The main advantage of municipal government, particularly at the local level, is the ability of citizens to have direct access to the results produced by their elected representatives during their term of office. Even in large cities, despite their high building density and many districts, the evaluation of results can be very reliable. However, visibility of actions and assessment of the municipal government’s work is easier in rural areas with a small-scale urban fabric, such as Mani. If we accept that there are two major themes that constitute the main οbjectives of local government, i.e., a) quality of life and b) natural environment, then in the urban municipalities, due to the high density of population, the quality of life should be the first priority, while rural municipalities, due to their large territorial area, should prioritise the natural environment. The common rule, in order to achieve efficiency in both cases, is the obligation to apply the following basic economic rule: “maximising the return on the financial resources allocated at the lowest possible cost”.

At each level of operation of the elected bodies, and especially at the leadership levels, we need to examine the incentives that prompted elected officials to participate in the local government. It is certain that if the real cause of this impulse is the sincere desire to offer social work and provided, of course, that this desire is combined with competence acquired through studies and/or professional experience, the results will be visible and measurable, so that they can be recognised by any bona fide observer. Usually, however, human passions, such as the thirst for glory and money, are the main motives for participating in the local government. Although the pursuit of glory, in its pure form, is a legitimate ambition for humans, it often loses its purity under the strong pressure to materialise and it leads to uncontrollable actions. Becoming rich through compensation provided by a municipal government to its elected officials is impossible. Municipal politicians, however, can become rich through the many decision-making powers granted to them by the legislative framework and the lax internal control mechanisms for these decisions. It is perhaps no coincidence that in practice the decisions of local government bodies are not subject to effective social scrutiny by the public. Summarising the preceding thoughts, we conclude that only the existence of a conscious willingness for social contribution through municipal government institutions can provide positive results for the society. The reward for local politicians should not be personal enrichment, but rather the satisfaction of conscienciously performing one’s duties, which sometimes can also bring glory to some extent. 

One way of measuring results in rural municipalities is by observing improvements in the physical environment (municipal roads and squares, rural roads, municipal buildings and monuments, harbours). Their maintenance is financed annually from the state budget and requires coordinated action, based on the principle of “maximising results at the lowest cost”, in order to implement the necessary projects in an efficient manner. A prerequisite for the completion of these works is the full use of human resources within the scope of their duties and, above all, the capability of the elected politicians to plan and coordinate all the necessary phases from preparation to completion.

Another way of measuring results in rural municipalities is by observing improvements in the areas related to quality of life (water supply, drainage, sewage, electricity, cleaniness of municipal spaces, solid household waste). Daily local government actions in these areas (particularly in those areas that are financed directly by the users of these services) are easily observable, and conclusions about the effectiveness of these services and the coordinative capacity of the elected politicians can be drawn easily. It should be noted that for the “quality of life” projects a significant amount of funding is required, and that the search for funding from the central government is the primary responsibility of the municipal authorities, both unilateral and collective.

We hope that in the upcoming municipal elections the voters will consider the thoughts developed in this editorial and choose those candidates who will be able to create maximum efficiency for the benefit of our society.

THE EDITORIAL BOARD

From the encyclopedia:  Local Government: a) administration without dependence, b) institution that organises the administration of a region by representatives of local communities or a section of a special public organisation without substantial involvement of the state.In the old days, in the era of the dominance of the “katharevousa”,[1] when there was a complete mismatch between a name and its meanings in practice, the expression “κατ’ εὐφημισμόν” was used. This is how local government works in practice, i.e., in complete dependence on the goals of the state administration and with the aim of promoting those matters which it does not wish or does not have the ability to implement. In addition to promoting the persons it wishes to appoint to leading positions in local government institutions, the central government also controls the rates of grants through which the powers delegated to local government can be promoted to a minimum extent. In short, in our everyday language, local government is the step child (= child of inferior status who helps with the chores) of the state administration. Nevertheless, this institutional expression has a comparative advantage: it is in close proximity to the citizens and thus the possibilities of monitoring the events unfolding with, and by, the actions of its representatives, as well as to some extent the possibilities of intervention, are easier. The reflection that preceded is a prelude to a basic review οf the local government period that will end with next October’s elections, which will highlight the people who will play a leading role in the next five-year local government period. We will record our observations below.

Contributing to the inefficiency of the institution of local government is the total absence of any relevant reference to the country’s Constitution. If such a reference existed, it could mitigate the complete fluidity regarding the main characteristics of the institution. Each state government can decide, through its own legislation, on the number of elected officials, on the duration of the municipal government periods, on the electoral system, on the powers of their unilateral and collective bodies, but also on the bulk of their financial resources, which come from the state budget and are distributed through grants. As an extension of this, the government at the time decided that the 2019 local government elections would be held under a proportional representation electoral system even though the general political climate was extremely conflicting, the ambitions of the leaders in the local government groups were unrestrained and, consequently, decision-making by the collective bodies was highly problematic. Some corrective legislative interventions by the next government, but mainly the holding of meetings of the collective bodies by teleconferencing, balanced to a certain extent the chaos that had been created. The newest legislation, through which the municipal elections of next October will be held, brought back the pre-existing electoral system, which strengthened the majority combination and provided it with an enhanced majority in the collective bodies, but it also eliminated one of the few positive provisions of the previous electoral system: the election of members of the Municipal Communities with separate ballots and their mandatory financial support from the municipal budget for the execution of small maintenance projects of the local infrastructure. The abolition of this arrangement fully confirms the aforementioned trend towards full control of local government by the central administration.

In our region, Mani, the strong negative effects of the electoral system of the simple proportional representation were also felt and created dissonance. In the municipality of Western Mani in particular, the mayor had to cooperate with two minority municipal groups in order for the institution to function properly. Two favourable circumstances, as the “deus ex machina” of the ancient Greek tragedies, balanced to a certain extent the inability to produce work, even the maintenance of critical municipal infrastructure, by the local governments of our region. We are referring to: a) the assignment of the Ministry of Interior to our compatriot politician who, due to the need to restore public infrastructure from the wildfires of 2020 and 2021 in Laconia, financed Eastern Mani with large sums of money and b) the election of our compatriot to the position of Regional Governor who, when he was given the legal opportunity, tried to counteract the permanent marginalisation of Mani in the financing of public infrastructure projects. A great opportunity for qualitative and quantitative upgrading of the territorial area of Mani, through the EU-funded program “Integrated Spatial Investments” was underutilised. Delayed or even faulty drafting of technical studies for necessary public projects, underfunding of private investments in the tourism sector, emphasis on one-time cultural actions, or in some cases with directed beneficiaries, minimise the footprint on the Mani area of this significant amount of funding which, unfortunately, is not repeatable.

It seems that in our region the lessons of the past are reflected when they collide with personal ambitions. These lessons, which have arisen from objective and subjective reasons (small population, great distance from decision-making centres, individualistic views of things, reduced willingness of social contribution, etc.), for the rational thinkers, lead to self-evident tendencies towards universal cooperation, which is the only way to produce improved results. It seems, in the first ten days of August, as this text is being written, that instead of joint activities in view of the October municipal elections, a more intense division will emerge. It seems that there is a complete ignorance of the risk of even greater degradation of the area even though the external economic conditions, due to the quality of the geographic and climatic environment, are favourable…

THE EDITORIAL BOARD

[1] archaic official language used by the Greek state until 1976 when it was replaced by “dimotiki” (everyday colloquial language)

Productivity expresses how efficiently and effectively resources (capital, labour, entrepreneurship, technology) are used to produce goods and services. This definition applies both at a) the level of business-household and b) the level of business sectors or government entities. At the business-household level, productivity is easy to establish, because effective management is immediately ascertainable and can be determined by simple observation. At the sectoral level, the observations are relatively more difficult to establish, but again, through the multi-information that is characteristic of our times, reliable findings can be made.

At the third and last level, the state level, productivity results from effective management in the areas of state activity (mainly public finance, defence and security, public health and public education). At this level, the initial findings are relatively easy, as they are derived from the opinion of the direct beneficiaries, i.e., the citizens, through the electoral process. However, at this level, because of its large size, the many conflicting or hidden interests and the many methods of deception that can be deployed, it is often the case that the data is false and misleading and does not correspond to real facts. The state of bankruptcy Greece found itself in over the past decade is irrefutable proof of this. The main cause of the apparent and false prosperity, as it was finally revealed, was not the increased productivity of the state administration, but the concealment and the methodical downplaying of the country’s extensive borrowing and its consequences on the finances of its citizens.

It can be seen, from the course of public finances especially in the last five years, that state administrations and the general management of the national economy are going through an honest and effective phase, with productivity being the compass for the formulation of individual policy proposals in the management of all sectors. This is a comforting fact that can lead to a first conclusion that for the general economic development of the country, the content of the concept of “productivity” could be a dominant factor in the sphere of economic activity at the family and business level; from these two levels it can then be passed on in a generalized form to the third level, the state development priorities and the legislative regulations that will give them elements of timelessness.

As we attempt a more specific approach to the sensitive economic data of the country, our attention focuses on the negative trade balance and the soaring trade deficit recorded in 2022, which climbed to a 14-year record level, despite the impressive rise in exports, which were nevertheless outstripped by imports. A brief look at these figures leads to the conclusion that there is indeed an improvement in the productivity of the goods manufactured in the country, as reflected by the significant increase in exports, but the higher increase in the value of imported goods is a warning bell of the risk of creating a permanent economic imbalance. These findings, in the final analysis, prove that our country is lagging behind in the industrial sector, especially in the field of processing raw materials through vertical integration of production up to the final product to be used. By improving productivity in the industrial sector in this way, many of the imported products can be substituted by domestically produced ones, thus improvinge   the trade balance. Certainly, the promotion of this objective will need to be based on the improvement of productivity (labour, capital, entrepreneurship, technological applications) and its positive consequences will be reflected in employment, return on capital and even an increase in government revenues, which will be available for broader social purposes.

The search for a living model that had shaped high productivity at the first level (family-microenterprise) leads to the way the family economy and microenterprises operated in Mani for many centuries until the 1980s. The difficulties in maximising the performance of small farm properties due to the infertile soil were addressed by making full use of all available means: the continuous cultivation of fields alternatively with cereals and legumes; the enhancement of soil performance by recycling animal waste; the mutual exchange of working animals for farm work (ploughing, threshing, transport); the collective mobilisation of labour for oil harvesting; generalised domestic livestock farming for the production and consumption of livestock products that were sufficient for family needs and usually in surplus. Even more so, by making use of the seasonally surplus workforce, securing wages for agricultural work in the richer neighbouring areas of Messinia and Laconia. In the Maniot economy, concepts of quality of life that appear with intensity in our days, such as the protection of the environment from extraordinary weather phenomena (with automatic generalised mobilisation of all available means to deal with fires and floods) and minimisation of the volume of waste (with total recycling of all by-products of agricultural and livestock production) were integrated into everyday life and their application was self-evident. Thus, the increase in productivity (of land, labour, available farming resources) was combined with the quality of life, which is still a concern in our time…

THE EDITORIAL BOARD