Yannis Radin
Italy and Greece are two Mediterranean countries that are often paralleled in public policy and discourse because of their strong party patronage systems, perceived bureaucracy, Napoleonic governance traditions and clientelism, however an issue that separates them is decentralization. An analysis of the main decentralization indexes confirms an important difference in the level of local autonomy between the two countries, with Italy exhibiting a minor trend towards federalism over the last four decades while Greece remains one of the most unitary and highly centralized countries in the European Union. Moreover, decentralization reform in Italy is a more gradual and continuous process, while in Greece decentralization occurs in a rarer and more brutal scope. This difference in decentralization approaches has led to divergent outcomes in local governance, regional development, and political power distribution within each country, despite their shared Southern European context and historical similarities.
