Reforming suo tempore: Exploring the unintended consequences of the European Union’s ‘reform actorness’
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/13691481221077842 |
| Published date | 01 May 2023 |
| Date | 01 May 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Original Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/13691481221077842
The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations
2023, Vol. 25(2) 295 –310
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/13691481221077842
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Reforming suo tempore:
Exploring the unintended
consequences of the European
Union’s ‘reform actorness’
Spyros Blavoukos1 and Giorgio Oikonomou2
Abstract
The European Union is broadly considered a benign reform actor, encouraging and supporting
reforms in member states and beyond. However, European Union-induced reforms do not
only generate the intended effects; they can also trigger unintended consequences for other
reforms. These unintended consequences occur primarily through the impact of European Union-
induced reforms on the resources available. The scope and size of the unintended effects will be
conditioned by the domestic cycles in economic and public policy-making. Here, we apply our
analytical framework to study the resilience of governance reforms in Greece during the period
of fiscal consolidation (2010–2015), highlighting the unintended consequences of the European
Union’s ‘reform actorness’. We find that the distinction between financial and non-financial
resources is critical in unpacking the unintended consequences of any exogenously driven reform.
Depending on the current stage in the cycles, the impact on non-financial resources can generate
positive side-effects that help prevent other ongoing domestic reforms being derailed.
Keywords
economic and policy cycles, EU ‘reform actorness’, fiscal consolidation, Greece, state reforms,
unintended consequences
Introduction
Reforms rarely evolve in isolation from other policy programmes and reforms; thus, one
reform process feeds into others, often to the surprise of policy makers, bringing about a
series of unintended effects (Egeberg and Trondal, 2018: 19–20). The European Union
1 Department of International and European Economic Studies, School of Economics, Athens University of
Economics and Business, Athens, Greece
2 Department of Political Science and International Relations, School of Social and Political Sciences,
University of the Peloponnese, Corinth, Greece
Corresponding author:
Giorgio Oikonomou, Department of Political Science and International Relations, School of Social and
Political Sciences, University of the Peloponnese, 1 Aristotelous Street & Athinon Ave (1st Floor), Corinth
GR-20132, Greece.
Emails: giorgio.oikonomou@yahoo.com; g.oikonomou@uop.gr; nikolitsigr@yahoo.com
1077842BPI0010.1177/13691481221077842The British Journal of Politics and International RelationsBlavoukos and Oikonomou
research-article2022
Original Article
296 The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 25(2)
(EU) is a prominent reform actor, whose reform-inducing activities interweave dynami-
cally and multi-dimensionally with its member states (Börzel and Risse, 2012; Börzel
et al., 2017; Exadaktylos and Radaelli, 2015; Exadaktylos et al., 2020; Radaelli, 2020).
The EU has been attributed normative, regulative and cognitive power (Laffan, 2001)
capable of encouraging or imposing significant policy changes in its member states
(Beyer, 2018; Leuffen et al., 2013; Thomann and Zhelyaskova, 2017). This transforma-
tive potential of the EU is associated with the intended outcomes of the EU policy initia-
tives. But does the EU’s ‘reform actorness’ have unintended effects, and what determines
their magnitude, intensity, content and pace? How may the EU alter the outcome of other
domestic reform efforts, partly or totally, without meaning to do so?
Our starting point for addressing these questions is the assumption in the public policy
literature that the availability of resources is a key parameter in determining reform suc-
cess (Hill, 2003; Sabatier, 1986; see also Rodrick, 1996 for economic policy reform).
Thus, the straightforward expectation would be that EU-driven reforms (‘source reforms’)
which curtail the resources available jeopardise the success of other domestic reform
efforts (‘target reforms’), generating negative spillovers and having adverse unintended
consequences. We add more nuance to this argument by positing that the unintended con-
sequences of an EU-driven reform depend both on the kind of resources they impact upon
and the domestic cycles in economic and public policy-making. We distinguish between
the financial and non-financial resources available domestically, with the latter compris-
ing inter alia human capital, institutional and regulatory power, as well as ideational
shifts. How the economic and public policy-making cycles condition the scope and size
of the unintended effects will depend on the kind of resources impacted on.
Our empirical focus is on the intersection between the fiscal domain and domestic
governance architecture in Greece. More specifically, considering the impact of the fiscal
crisis on public administration (Ladi, 2014; Lampropoulou, 2020; Randma-Liiv and
Kickert, 2017, 2018), we examine whether the country’s fiscal consolidation odyssey in
the period 2010–2015 had any unintended effects on the most ambitious Greek adminis-
trative reform plan (‘Kallikrates’), which was launched in 2010. The Kallikrates reform
was the output of a long period of preparation and political osmosis before the outbreak
of the economic crisis. It was heavily encouraged by the EU, but its implementation
evolved in parallel with the domestic fiscal consolidation reform process, which was
associated with hard conditionality measures in the context of the bailout agreements
between the Greek government and the EU. Given the significant curtailment of financial
resources during this period, it would be reasonable to hypothesise the existence of a
negative spillover impact, which annulled the reform potential of Kallikrates in practice.
However, we find that the increase in the non-financial resources that occurred as a by-
product of the fiscal consolidation process compensated in part for the reduction in the
financial resources. The stages of the economic cycle (severe recession and contraction)
and the public policy-making cycle (formulation and early implementation) led inevita-
bly to the ambitious reforms being downgraded, though not totally eradicated. Several
elements have survived and now guarantee the fiscal viability of local and regional
administration in Greece.
Our analysis is based on primary and secondary sources. The former comprises seven
semi-structured interviews conducted with Heads of subnational institutions and state offi-
cials during the implementation phase of the two reforms. In these interviews, our primary
objective was to identify the intertwining of Kallikrates with the concurrent fiscal adjust-
ment reforms. The interviews were conducted anonymously and were semi-structured in
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