Authors: Costas Eleftheriou, Chrysanthos Tassis

Title: Aspects of social policy and political parties during the crisis: The case of the ‘Guaranteed Social Income’/‘Social Income of Solidarity’

Abstract

The proposed paper will examine the social policy of PASOK (along with New Democracy and the Democratic Left) (2012-2014) and Syriza (along with Independent Greeks) governments (2015-2019) during the period of the economic crisis. The international economic crisis has largely affected Greek society since 2009 and the dominant perception on social policy as well. The latter is recently related to the necessity of keeping pace with the country’s macroeconomic figures and not to the classical social democratic theory of the welfare state as a central instrument for economic and social development. In this context, first of all we will analyze the results of the basic economic policies stemming from the consequent bailout programmes (‘Memoranda’), and therefore, our analysis will focus on the planning and the implementation of the ‘Guaranteed Social Income’/‘Social Income of Solidarity’ policies from PASOK and Syriza’s governmental agencies and the framing of these policies from both parties’ political discourse and strategy. Thus, the planning and implementation of the guaranteed income policies will be analyzed through the three following axes: a) the general perception of each political party concerning social policy in general; b) the context of the bailout obligations that conditioned the planning of the specific policies during the two different governmental periods; c) the context of party competition that constituted public discourse around this specific public policy. The basic question that the proposed paper seeks to examine is the following: the specific forms of planning and implementing the guaranteed income policies are the direct result of the limitations that were imposed by the management of the economic crisis through the bailout programmes or on the contrary those policies were inscribed into political and ideological transformations that preceded the crisis?