This contributed volume explores the relationships between politics, economics, and evaluation. With a special focus on Greece, it addresses how evaluations within different sectors impact policymaking and explains what this means for sustainable development. Featuring interdisciplinary perspectives on economic policy evaluation for inclusive and future-forward public policy, the chapters rethink and reform evaluation to meet modern economic challenges. The book outlines the concept and principles of resource allocation in evaluation, offering a framework for economic transformation. It highlights the role of evaluation in achieving sustainable development. It provides a new way to measure the quality of public policy, governance, and economic policy.

Greece adopted an ambitious program to eliminate fiscal and current account imbalances, regain competitiveness, maintain financial stability, and boost growth and employment. While significant fiscal adjustment occurred, critical objectives such as regaining confidence and restoring growth were not achieved. The program lacked in better tailoring of IMF lending policies, avoiding undue delays in debt restructuring, attention to the political economy of adjustment, and parsimony in fiscal structural reforms. The importance of streamlining the Troika process and effective risk-sharing arrangements within the euro area has been stressed by Executive Directors.

For most of the first part of the 21st century Greece has been seen as a critical battlefield for the survival of the powerful and the adjustment or extinction of the weak, as if all the historical contradictions of the global financial crisis and the eurozone crisis were concentrated in that tiny part of the world, with a population of just 11 million people and a GDP of less than 2% of that of the European Union as a whole. While the country has been overpowered by the disciplinarian and deeply authoritarian policy mix of ordoliberal/neoliberal rules, as this book attempts to show, there is hope. Defeat does not end the crisis, and crisis means constant opportunity. In this state of affairs, all types of agencies try to take advantage of the conditions and opportunities in order to advance towards positions of power and provide the best of solutions for the class interests they represent. Thus, harsh conflict is inevitable and if history provides a yardstick, it is that in periods of conflict and crisis, the winner, usually, is the one who manages to strike the right political and social alliances at the right time. The editors have assembled in this volume a number of interdisciplinary chapters and arguments which, despite their differences, share the strategic aim of a critique of both neoliberalism/ordoliberalism and new authoritarianism. Chapters examine the eurozone crisis from a variety of angles with reference to Greece, and Greek politics and society. With this collection of heterodox and scholarly essays, the authors and editors aim to offer a progressive understanding of current historical circumstances. Constantine Dimoulas is an Assistant Professor in social administration and evaluation of social programmes at Panteion University, Greece. Vassilis K. Fouskas is Professor of international politics and economics at the University of East London, UK, and the founding editor of the Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies (Taylor & Francis).

This book not only analyzes and evaluates the current state of economic growth and development in Greece, but also investigates the potential for growth and development in the mid- to long-term horizon. This book presents a unique theoretical framework drawing on structural elements of political economy such as institutions, cultural background, and the complex nature of politics and political power, as well as neoclassical economics and behavioral economics. The first part of the book introduces readers to some key concepts of normative analysis from a theoretical and methodological perspective, presents the relation between theory and policy, placing the Greek economy within the framework of the Eurozone, and provides the political economy of integrated growth and development in Greek economy. The second part of the book describes the current condition of Greece in the global economy and attempts to detect the major social, economic and political trends that will prevail in the Greek society, while pointing the challenges that the Greek economy will face across the coming decade by taking into account the Covid-19 crisis. The third part of the book provides an overview of growth and development theory as specifically applied to Greece, focusing on the endogenous forces driving the economy, and portrays how the 2008 financial crisis and the crisis of Covid-19 transformed the framework of Greek growth and development policy, to the ground of a new consolidated situation of low growth, low inflation and low employment in the case of Greek economy.

Praise for the first edition: 'The new book by Michael Mitsopoulos and Theodore Pelagidis offers insightful analysis of the Greek drama. It makes fascinating reading and well demonstrates that the blame is widely shared.' André Sapir, University Professor, Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium, and former Economic Advisor to the President of the European Commission 'Who is to blame for Greece? If I could pick just two experts on the Greek debacle to answer this question it would be Theodore Pelagidis and Michael Mitsopoulos. And thankfully they have done just that in this penetrating analysis of what has happened to Greece over the past five years. It's a timely and incisive work and no one gets off easy a must read.' Landon Thomas, Jr, Financial Reporter, New York Times, USA This expanded and enlarged second edition of Theodore Pelagidis and Michael Mitsopoulos’ popular Who’s to Blame for Greece? (2016) reviews Greece's economy since its accession to the Monetary Union, with new research focusing on the perils of the populist Syrizia government during the critical 'Grexit' period of 2015-2016. The authors also focus on political developments since that time and in particular propose a new form of taxation as well as explore debt sustainability in relation to Greece's economic challenges. This book will appeal to researchers, practitioners and policy makers interested in the EU and the political economy of Greece and offers valuable updates on the first edition.