Corruption, Policy Inadequacy and the Greek Constitution

In this Chapter is to give an overview of the relevant literature that also provides the necessary starting point to investigate the relationship mentioned above between policy decisions and corruption. Then in section 3.3 we examine briefly what motivates agents to engage in activities that we have defined as corruption. In section 3.4 we revisit seminal work that allows us to describe the challenge that democracies face when they have to balance, on the one hand, the need to provide society with a government that is able to govern, and, on the other hand, take into account the preferences and rights of minorities. We then examine in section 3.5 the role of these minorities in a democracy. We also see how they are both potential corruptors and those who will first take the initiative to defend the democracy, if it is threatened by some encroaching power. At this stage we can now observe how the same attributes of democracies that lead to decisions that reflect the preferences of a large spectrum of minorities can also create an environment that is not favorable to the emergence of corruption. In the closing section we look at the attributes of a number of select constitutions to see how they manage to secure, on the one hand, strong governments and, on the other hand, the protection of minority rights in a democratic setting. We can subsequently use both the theoretical background of the previous sections and the attributes of a number of the constitutions examined to put in perspective certain salient attributes of the Greek constitution. We also link these elements with the inability of Greece to promote a decisive reform agenda that would allow the country to overcome the obstacles that now seem to endanger gravely its prospects and, at the same time, to fend off corruption