Romanos, Michael Joseph
(2008)
Moving ashore? Greek shipowners, state corporatism and the Europeanisation of maritime transport.
PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.
Abstract
As the European Commission muscled in the national configuration and domestic actors engaged with the EU institutions, the purpose of this dissertation is to explore the impact of Europeanisation on the state corporatist arrangement encompassing the Greek state and the shipowners. The central argument is that although there is evidence of the reshaping of the relations between the state and Greek shipowners, the direction of change varies across industry segments and is contingent on four conditions. Firstly, it is contingent on the nature of the Greek state and its ability to exercise 'integrated leadership'. Secondly, the domestic actors recognise and act upon the incongruence between EU initiatives and existing domestic or international policies. Thirdly, the shipowners possess the capacity to exit the domestic configuration through capital mobility. Fourthly, alongside the shipowners, the presence of influential formal or factual veto points in the domestic institutional arrangement. The argument made is sustained through the analysis of the impact of Europeanisation on the relations between the Greek state and shipowners in two case studies. The first case study is devoted to ocean-going shipping and the growing EU competence in maritime safety regulation, concentrating on the accelerated phasing- out of single-hull tankers and the constitution of criminal sanctions for ship-source pollution. The Greek ocean-going shipowners in consultation with the incumbent Greek governments mobilized at every possible level to halt or amend the EU initiatives. As a result, there is evidence of the reinforcement of state corporatism which is contingent on the unitary nature of the Greek state, the absence of integrated leadership, the incompatibility between EU and international policies, the capital mobility and ensuing structural power of ocean-going shipowners and the weakness of the other formal or factual veto points in the domestic political process. The second case study concentrates on the coastal shipping sector and EU measures to abolish the cabotage trades across the member states. The coastal shipowners, the incumbent Greek governments and the island communities engaged politically with the EU institutions in advancing their interests. In this instance, there is evidence of the loosening of the state corporatist arrangement between the Greek state and the coastal shipowners. In spite of the unitary nature of the state, the lack of 'integrated leadership' and the incongmence between the EU and domestic policies, the coastal shipowners were more embedded at the national level and contended with an influential factual veto point in the form of the island communities.
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