UNIVERSITY OF THESSALY
2nd International Conference on Economic and Social History
"Markets" and Politics
Private interests and public authority (18th-20th centuries)
Volos, 10-12 February 2012
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Abstracts
- Iordanis Aivazis & Maria-Christina Chatziioannou Political power and agents of economic activity in postwar Greece: the case of Stratis Andreadis
The interaction between political power and agents of economic activity in postwar Greek history is examined by focusing on a particular case, that of Stratis Andreadis (1905-1989). The struggle of the country to reach a path to recovery after the Second World War and the ensuing Civil War found an expression in both the actions of the post war governments, as representatives of political power, and of Stratis Andreadis who because of his entrepreneurship and social standing and behavior came to personify the power of the market forces at the time.
The entrepreneurial activity of the man spans a number of years, but he became really visible from 1952 when he burst into the financial scene after he gained control of the Commercial Bank of Greece until his demise in 1975 when the then Government turned after him on allegations of impropriety in connection to Commercial Bank’s practices, while the epilogue was written after his death with the final decision of the European Court on the “Andreadis versus the Greek State” case in connection to the “STRAN” refinery. His presence of almost twenty-five years in the financial scene can be divided into three periods: the one which starts in the early ‘50s and lasts until the onslaught of the dictatorship in 1967, the period of the dictatorship itself (1967-1974), and the early years of the post-dictatorship period. Although these periods differ in length, they are distinct from each other because of the policy characteristics and the behavioral pattern of the political power and the economic agents respectively.
The basic postulate of this presentation is that the actions of a government and of government related agencies, as representatives of political power, and on the other hand of the agents of economic activity lead to cycles of stability or, inversely, instability, depending on a number of factors, beyond, obviously, the existence of a common interest as the deciding factor for stability. These factors encompass the state of the economy, political and social conditions, institutions and their enforcement, etc. Imbalances usually occur when the agents of economic activity overstep their power, in which case governments react usually through enforcement of institutions until a new “pact” or stability level is achieved.
