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This paper proposes that the prevalence of illegitimate wage practices in Southern European societies results from the discord between the formal rules (formal institutions) and the socially shared unwritten rules that reflect citizens' beliefs (informal institutions). To evaluate this, a 2013 survey is reported on whether employers in five Southern European countries fraudulently evade tax and social security payments by paying employees a portion of their salary off the books. A strong association is revealed between the extent of wage under-reporting and the degree of institutional asymmetry across these societies. The implications for theorising illegitimate wage practices are then explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article, the final part of the symposium, concentrates on the common characteristics of Southern European states and administrations that can explain the distinctiveness of the reforms there. First, we briefly consider the theoretical aspect of the country papers, that is, historical institutionalism. We then briefly review some common features of contextual factors such as welfare state, economy and civic culture. This is followed by a discussion of some typical characteristics of Southern European administrations: legalism, politicization and clientelism. Finally, we discuss some common features of reform in Southern Europe. Reform in the region encompasses not only new public management; other reforms have also occurred. However, political polarization means these countries lack the stability necessary to implement and carry out reform effectively. In terms of improvement in quality, efficiency and client orientation of public service provision, the far-reaching politicization of the civil service gives a distinctive twist to any such claims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In much of the international public administration literature, New Public Management (NPM) already appears to be bogged down in a quagmire of critical revisions and assessments. Although some criticisms are well founded, there can be no doubt that NPM represents a trend which has considerably affected public-sector decision-making worldwide. This article takes the examples of the Southern European bureaucracies, where NPM-inspired reforms were introduced later than in the English-speaking world, but have nevertheless played a decisive role in the political agenda of both socialist and conservative governments. The paper presents the results of a comparative study of administrative reforms in five European countries as well as the USA during the 1980s and 1990s. The comparison is based on three specific dimensions (central bureaucracies’ formal structure; civil service organization; administrative processes), enabling us to systematically measure and compare the progress of the various countries subsequent to the cycle of managerial reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article investigates why, despite similar background conditions, Greece has been the site of frequent, highly visible, fringe, anti-system politics and street riots, while similar phenomena are rare in Spain. Although the article's focal point is the eruption of the December 2008 riots in Athens, it sheds light on the two countries' diverse social reactions to the sovereign debt crisis. Deploying the tool of media framing, it argues that historical legacies and political cultures matter. In the Greek case, the transition to democracy shaped a political ‘culture of sympathy’ towards acts of resistance to the state, a culture that has been institutionalised since the mid-1970s. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper focuses on analysis of public opinion towards European integration in Greece, Portugal and Spain, countries known for their positive attitudes toward integration. In particular, the article analyses how public attitudes towards Europe have been formed in these countries. Secondly, it examines the determining factors of citizens' positive attitudes toward integration and shows the types of variables that are essential to understanding the differences between Greeks, Spaniards and the Portuguese. It also examines traditional euro-optimism in these southern countries. The findings show the relevance of identity and the various impacts of party platforms and ideology in attitudes of support for European integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Differential national responses to the European Union's environmental policy have led to the idea that two worlds of environmentalism exist in Europe. In its harsh version, Europe is divided into North and South, with the South suffering from a Mediterranean syndrome. Southern European countries are viewed as environmental laggards, a perception attributed to, among other factors, a weak civil society intertwined with political systems characterized by patronage, clientelism, and lack of respect for public authority. This article provides new evidence documenting that civil society in Greece, Italy, and Spain appears to be much stronger on environmental matters than anticipated by the proponents of the above view. It also offers an alternative theorization of environmental politics, emphasizing aspects of organizational structures and political processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Latin American, South European and, later, the Central and East European democratic transitions have led to a 'revolution' in comparative politics. Instead of the polar notions of democracy and dictatorship, different types of 'transitions' have emerged and democracy has appeared also as a function of the world-system. The paper suggests that there are four scenarios for Central and East European democratic transitions in their international context: (1) Sleeping Beauty (easy westernization); (2) Deepfreeze (return to the past); (3) Latin Americanization (falling back to the Third World); and (4) Fair Weather (Central Europe joins the European integration). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The article focuses on Italy—a typical example of the Southern European model—and the recent evolution of occupational welfare (OW). It first provides up‐to‐date information on the spread of OW in the country. We then explain the persistent limited development of OW and its uneven diffusion—across policy areas (healthcare vs. pensions) and economic sectors (public vs. private sectors). The article focuses on the role of employers, trade unions, and policymakers. The state (as an employer) has not invested in OW for public employees—because of budgetary problems and a traditional lack of interest in the field—while private employers have started to invest in OW in line with broader business strategies. Trade unions have supported occupational health insurance, while they have resisted the spread of occupational pension funds. Such different strategies are related to the different role trade unions play in the two policies. Eventually, policymakers have followed different retrenchment strategies of statutory schemes in different policy fields: the more evident short‐term impact of reforms in healthcare has “crowded‐in” occupational schemes in the area, while the longer phase‐in period of pension reforms has led to the more limited role of occupational pensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides a comparative analysis of the 2014 European Parliament elections across the six countries of Southern Europe by gauging the performance of the second-order election model. Both the aggregate hypotheses of this model and evidence of micro-level foundations are analysed. The findings reveal that the political and electoral consequences of the economic crisis have not drastically challenged the second-order character of these elections in Southern Europe. However, electoral behaviour also exhibits some indications of a more critical contest. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An introduction is presented in which the editors discuss various reports within the issue on topics including catholic organisations and territorial welfare, transformations of political governance, and changes in political and economic contexts.

Despite its increasing importance, the phenomenon of party regulation has hitherto received relatively little systematic and comparative scholarly attention. The contributions to this special issue fill part of this lacuna by evaluating the various dimensions of party regulation and their impact on the parties and the party systems in post-authoritarian Southern Europe. This introduction discusses the main sources of party regulation – Constitutions, Party Laws and Party Finance Laws – and provides some preliminary conclusions on the cartelisation of party organisations and party systems. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article presents the comparative findings of six case studies of continuity and change in Southern European political economies which make use of the Europeanisation research programme. It summarises the varied European Union (EU) level inputs, frameworks or agendas in the different policy areas that each case study focuses on. It gauges the magnitude and direction of domestic change at the level of policy and governance in each political economy. In order to show how the case studies unpack the relationship between the EU input and domestic change in public policies, the article explains how the prevalent ideas, dominant interests and structuring institutions co-determine the nature of domestic change in political economies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Radical left parties actively encourage the participation of their members in internal decision-making and insist on promoting organised links to trade unions and social movements. As a party family, they deviate from what is considered to be the trend in which Western political parties have turned their backs on their social roots. Drawing on the experience of South European radical left parties from the fall of the Berlin Wall until the recent financial crisis, we argue that ideology, electoral incentives, party competition and external events explain the radical left's pronounced emphasis on linkage, while organisational trajectory explains variation within the party family in terms of the linkage strategies pursued. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article introduces a collection of essays on the elections of 2010–11 in Italy, Greece, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, Cyprus and the Turkish Cypriot community. It examines the impact of the European sovereign debt crisis on electoral trends in the era of the Greek and Portuguese bailouts. After briefly examining the crisis economies, it investigates patterns of abstention, incumbent punishment and opposition success, including the rise of regional, anti-party, far-right and racist parties. The article concludes, following Krastev (Journal of Democracy, vol. 13, no. 3, 2002, pp. 39–53), that the crisis is creating ‘democracy without choices’ in Southern Europe with potentially destabilising consequences throughout the region. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

After laying out the rationale and framework of the issue, this introductory article offers a survey of party and popular euroscepticism in European Union member states, Italy, Greece, Portugal, Spain, Cyprus and Malta and candidate Turkey, over several decades. Leonard Ray's criteria of ideological extremity, electoral unpopularity and opposition are used to assess whether South European euroscepticism has been a marginal phenomenon. The article investigates whether Maastricht constituted a turning-point for the rise of euroscepticism and accession for its decline. Finally, it asks whether euroscepticism in Southern Europe is moving towards a new 'constraining dissensus'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main aim of this article is to show to what extent it is possible to talk about the South European member states as a homogeneous region with respect to the topics of European citizenship addressed in this special issue. In particular, we will address this problem by exploring both the level of homogeneity of the attitudes developed by national elites within this area, and the level of distinctiveness of such attitudes compared with the pan-European trend. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a comprehensive investigation into the relations between political elites and mass public opinion regarding attitudes towards European Union integration. The systematic study called the Intune project attempts to map the conceptions of identity and their multiple interconnections among elites, citizens, and the mass media considered crucial to the construction of a European identity. A comparison of Central and Eastern European post-communist countries and Southern Europe in terms of identity and representation as two basic dimensions of the European integration process is described.

Migration is challenging the meaning of residency and citizenship in Southern Europe today. Migrants are contesting the ethnic model of citizenship in Spain, Italy, and Greece by becoming increasingly engaged in social movements to make existence and program claims on the state for residency and citizenship rights. As such, migration processes interfere with the way that migrant social movements can be enacted and sustained and with the potential for successful claim making. The selectivity of migration flows, the migrant networks at origin and destination countries, and the patterns of flows between the home and host countries can affect the stability and continuity of sustained networks of actors involved in social movements and in claim making on the state. This article focuses on the theoretical issues involved in migration flows, network change, and state responses to claim making to explore the potential for sustained changes in the meaning of citizenship in southern Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article investigates whether and how political parties in Southern Europe changed between 1995 and 2005. Party changes have occurred in various countries in Southern Europe during the said period, including Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, Cyprus and Turkey. A chart showing the total number of members of the two main parties in each South European country is presented. The role played by incumbency on party change is also discussed.

Focuses on the political study concerning the parliament and democratic consolidation in Southern Europe. Importance of the values of efficacy and stability to the new democratic parliaments; Ascertainment on how parliaments of Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain and Turkey adapted to the pressures of a democratic polity; Introduction of new democratic institutions as a reaction to past experiences.