other provisions’ in the formal title of bills). As a result, the objective is not necessarily evident, nor do potential opponents have the ability to get to know about it and for opposition to be mobilised. Moreover, legal drafting often deliberately makes matters even more opaque. To achieve that objective it takes the form of a long list of references to already existing legal texts that the new provision modifies (e.g. by limiting or extending their scope) that only insiders will understand and goes something like this: this provision modifies section x of paragraph 2 of art. 35 of law 9999/2002 as it has been updated by paragraph 3 of art. 456 of law 0000/2006 (entitled ‘ABCD and other provisions’) by removing from its scope those who meet the following criteria (criteria follow). The minister is hereby granted the right to extend the period during which this provision applies. The opacity of provisions like this is further exacerbated by the non-codification of laws (i.e. their non-amalgamation into a single, clear text that could serve as a reference point for all interested parties).
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Dimitrakopoulos, D., Passas, A. (2020). Introduction. In: The Depoliticisation of Greece’s Public Revenue Administration. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23213-9_1
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