The previous section discussed some of the major challenges that governments and their foreign policy bureaucracies are currently confronting in managing international policy. The present section focuses the discussion on Greece with the aim of exploring the implications of the aforementioned developments for the Greek foreign policy machinery. With issues such as widening foreign policy bureaucracies and decentralisation of foreign policy making as well as the development of international policy capacity in domestic departments constituting
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Contemporary international policy issues are complex and require individuals with specialised skills together with a simultaneous expansion in the involvement of bureaucracy in foreign policy making. Naturally, for this to be achieved, pooling experts other than those involved in diplomatic or political affairs is necessary. For more on this see Jensen (1982: 123)
key preoccupations within national foreign policy machineries, it is interesting to test how such themes relate to the Greek foreign policy machinery.
The overview of Greek foreign policy making processes in chapter two indicated that the political leadership together with external consultants, and more specifically the PM and the PMO together with the FM and the FM’s office and deputies, constitute the key agents for policy formulation. The foreign policy bureaucracy is of secondary importance and commonly restricted to providing information and implementing policy (Griva, 2002: 46; Sotiropoulos, 2001). The same section also indicated a significant degree of introversion and secretiveness on the part of the government and the MFA regarding the management of external issues, which have traditionally revolved around the dominant Greek national security issues (ta ethnika mas themata).
Nonetheless, change in the content of foreign policy and the rise of ‘low policies’ on the foreign policy agenda brought forward by globalisation and membership to the EU have brought into the foreign policy process a large part of the bureaucracy previously confined in areas of domestic policy. As a result, the acutely centralised Greek foreign policy processes opened up to diverse bureaucratic agents and effectively augmented in size both within and outside the MFA (Interview, no 2; 3; 8; 9; 26; 28). A characteristic example concerns the Permanent Representation of Greece to the EU (PeRepGr), which constitutes a clear example of foreign policy making power handed over to a bureaucratic unit. PeRepGr is discussed in the sections that follow.
Greek governments, until fairly recently, had never relied on civil servants either for new ideas, strategic planning or foreign policy formulation (Sotiropoulos, 2001: 85; Theodoropoulos, 2005). Even the short-lived coordinating committees between the MFA and several technical ministries were led by and comprised the political leadership of the ministries rather than bureaucratic departments (Spanou, 2001: 65). This practice has been re-enforced and legalised recently by the identification of Greek foreign policy as coterminous with issues relating to Greece’s territorial integrity and security defined in geopolitical terms. This justifies foreign policy
making being the prerogative of the FM, his deputy ministers and the PM and its insulation from other policy areas. Such an approach to policy making left limited scope for involvement of the foreign policy bureaucracy, let alone of what was traditionally understood as domestic bureaucracy: in other words government departments with a domestic mandate. The nominal involvement of bureaucrats and the focus of foreign policy on issues of national security prevented any significant link developing between foreign policy with the domestic political agenda (Interview, no 6).
Recently, however, the scope of the Greek government’s international preoccupations has grown and its international engagements have intensified, which becomes especially manifest at the level of the EU. Involvement in international and EU policy making has brought into the international policy processes a variety of actors from the political and business world (Ioakimidis, 2003: 134; Makridimitris, 1992: 77) and a number of experts from other departments and ministries (Ioakimidis, 1993: 414). However, as yet there is no hard evidence of significant qualitative shifts or changes in the foreign and international policy process.
There are indicators that some domestic ministries are starting to acquire an international orientation but no hard data that they are formulating their own coherent and integrated international policy. For instance, as interviews indicated, the ministry of education and religious affairs has intensified its international activities in the last decade as well as its international cooperation with a number of NGOs and international cultural centres such as the British council, the German Goethe Institute and the French Foundation Lycée as well as other such institutions. It has also extended its international presence by attaching educational consultants to a number of Greek diplomatic missions.
Similarly, the ministry of health has intensified cooperation with a number of international NGOs and foreign state organisations and involvement in projects of a regional or international reach. For instance the ministry of health together with the MoD have intensified cooperation with their Balkan counterparts in a joint
project for the fight against drugs in the region (Interview, no 16). In addition, in an attempt to fine-tune with international developments and increase international policy capacity, the ministry of health has promoted training and post-graduate studies in state university hospitals on international medical crisis management (Interview, no 16).To further support such internationalisation the PMO and the MFA have opened up consultative channels with technical domestic ministries for purposes of borrowing technical expertise and, as far as the MFA is concerned, for purposes of lending protocol advice and support to ministries engaging in international dealings (Interview, no 30).
The existing literature and past research suggest that in terms of direct communication, at least until the mid 1990s, most of the core ministries in Greece communicated with the rest of the EU or international institutions and policy making fora through the MFA which held the monopoly of expertise on issues concerning the international dimension of any kind of domestic policy (Minakaki, 1992: 44; Sotiropoulos, 2001). This underscored the centrality of the MFA in all areas of external policy, both European and international. The direct linkage between Greek civil servants -outside the MFA- and international organisations has been similarly weak. When it exists it is restricted to Greek civil servants travelling to other countries to meet their counterparts and attend seminars, usually organised by the European Commission aimed to diffuse new administrative ideas and methods. Usually civil servants accompany the minister’s confidant or a politically appointed consultant (Sotiropoulos, 2001: 71).
It is surprising that Greek integration into the EU, which for Greece is the major forum of interaction and socialisation with other foreign policy bureaucracies, did not result in the direct communication of Greek bureaucrats with international organisations. A research project conducted by the Ministry of Interior, Public Administration and Decentralisation (MIPAD) indicated that until 1998, 76% of Greek civil servants had never had any kind of contact with civil servants of a foreign national administration or with the European Commission (Sotiropoulos, 2001: 71). Given such practices it is not surprising that officials or the majority of
ministries have not developed any distinct international identity (Minakaki, 1992: 44).
Interviews with a number of officials indicated that even though domestic departments have always consulted the MFA on technical matters with an international dimension, today the MFA seeks their technical expertise more regularly for the purpose of formulating and generally managing international policy in conjunction with the PM and the cabinet. For some this suggests a horizontal ‘spread’ of the management of international policy to a larger number of domestic ministries (Interview, no 3; 22; 31). This spread, however, is not always explicit or translated into an institutionalised mechanism or structure and is commonly limited to information sharing. Nonetheless, expectations and needs for further involvement of technical ministries into policy formulation are increasing (Interview, no 31). Whether such involvement amounts to the emergence of a foreign or international policy community is explored later in this chapter.
Evidence of the need for foreign policy management by a growing number of government departments beyond the MFA can be drawn from the practice of the weekly inter-ministerial meetings that take place in the MFA. Such inter-ministerial meetings serve the purpose of home departments informing the MFA and seeking guidance from the MFA with regards to international dealings. As it is impossible for the MFA to have expertise in all technical matters, the lead ministries prepare the file under investigation and present it to the MFA for discussion, which then gives directions and instructions (Interview, no 31).
Another source of evidence for some horizontal spread of foreign policy management to domestic ministries comes from the creation of MFA linkages with the Ministries of Defence, Culture, Economy, Health and Development, which are known as ‘fast ministries’. These ministries have been termed fast for a number of reasons ranging from the fast ways in which their bureaucracy operates in comparison to other parts of Greek bureaucracy and their speedy responses concerning domestic and international demands for action. The latter is also related to their continuous direct communication with the PMO (Interview, no 21).
Based on the MFA’s 2007 Charter (Law 3566/2007, art. 7) the role of the MFA’s linkages is the ensuring of ‘systematic, cohesive and effective implementation of
foreign policy’. From the above linkage offices, however, it is only the office in the
MoD which is institutionalised while the others are dependent on the continuing support of the PM (Interview, no 10).
MFA linkage offices in fast domestic ministries are considered to have been created as a response to increasing needs for information sharing and the carrying out of international tasks in the aforementioned ministries and in practice they serve only this purpose (Interview, no 44). A number of interviewees confirmed that the MFA is still at the centre of both diplomatic interaction and representation overseas, while such offices serve to strengthen the MFA’s centrality within the foreign policy bureaucracy rather than promote decentralisation in foreign and international policy management. Nonetheless, a MFA official (Interview, no 13) argued that such offices are expected to increase as they represent the first signs of the realisation that ‘Greek foreign policy in the 21st century is expanding towards areas traditionally understood as domestic policy but currently acquiring an international dimension’.
The horizontal proliferation of foreign policy to involve other domestic departments with an increasing international dimension is more or less limited to technical ministries preparing their files and portfolios and then submitting them to the MFA for further instructions on policy making (Interview, no 30). As far as direct communication between the overseas diplomatic network and home ministries is concerned, it is possible that a Greek embassy would communicate with the Ministry of the Interior, for example if the issue under discussion is only a strictly technical matter, concerning that Ministry alone. Therefore, in theory, officials directly refer to, and are encouraged to do so, sectoral departments in order to save time and resources. This alternative path, however, outside the MFA’s established channel of communication, has been rarely used (Interview, no 27). It seems that one of the areas whereby enlargement of the foreign policy agenda and widening of the policy process are more clearly observed is security. Security,
traditionally coming first in the Greek foreign policy agenda, has always kept the MoD in close cooperation with the MFA and the PMO and is now extending to include other government departments as explored in the following sections. With a revised notion of security to encompass asymmetric security threats such as international migration, pandemics, AIDS and drug and human trafficking4 a number of government departments have been pooled into the international policy process (Nomikos, 2004: 442). The aforementioned security issues which have been added to the Greek foreign policy agenda have intensified collaboration between a number of domestic departments (Interview, no 18).
For instance, the MFA largely shares civil protection responsibility with the General Secretariat for Civil Protection (GSPC)5 which, administratively, falls under the umbrella of the MIPAD, whereas for issues concerning illegal migration it is in constant collaboration and intelligence information sharing with the NIS and the Police (Nomikos, 2004: 443). Another area of increased horizontal collaboration between various domestic ministries, nevertheless under the aegis of the MFA, is the management of domestic and international crises. Crisis management, discussed in chapter four as it constitutes one of the newly added functions of the MFA, is a characteristic example of both interministerial horizontal cooperation and of the creation of international links between the relevant ministries. For instance, in cases of crisis management, domestic or international 6, there are a number of agencies that need to be coordinated such as the Coast Guard under the auspices of the Ministry of Mercantile Marine, the General Secretariat for Civil Protection of the Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of Health and the naval and air forces under the military branch of the MoD.
Based on the above a need for a horizontal spread in the management of foreign and international issues today calls for the involvement of a number of home ministries. In Greece there has been a tradition of consultation but it seems that
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The ‘commodification’ of persons constitutes a serious problem in the Balkans and in the Mediterranean countries p: 442
5
www.gscp.gr
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today further joint ministerial management and policy formulation takes place and is encouraged by the MFA. Two questions are raised in this context. The first concerns the extent to which domestic departments participate in policy formulation beyond policy implementation and management of international issues and the second concerns the development of their own intra-ministerial capacity to generate international policy. Both issues constitute the focus of discussion in the following sections.