In the context of globalization, public organizations are undergoing rapid transformation, and how to govern them scientifically has become an important research topic.
Recent developments in Greece and the world, including the crisis in Ukraine, the conflict between Russia and the West, the withdrawal of the United States from Afghanistan, the abandonment of the Kurds by the United States in Syria and Iraq, the escalation of Turkey’s aggressive behavior in the Aegean, Cyprus and the Mediterranean, the involvement of Turkey in Syria, and Libya, the conflict between America and China, are of great concern to most of us.
I acknowledge that the most important factor in shaping politics is the conflict of interests, but I am surprised that cultural, nationalist and religious parameters continue to influence the world today, in a similar as they did centuries back.
One could say that with the progress of humanity, a way would have been found to minimize the conflicts with the adoption of religious tolerance and multicultural diversity, but also, controlling of nationalist and economic competitiveness in a more intelligent way, after so painful experiences, adhering to rules for human rights and international law.
On the contrary, religious, and cultural contradictions become tools of exploitation of political, economic, nationalist and geopolitical interests…
Unfortunately, recent events, both local and international, have dashed any optimistic expectations.
Expectations in domestic politics, international geopolitical conflicts, nationalist revisionism, religious fanaticism, and cultural contradictions are being dashed, so much so that we have reached a point where a new world war does not seem so distant. This seems to me so backward.
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The political dimension
The basic political-economic theories (that mainly cover the space, from free economy, to socialism, and radical left), compete, in the best case, within the democratic principles and much more with autocratic regimes, internationally.
The main difference lies in planning and control of the economy that takes place based, either on central administration of public funds, capital and investments under government control or on private economy under the rules free economy. .
Such economic policies. directly and indirectly determine the distribution of wealth.
Both systems seem to have respective advantages and disadvantages. A crucial element is the identification of ‘golden section’ to be applied and the choices of control methods, as well as compliance with specific limits to be applied by each system in order to maintain the balance between productivity performance and social policy that eventually, determines the overall benefit.
The problem is that both systems have followed a different historical path within each nation and state in various periods. This affects the transition to a new environment created by the evolution of humanity.
In addition to the influence that the historical path, clearly, has on the implementation of any state’s optimum economic policy, an important role is played by various factors, such as the educational status, social level, climatic conditions, health, geopolitical conditions, religion, etc.
All this needs to be considered, to draw conclusions for the implementation of an optimal policy.
Unfortunately, people make decisions based on dogmatic theories without considering all above factors, this creates contradictions and conflicts among groups within states but also among states globally.
Shaping of politics in Greece
A key element to remember is that the Greeks are one of the ethnic groups preserved from the ancient times, which also include the Jews, the Chinese and some others such as the Egyptians, the Persians, etc. These peoples have friendly feelings and respect for each other’s culture.
Especially the Greeks survived through cosmogenic rearrangements from the Hellenistic times of the empire of Alexander the Great, the founding of the Roman Empire, the creation of the Eastern Roman Empire under the influence of Christianity that gave birth to the Byzantine Empire, a multinational Empire that mainly survived due to the Greek element (Greek language and culture) and Christianity and led the world for more than a thousand years.
Byzantium withstood multiple invasions from the East and the West and eventually fell from the expansion of Islam.
The failure of Christians to unite and solve the problem of the split between the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church played a major role in this.
In this way Hellenism ended up being confined to a poor Ottoman province while many Greek Christians, in Asia Minor, were converted to Islam under barbaric conditions that prevailed for many years.
Hellenism eventually survived once more because of religion and its cultural heritage.
The conditions of oppression forced many Greeks to emigrate or to create a merchant fleet which gave them some independence, which, in turn, led this group of people to communicate with the West and to create the expatriate Hellenism that played a dominant role in the revolution and the creation of the New Greek state. .
At the same time, Europe was experiencing the Renaissance followed by the French and American revolution and the creation of philhellenic movements.
The fear of the expansion of the Ottoman Empire to the west strengthened the pro-Greek tendencies.
It was natural consequence for the great Western powers to coordinate with Russia and help Greece’s liberation struggle.
It was also natural for these forces to compete and influence political affairs in Greece.
Therefore, it was also natural to create tendencies of influence in the Greek political system.
At the same time, it is a great achievement that Greece managed to obtain one of the most developed and modern constitutions in the world, at a time when empires were disappearing and new states formed were vulnerable to instability, as they developed new national and social claims.
Also, a great achievement was the doubling of Greece’s size during the Balkan wars.
Another achievement can be considered the reconstruction of the country after the Asia Minor catastrophe, at a time when Europe and the whole world were plagued by the rise of nationalist fascism and the emergence of the Communist movement.
All this cosmogony, together with the effects of Second World War and the shortly followed events of a civil war could not leave the Greek political life unaffected.
I conclude that the evolution of the political position that gave an opportunity for Greece to become a full member of the European Union helped the country to overcome serious economic and national security problems
In addition, EU helped Greece to improve competitiveness and public administration, leading to a modern state governance, covering the need to balance between social policy and competitiveness and to secure the true principles of democratic governance
In particular, it helped to maintain the principles of human rights and the foundations of democracy, which is, most of all, the distinct separation of political powers into Legislative, Executive, and Judicial..
Undermining these basic principles is like destroying the evolutionary course not only of the last 200 years but the 2,500 years of the survival of Hellenism.
The economic dimension
As mentioned above, the crucial point in the implementation of an economic policy is identifying the “golden section” between social policy and competitiveness for survival within the global economic community.
Public capital investments are based on the collection of taxes on private and public production, the management of these funds affects productivity.
Raising capital in any country depends, first and foremost, on the stability of the economy and the prospect of making a profit.
Without raising funds, there is no prospect of producing wealth and any mismanagement destroys both wealth and prospects.
A long-standing problem of the political scene in Greece is populism, which usually finds ripe and suitable ground to evolve in western democracies and not only.
Populism grows in times of crisis, economic or national, which finds vulnerable masses, affected by these crises, and is adopted usually by political extremists of right or left.
In mature democratic regimes, the influence of populism decreases, unfortunately Greece is a relatively new democracy with deep wounds from its recent history; it will take some more time to get rid of these syndromes, derived from past .
A second old problem is inherent within Greece’s geopolitical position, as the end of both World Wars seems to have left an unfinished abeyance between West and Turkey, and the Islamic world in general, whose leadership Turkey is seeking.
This is expressed by the revisionism of Turkey, as the successor of the Ottoman Empire trying to resolve these outstanding issues in its interest.
This policy is confirmed this period with the involvement of Turkey in Syria and Iraq with the main target Kurdistan, which is the main issue. This directly affects Turkey’s aspirations against Greece and Cyprus along with its aspirations for the Mediterranean gas, overlooking all international treaties, international law and UN resolutions.
For Turkey the signing of the Lausanne agreement was a mistake that they have never accepted, especially after the Cyprus invasion during 1974 when NATO and USA as well as UN have indicated hesitation to apply UN resolutions, and international law, Turkey considered that its international position was so strong that it could force it’s interests above any law or UN decision, hence it gradually raised issues such as grey zones in Aegean and Mediterranean sea, even in challenging sovereignty of Dodecanese and Eastern Aegean Greek islands. This is an extraordinary hostile attitude which cannot be accommodated by anybody.
This situation forces Greece to maintain defense programs beyond its capabilities.
In this context, social policy and economic development becomes a difficult task for any government and an easy target for populism.
An additional intractable problem of Greece in the field of Public Administration is the large number of civil servants that resulted from the frequent changes of governments. In addition to this is the constitutional restriction to apply normal workforce legislation for performance evaluation, let alone imagine how difficult it is to implement any efficient operating system under these conditions
As a result of these problems, Greece has survived due to the development of the private sector, mainly tourism and shipping so far, and sets as a basis and perspective, first the improvement of the efficiency of the public sector, which has huge room for improvement and secondly expansion of the private sector in sectors. new technology and finance..
A precondition for all this is the elimination of Populism and the confrontation of the Turkish threat which has recently exceeded the limits of any logic demanding restriction relocation of Greek populations among Greek islands and other locations. On the other hand, they are not referring to the relocation and settlement of Turkish immigrants from Turkish mainland to Cyprus with the aim of altering the population ratios in Cyprus after the Turkish invasion of 74, an act that is a war crime under International law.
Επιρροές από πολιτισμικούς, εθνικιστικούς και θρησκευτικούς παράγοντες
Κανείς δεν πρέπει να υποτιμήσει την σημασία που έχουν παράγοντες που δεν θα έπρεπε να επηρεάζουν τον τρόπο διακυβέρνησης, κυρίως στην εφαρμογή της οικονομικής πολιτικής και ακόμα περισσότερο, της εκλογικής διαδικασίας μιας χώρας, στις σημερινές συνθήκες, αλλά δυστυχώς αυτές εξακολουθούν να παίζουν σημαντικό ρόλο.
Influences from cultural, nationalist, and religious factors
One should not underestimate the importance of other factors that should not affect the way of governance, especially affect the implementation of economic policy and even more so, the electoral process in a country, under the current conditions.
Yet such parameters, unfortunately, still play an important role.
Theocratic states decide their economic policy even the policy of independent institutions such as national banks, in many issues like interest rates, as happens today in Turkey. According to Islam, applying interest is a sin, in other countries Saria is the supreme penal code. Look what is happening in Afghanistan.
In the past, there were crusades engaged by Christians, today there are ‘holy wars’ provoked by Islam.
Entire states were created or destroyed even more recently, Yugoslavia was disintegrated and so many states and even new national entities were created.
We thought that all this could be a thing of the past, but it still affects the world community, and it is certainly not limited to Islam, it applies to Christian or other states to varying degrees.
Other religions accuse Christian states of colonialism and exploitation of many people and territories.
Communism is not a religion; on the contrary, it accuses religion as the «opium» of the peoples. Communism did this because, historically, the religious hierarchy collaborated with the political power for sharing political power, but conversely the political power collaborated with the religious one.
Mixing nationalism with religion can create very difficult situations, contrary to popular tradition that helps preserve the identity of peoples.
Despite the fact that religion was and still is one of the most important factor influencing political power and developments, there are many other factors that are not so, immediately, obvious.
Art is a great force that influences crowds and their emotional state.
Sport is another area that inspires masses and drives fans and fanatics who end up, easily, victims of populism.
The press, and television, has traditionally been seen as the ‘fourth political power’, recently reinforced by the evolution of social media, the easiest medium to influence the spread of fake news and theories. This ‘fourth political power’ is today the most common tool of populism, of course, this introduced additional methods of communication, mainly, for the younger generations who, despite the great technological advantages offered by the internet, led people to abandon the effort of written and oral communication and simplified communication in a form of codes and images.
In my opinion this deprived younger generations of some form of brain activity and human competence related to productive imagination, which, in turn is replaced by some new, more technical competences, allowing people to become more adaptable and efficient in the use of computer technology.
With all this, which I have mentioned in this article, indicats how much more complicated the process of democratic operation, in a country, has become, in order to maintain the balance in the implementation of social policy with productivity and competiveness.
Times for Change 