Political leadership, 'social traps', and crisis management

Organised by

• Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies
• EGPP: European Governance and Politics Programme

This seminar discusses Greece’s responses to both the MoU (Memorandum of Understanding)-based conditionality during the economic crisis of 2009-10 and the more recent pandemic crisis. It draws on the institutional theory of political leadership and crisis management, as well as the theory of institutional and policy change with emphasis on aspects of Quality of Government (QoG) and trust.

The focus of the seminar is on the role of political leadership in overcoming embedded problems of pre-existing institutional infrastructure, namely the combination of low level of QoG and trust as a precondition for tackling the repercussions of the crises. Hence, political leadership is identified as a crucial intervening variable between mostly externally induced crises and domestic response through the overcoming of fundamental pathologies of pre-existing institutional infrastructure. In this respect, the qualitative features of transformational political leadership (such as sense-making, decision making & coordinating, meaning making, account giving and learning) are examined, during and after the crisis periods 2009-11 and 2020-22. The results contribute to providing probable explanations of the most crucial challenges that Greece has been facing over the last decade or so.