Introduction

Abstract

This book is about Greece. It is also about political and institutional change and the interaction between change and public—private relationships. Distinctions associated with the latter, as Chalmers Johnson reminded us, lie at the heart of all modern political analysis: free trade and mercantilism, capitalism and socialism, laissez faire and social goal-setting, concern with politico-economic procedures and concern with politico-economic outcomes (cf. Johnson, 1982: vii). This book addresses the twists and the oscillations in the evolution of public-private relationships in postwar Greece by focusing on the interlinking of domestic, international and supranational parameters in the process of change. The link to the European Community and the eventual participation in the process of European integration has been a critical ‘external’ parameter in Greek political development since the 1950s.