Νομαρχιακή διοίκηση και αυτοδιοίκηση στο ελληνικό πολιτικό σύστημα

Abstract

The Greek nomos, the territorial basis of the prefectural system of field administration and constituency for general elections, has been the apparatus for the build up of clientelism in the provinces, surviving a hundred and twenty years of failed attempts at reform and the decentralisation wave of the 1980’s. Recently, the government has introduced elected prefects and councils at the nomoi level and moved its units of field administration to the regions, leaving Regional Prefects as the only state representatives outside central government. In this article we argue that the importance of the regions as units which manage a substantial part of Community Support Framework funds vis-a-vis the on-going impoverishment of the state-funded nomoi lies at the heart of the reform, as clientelism is now being rebuild around the distribution of EU funds. Moreover, the reform could prove politically useful as an outlet for increasing pressures of middle level party cadres against the centralisation of political power. Arguably, the démocratisation of the nomoi, conveniently presented as the epitomy of decentralisation, is a clever move of the central state to a more advantageous level.