When Mario Monti and Lucas Papademos were appointed as prime ministers at the head of two technocratic governments, respectively in Italy and Greece, there was similar media upheaval. They were seen as equally dangerous for party democracy – even for democracy as such. However, under closer inspection the two cabinets shared few characteristics in terms of composition, mandate and duration. Papademos’ cabinet was a technocrat-led, ecumenical government, which, though not unique in European political history, had very specific characteristics. This exceptionalism applies to all four Greek technocratic governments in the period following the country’s democratization: Grivas (1989), Zolotas (1989), Papademos (2011) and Pikrammenos (2012). The paper explores Greek technocratic cabinets’ peculiarities in a comparative manner, finding that key explanatory factors are: special constitutional provisions on government formation, the role of the judicial vis-à-vis weakened presidents and the conflictual party system with little incentive for coalition formation in case of stalemate.
