Agenda and Framing Dynamics of Public Policy during the Debt and Refugee Crises in Greece

The paper aims to examine the impact of the ongoing Eurozone and refugee crises on changes in public and party policy priorities in Greece. The goal is to make theoretical and empirical contributions to the analysis of agenda dynamics and provide a schema for the analysis of agenda-setting and frame-building. To what extent are the policy priorities placed on the agenda driven by domestic actors, such as political parties. or by supranational EU actors? Has the process of issue attention, in terms of public policy priorities on the legislative and electoral agendas, changed because of the debt and refugee crises? The paper employs a comprehensive framework for coding policy agendas provided by the Comparative Agendas Project (CAP) and develops a new schema to identify the attribution of policy responsibility between national and supranational institutions involved in these crises. The paper aims to examine to what extent the legislative and electoral agendas are dominated by the attribution of policy-making responsibility to supra-national actors versus that of national actors. In the supra-national policy route, issue initiation is driven by European political leaders, the representatives of Greece’s creditors (the Troika), but also the obligations of the Greek government towards the European treaties, and finally by the international media. As domestic indicators of influence, we consider the role of political parties, both in government and opposition, but also the impact of existing laws and path-dependency dynamics in the policy formation process. The goal is also to discern the dividing line between dominant and critical frames as they were articulated between mainstream and niche political parties. Those frames undertaken by political actors, are linked to a set of causes, responsibilities and solutions that shaped the major political cleavage between anti-austerity and pro-austerity groups (mnimoniakoi/antimnimoniakoi) that still dominate party system dynamics in Greece. The agenda becomes the mechanism by which we perceive governance in action, providing insights into issue diversity and policy change over time. The findings will increase knowledge about some of the key behavioural mechanisms of governance. Furthermore, the Greek debt crisis and the refugee crisis provides useful insights into the impact of Europeanization on public policy formulation. The paper will enhance understanding of the process of agenda dynamics in EU member states characterised as multi-level systems of governance.