Abstract
Austerity measures have substantially redrawn a number of boundaries, challenges and perceptions in Cyprus’ political, economic and administrative history. Empirically, austerity measures seem to outreach their immediately apparent scope of fiscal consolidation with repercussions for the economy as a whole as well as for wider public management and citizens’ well-being. This has created new dynamics and posed new challenges to local public services, which constitutes a theoretically and empirically challenging endeavour within the framework of Europeanization research. This chapter contextualizes and analyses the variety of austerity measures and their impact on Cyprus’ local public services from a two-fold perspective. In the first place, it does so through a mapping of austerity measures, their specificities and impact. Secondly, it examines how divergent brands of policies and reforms could potentially be transferred via unofficial channels, such as the Learning and Development function of a public administration system. Finally, this work argues that the design and delivery of local public services depends on historical continuities that affect the interplay between central and local government structures and that austerity measures cannot but reinforce them.
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- 1.
This work focuses on the Municipalities that have not been displaced due to the Turkish invasion of 1974 (30) and which remain fully functional local government organizations.
- 2.
The Ministry of the Interiors prepared the relevant Bills and brought them to Parliament in March 2016. Once again, there was inconsistency between the experts’ proposals and the executive’s choices with regard to the Bills. Major provisions included mandatory clustering and a non-hierarchical relationship between District and local clusters. The reform proposals triggered new reactions. Since tensions are expected to rise in view of the February 2018 Presidential elections, support for the LG reform bills is expected to further decrease, in fear that local reactions could influence the outcome of the elections.
- 3.
The Cypriot government successfully implemented reforms in important sectors for example fiscal consolidation, tax reform, social welfare reform and financial sector reform. Yet, it was not so successful in other areas, such local government, the incomplete health care reforms and the privatization of the Cyprus Telecommunication Authority. See European Commission (October 2015).
- 4.
Reactions originated from leftist organizations connected with the opposition party and from groups whose social benefits were running the risk of being decreased, for example the disabled and large families.
- 5.
Ministry of the Interior-Central Electoral Service (2011–2016).
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Kirlappos, A., Philippou, P., Agapiou-Josephides, K. (2019). Austerity Measures and Local Public Services in Cyprus: Coping with Challenges Old and New and Reinforcing Historical Continuities. In: Lippi, A., Tsekos, T. (eds) Local Public Services in Times of Austerity across Mediterranean Europe. Governance and Public Management. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76225-8_7
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