Corporatist Ideas in Inter-war Greece: From Theory to Practice (1922–1940)

Abstract

The article examines the reception, conception and practical application of corporatist ideas in inter-war Greece. Drawing on Peter Williamson’s terms, this study looks closely at both consensual- and authoritarian-licensed corporatist theories and policies. In the period under consideration, Greece was a fledgling, fast industrializing society that was significantly affected by the economic advantages and misgivings of the ‘gloomy thirties’. High rates of unemployment, which were aggravated by the global economic crisis of 1929, low wages, long working hours and insufficient enforcement of labour law increased the dissatisfaction of the working classes and fanned social unrest.

Consensual-licensed corporatist proposals for ‘professional representation’ entered the debate on the (re-)establishment of the Senate in 1928–29. Authoritarian-licensed corporatism found a much broader audience and practical scope during the Kondylis and the Metaxas dictatorships in the period 1935–40. Fascist-like corporatist practices were applied in agriculture and in the bargaining of collective agreements that regulated minimum wages and salaries. In fact, Metaxas had pronounced the transformation of his anti-parliamentary regime into a corporatist ‘new State’. However, the eventual implementation of corporatist ideas was rather limited. For that matter, I argue that interbellum Greece remained, in its European setting, a marginal case of corporatist theories and policies.