The political independence of a state can easily be represented by a Constitution, a flag, borders, a government and membership in international organisations. Its actual autonomy is far more difficult to measure. It depends on who can restrict its choices, who controls access to financing and critical infrastructure, who participates in shaping policy before it ever reaches Parliament, who possesses the economic and communicative resources to place an issue at the centre of public debate, and which people inside the country function as connecting nodes to more powerful centres abroad.
It is in this sense that the term “occupation” is used here. It describes a condition in which the institutions of independence formally exist while the actual exercise of sovereignty is constrained by a dense web of economic dependencies, geopolitical commitments, transnational interests and domestic networks capable of transforming external power into internal influence.
Within the Ottoman Empire, authority in the Greek-speaking territories was not exercised solely by the central administration. Local notables, kotsambasides, communal leaders, ecclesiastical figures, tax intermediaries and local economic elites stood between imperial authority and local society. Their position allowed them to accumulate social, economic and political power. Authority therefore also functioned through networks. Access to the person who made the decision constituted a form of power in itself.
The Revolution of 1821 overthrew Ottoman sovereignty in the territories from which the new Greek state was formed. Societies, however, do not restart from zero with the signing of a treaty. People, property, families, local hierarchies, relationships of protection and networks of acquaintances entered the new political order with them. The historiography of Greek clientelism has highlighted this continuity. Sections of the pre-revolutionary elites were incorporated into the new political class, while personal mediation continued to play an important role in gaining access to the state.
At the same time, the newly created Greek state was born within a system of international protection. Britain, France and Russia played a decisive role in the process of its creation, in determining its international status and in selecting the monarchical solution. In 1832, the Bavarian Prince Otto was chosen for the Greek throne, while the three Powers guaranteed the large loan of 60 million francs associated with the establishment of the new regime.
This external presence did not remain confined to diplomacy. It penetrated domestic political life through the English, French and Russian parties. John A. Petropulos’s classic study of the nineteenth-century Greek state documents the ways in which Greek political factions were linked to the three Protecting Powers and their embassies. Domestic political rivalry therefore became intertwined with international competition.
This reveals one of the deeper patterns of modern Greek history. A foreign power seeking influence rarely needs to administer a country directly. Far more effective is a domestic mechanism that understands the language, the society, the political balance and the relevant personalities, while having its own reasons for connecting its power to an external centre.
The domestic actor may gain protection, money, access, political connections, professional opportunities or social prestige. The external centre gains a person or organisation capable of operating within the local system far more effectively than a foreign official could.
This phenomenon is not uniquely Greek. In examining contemporary mechanisms of foreign interference, the European Parliament explicitly uses the term “domestic proxies” and notes that foreign actors may be assisted by political accomplices inside EU member states who derive political or economic advantages from advancing foreign strategies. The same resolution observes that the use of domestic proxies and cooperation with domestic allies can blur the boundary between external and internal influence.
In Greece this mechanism was already visible during the nineteenth century. A political actor connected to one of the Protecting Powers was not necessarily its passive instrument. He could also use that relationship to strengthen his own position domestically. Dependence therefore created a system of mutual usefulness between partners whose actual power, however, was far from equal.
Later, the same basic mechanism acquired a much more tangible economic form.
The Greek bankruptcy of 1893 and the military defeat of 1897 led to the establishment of International Financial Control in 1898. The International Financial Commission, composed of representatives of six foreign powers, acquired supervisory authority over specific sources of Greek state revenue. State monopolies, tax revenues and customs receipts were assigned to service the country’s creditors. Economic sovereignty was therefore restricted through the mechanism of debt.
This is central to understanding the history that followed. The power generated by lending is different from military conquest, yet it has real political consequences. A state dependent on the next tranche of financing occupies a considerably weaker negotiating position than the body capable of deciding whether that financing will continue.
In 1927 Greece again faced serious economic and fiscal difficulties and turned to the League of Nations. The Geneva Protocol of 15 September 1927 was linked to a £9 million loan and to an institutional reorganisation of the Greek monetary system. The Bank of Greece itself records that the League of Nations, which mediated the loan, proposed the creation of a separate central bank and that the Bank of Greece was established within the framework of that agreement.
The repetition of the pattern is striking. Economic crisis, a need for foreign financing, negotiations with a more powerful external institution, financial assistance, and accompanying changes in domestic institutions or economic policy.
After the Second World War, the system assumed another form. Greece found itself at the centre of the first confrontations of the Cold War, while the devastated economy and the Civil War made the country exceptionally dependent on external support. Britain could no longer maintain its previous level of involvement, and the United States assumed a central role.
American government archives are remarkably explicit.
In a memorandum from Dean Acheson to President Truman on 23 May 1947, it was stated that the Greek government would retain responsibility for domestic reconstruction, while the United States government would exercise “full control” over the expenditure of American funds and over Greek government programmes directly affecting the success of American assistance.
Preparatory American documents also proposed general supervision of public finances and participation in the formulation of fiscal policy. The official instructions issued to the head of the American Mission for Aid to Greece gave him substantial powers relating to the conditions attached to aid and the supervision of reconstruction programmes.
Even more revealing is a telegram from the U.S. State Department in November 1947. It acknowledged that the United States government had necessarily become involved in certain aspects of Greek internal affairs and stated that American influence should be exercised as discreetly as possible. The same document noted the desirability, where possible, of leaving responsibility and public credit for measures to the Greek government and the Greek people.
This document is particularly important to the argument developed here. It demonstrates that external power can be exercised effectively without continuously appearing in the foreground. Discreet influence requires local institutions and local people capable of implementing, supporting and legitimising decisions within the domestic political environment.
This is precisely the role that is so often missing from narratives of Greek dependence.
Foreign actors possess no magical ability to impose anything they wish upon a society. They require domestic collaborators, groups with converging interests, political interlocutors, business partners, administrative officials, people with access to the media, and networks capable of transferring a priority from the international level into the domestic political system.
In some cases there is ideological identification. In others there is financial gain, professional advancement, political protection or access to international centres. Frequently, several of these factors coexist. A person does not need to receive secret instructions in order to serve an external interest in practice. It is sufficient for his own position, financing or political power to be strengthened when specific external priorities are successfully promoted within the country.
Post-dictatorship Greece added to this mechanism an extensive system of party and social mediation. Political science literature has described Greek “bureaucratic clientelism”, party patronage and the close relationships between organised interests and political parties. For large sections of society, the state became less an impersonal mechanism applying universal rules and more an arena in which organised groups competed for positions, resources, privileges and access.
The old kotsambasis did not survive as a person. The function of the access broker found new forms.
The local party boss, the trade-union official, the business association, the legal or consultancy firm, the powerful publisher, the professional organisation, the think tank, the NGO, the expert moving between the private and public sectors, the academic network and the public-relations company can, depending on circumstances, act as nodes within a far more complex system.
This is one of the major transformations of the twenty-first century. Political influence is no longer concentrated solely within political parties.
Modern public policy is produced within an ecosystem of organisations. Ministries work with consultants. European programmes finance projects. Foundations fund research and organisations. Think tanks produce policy proposals. NGOs participate in public consultations and international networks. Companies and professional associations maintain organised representation. Academics and experts serve on committees. Media organisations decide which experts and which studies become visible to the wider public. Within this system, money does not need to purchase a political decision directly in order to acquire political significance.
Funding determines which programmes can exist. Programmes create jobs and organisations. Organisations produce research and recommendations. Recommendations create experts. Experts gain access to committees and media platforms. The repetition of particular ideas gives them legitimacy and gradually introduces them into the vocabulary of public policy.
Economic capital can therefore be converted into social capital and, ultimately, into political influence.
International scholarship has examined this problem through resource dependence theory. An organisation that depends significantly on external donors must take into account the priorities of the sources that make its survival possible. This does not automatically turn every funded organisation into an instrument of its donor. It does, however, create a real system of incentives within which funding, agenda-setting and organisational strategy can interact.
The phenomenon becomes politically critical when such networks enjoy greater access to centres of power than the citizen who is supposedly the source of democratic sovereignty.
The European Union itself has recognised that foreign interference can operate through political allies, the financing of parties and organisations, media outlets, economic dependencies, academic and cultural institutions, and what it describes as “elite capture and co-optation”.
The issue therefore extends far beyond money. It concerns the creation of social networks of influence.
Someone funds a programme. Someone administers that funding. Someone selects the participants. Someone writes the report. Someone is invited as an expert. Someone has access to a minister or to a European institution. Someone appears on television to explain to the public why a particular policy is necessary. These individuals may act entirely in good faith and genuinely believe in the positions they defend. The operation of the network remains politically significant because it produces accumulated access that the ordinary citizen does not possess.
Greece now has an institutional framework for lobbying. Law 4829/2021 established a Transparency Register, and the OECD records for 2026 that Greece fulfils 60% of its regulatory criteria for lobbying and 56% of its criteria relating to implementation in practice. The Greek framework defines lobbying as direct communication with institutional representatives for the purpose of influencing decision-making and covers individuals and organisations carrying out such activity for remuneration.
This, however, captures only one part of the contemporary ecosystem of influence. Political influence may occur long before direct contact with a minister. It may lie in deciding which research is funded, in constructing a network of experts, in repeatedly producing particular policy proposals, in obtaining access to the media and in the ability of an organisation to transform its own agenda into an issue of national debate.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has used the term policy capture to describe a process in which public decisions are systematically or repeatedly directed away from the public interest and towards the interests of specific groups. It notes that this can occur through illegal practices, but also through entirely lawful mechanisms such as lobbying, political financing, the shaping of information available to decision-makers and close social relationships. This observation fundamentally changes the way power should be understood. A system may be formally lawful while distributing the actual capacity to influence decisions in an extremely unequal manner. The citizen has one vote.
An organised institution may have permanent staff, lawyers, economists, communications specialists, consultants, access to international conferences, personal relationships with political officials and a continuous presence in the policy-making process. These two forms of political presence do not carry the same actual weight.
OECD data for Greece are revealing. In its trust survey published in 2026, only 21% of respondents in Greece believed that people like themselves had a say in what the government does. The figure remained at 21% in both 2023 and 2025, while Greeks also gave low assessments of the system’s ability to take different interests into account and deal with complex issues in the public interest.
This is the first direct cost to the citizen: political inequality. The vote remains equal. Access to the production of policy does not.
The second cost appears in the economy.
When organised groups obtain privileged access to taxation policy, subsidies, public contracts, licensing procedures, regulation or the distribution of state and European resources, their benefits exist within a system of finite resources. Preferential treatment for one group may mean a higher tax burden for others, barriers to entry for smaller businesses, more expensive services or lower-quality public goods. The OECD associates policy capture with greater inequality, erosion of trust, the weakening of democratic values and lower economic growth.
The third cost is the diffusion of responsibility.
The Greek crisis after 2010 provides a characteristic example. Greece lost access to international markets and entered programmes of international financing that linked disbursements to fiscal targets and specific reforms. Decisions affected salaries, pensions, taxes, labour relations, public property and social services. Enhanced surveillance ended in 2022, but Greece remains under post-programme surveillance. The European Commission published another post-programme surveillance assessment on 3 June 2026. The financial consequences of these programmes extend much further into the future. Official EFSF repayment schedules include Greek principal repayments extending to 2070.
Within such a system the citizen faces a problem of democratic accountability. A government can invoke obligations to creditors or the European framework. European institutions can point out that final legislative decisions are taken by the Greek government and Parliament. The actual decision has emerged through a multilevel process of negotiation, making responsibility increasingly difficult to locate.
The fourth cost lies deeper within society and concerns the citizen’s own perception of the state.
In a state of strong institutions, a person knows that a service, licence, position or benefit depends upon general rules. When society becomes accustomed to mediation, the first question becomes: “Who do you know?”
That is where the political downgrading of the citizen begins. From a bearer of rights, he becomes a seeker of access. He looks for the MP, the party acquaintance, the trade-union official, the business figure, the person who “has connections”. The state gradually ceases to be experienced as a common institution and becomes an arena in which different networks compete for access. This is perhaps the deepest connection between the kotsambasis and the contemporary mechanism. The historical figure has disappeared. The function of the intermediary remains.
Today, however, the intermediary may possess a far greater reach. He may connect the Greek government with a foreign government, a multinational corporation, a European institution, an international foundation or a policy network. He may participate simultaneously in companies, organisations, research structures, committees and media outlets. He may move ideas, financing and people between different institutions. This is the contemporary carousel of influence. And there is no single player.
British interests have their own priorities. French, German, American, Russian, Chinese and other state or private centres have theirs. European institutions operate within their own institutional framework. Multinational companies pursue profit and access to markets. Private foundations promote programmes consistent with their stated purposes. Greek business groups pursue their own interests. Politicians seek power and re-election. Organisations require resources. Media organisations need revenue and access.
The lines intersect. Some Greek actors use international relationships to reinforce their own domestic position. Some external actors use their Greek interlocutors to reinforce theirs. Some individuals move between more than one of these worlds and create bridges between different interests.
It is within this environment that the concept of the “domestic proxy” becomes important. It does not describe every person who cooperates with a foreign organisation, nor every institution receiving international funding. It describes a situation in which a domestic actor uses his position to facilitate the advancement of an external interest while simultaneously obtaining political, economic or another form of advantage from that relationship. The European Parliament explicitly recognises the existence of this mechanism within European democracies.
Greek public debate frequently examines the foreign actor and pays much less attention to the domestic side of the relationship. Yet without that domestic component, much of the influence would be impossible. That is where the most uncomfortable questions begin.
Who opens the door?
Who gains locally from the relationship?
Who translates an external interest into Greek political language?
Who presents it as an obvious necessity?
Who produces the study that supposedly proves it?
Who finances the study?
Who invites its author onto the committee?
Who presents that person as an independent expert?
Who reaches the ministry before the citizen, the small business owner or the local community that will eventually live with the consequences of the decision?
These questions require no conspiracy theory. They require transparency. Funding, boards of directors, contracts, declarations of interests, lobbying, movement of personnel between the public and private sectors, membership of committees, ownership of media organisations and public subsidies can all be investigated.
That is where serious journalistic and academic scrutiny should be concentrated.
The mechanism of contemporary “occupation” has no need for a foreign governor sitting in a palace. It is far more effective to possess a network of people who already operate within the institutions of the country and whose interests sufficiently coincide with those of external centres for the general direction to reproduce itself without constant intervention. No one necessarily has to pick up the telephone. The system of incentives performs much of the work.
Greek history demonstrates a remarkable resilience of this mechanism. Ottoman administration relied on local intermediaries. The Great Powers developed political networks within the early Greek state. Creditors obtained institutionalised financial control in 1898. The League of Nations linked financing to institutional reforms during the interwar period. The United States acquired exceptionally extensive influence over economic and political reconstruction after 1947. Post-war and post-dictatorship Greece developed mass party and clientelist networks. The debt crisis again linked financing to external surveillance. The contemporary world has added an immense architecture of supranational institutions, private networks, lobbying, organisations, consultants, foundations and policy production. The continuity does not lie in the same people. It lies in the value of mediation. Whoever controls access between the citizen and power acquires influence.Whoever can connect domestic power with a stronger external centre acquires even more. And the less visible the network becomes, the harder it is for the citizen to understand who is actually influencing a decision. That is where the real democratic problem lies. Greece can have an elected Parliament while some of the most important parameters of a policy have already been shaped before the bill ever reaches MPs.
It can hold free elections while access to centres of power remains extremely unequal. It can have hundreds of civil-society organisations while the citizen still lacks a clear picture of who funds some of them, which international networks support them and how much access they possess to decision-making.It can have media pluralism while economic power still determines to a significant degree who possesses the resources to produce public discourse continuously. Formal democracy therefore does not by itself guarantee substantive popular sovereignty. The citizen must be able to see the networks.
To know who finances whom.To know which interests are represented on a committee..To know the financial relationships of an organisation producing policy recommendations. To know who pays a lobbyist. To know the route followed by an individual moving from a corporation into a ministry and from a ministry into an international organisation.
To be able to follow the money, the relationships and the decisions. Real liberation of a society begins precisely there. Greece liberated itself militarily from the Ottoman Empire. The history that followed demonstrates how much more difficult it is to free a society from dependence on the intermediary, from the external protector, from the creditor who transforms debt into political leverage and from the domestic actor who turns his relationship with more powerful external players into personal or organisational advantage. Two centuries after the Revolution, perhaps this is the question most worth asking.
How much is formal sovereignty worth when the ordinary citizen stands at the far end of a network whose most powerful members possess money, international connections, access to institutions and the ability to shape even the framework within which public debate will take place? The most effective form of power does not always need to issue orders. It is enough to shape the people, incentives, networks, dependencies and limits within which decisions are made.
And when such a system becomes sufficiently deep, the citizen may continue to vote freely while a significant part of the field within which he is asked to choose has already been shaped before he ever reaches the ballot box.
Bibliography and Sources
Petropulos, John A., Politics and Statecraft in the Kingdom of Greece, 1833–1843, Princeton University Press. A classic study of the creation of the Greek state, the role of the Protecting Powers and the English, French and Russian parties.
Clogg, Richard, A Concise History of Greece, Cambridge University Press. On the formation of the Greek state, the monarchy of Otto and the political development of Greece during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Jelavich, Barbara, Russia and the Formation of the Romanian National State, 1821–1878, together with her related studies on Russian policy in the Balkans. Useful for the broader geopolitical environment of Great Power competition in Southeastern Europe.
Frary, Lucien J., Russia and the Making of Modern Greek Identity, 1821–1844, Oxford University Press, 2015. On relations between the newly established Greek state and Russia and the operation of international networks of influence.
Lyrintzis, Christos, “Political Parties in Post-Junta Greece: A Case of Bureaucratic Clientelism?”, West European Politics, 1984. On the transformation of Greek clientelism within the mass political parties of the post-dictatorship period.
Pappas, Takis S., and Assimakopoulou, Zina, “Party Patronage in Greece: Political Entrepreneurship in a Party Patronage Democracy”, in Party Patronage and Party Government in European Democracies, Oxford University Press. On party patronage and the use of state resources by political networks.
Zambarloukou, Stella, “Interest Group Politics”, The Oxford Handbook of Modern Greek Politics, Oxford University Press. On the relationship between organised interests, professional groups and the Greek political system.
Papathanassopoulos, Stylianos, “The Media”, The Oxford Handbook of Modern Greek Politics, Oxford University Press. On the historical relationship between media ownership, political elites and economic interests in Greece.
Bank of Greece, “History of the Bank of Greece”. The official history records that the Bank was established in 1927 under the Geneva Protocol in connection with a £9 million loan mediated by the League of Nations.
Bank of Greece, The History of the Bank of Greece 1928–2008. A detailed account of the Bank’s establishment and the role played by the League of Nations.
U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1947, The Near East and Africa, Volume V, Memorandum by Acting Secretary of State Dean Acheson to President Truman, 23 May 1947. On American control over funds and Greek programmes connected with aid.
U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1947, preparatory plan for the American Mission for Aid to Greece. Contains proposals for broad supervision of Greek public finances and participation in fiscal policy.
U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1947, Instructions to the Chief of the American Mission for Aid to Greece. On the authority of the American mission over aid management and reconstruction programmes.
U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1947, Telegram of the Secretary of State to the American Mission for Aid to Greece, 4 November 1947. The document acknowledges American involvement in aspects of Greek domestic affairs and calls for American influence to be exercised discreetly.
European Parliament, Resolution of 9 March 2022 on Foreign Interference in All Democratic Processes in the European Union, including Disinformation, 2020/2268(INI). Particularly relevant for the concepts of “domestic proxies”, “political accomplices”, “elite capture and co-optation”, the financing of organisations and media, and the operation of domestic networks of foreign influence.
OECD, Preventing Policy Capture: Integrity in Public Decision Making, OECD Publishing, Paris, 2017. On mechanisms through which organised interests can redirect public decisions away from the public interest through both lawful and unlawful forms of influence.
OECD, Public Integrity Handbook, 2020. On lobbying, political financing, conflicts of interest and mechanisms of policy capture.
OECD, Anti-Corruption and Integrity Outlook 2026: Greece, 24 March 2026. On Greece’s lobbying framework, Law 4829/2021 and implementation of the Transparency Register.
OECD, Survey on Drivers of Trust in Public Institutions 2026: Greece. On Greek citizens’ perceptions of political voice, participation in decision-making and trust in institutions.
European Commission, Financial Assistance to Greece and Post-Programme Surveillance Assessments. The European Commission published its spring post-programme surveillance assessment of Greece on 3 June 2026.
European Stability Mechanism / European Financial Stability Facility, official Greek loan repayment schedules. Certain EFSF tranches include principal repayments extending to 2070.
Mitchell, George E., “Strategic Responses to Resource Dependence Among Transnational NGOs Registered in the United States”, Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations. On the ways dependence on donors can influence organisational strategy and priorities.
Edwards, Michael, and Hulme, David, Too Close for Comfort? The Impact of Official Aid on Nongovernmental Organizations, World Development. On relationships between funding, organisational autonomy and NGO accountability.
Carpenter, Daniel, and Moss, David A. (eds.), Preventing Regulatory Capture: Special Interest Influence and How to Limit It, Cambridge University Press, 2014. On institutional and regulatory capture by organised interests.
Olson, Mancur, The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups, Harvard University Press, 1965. A foundational work explaining how small and highly organised groups can acquire disproportionate political influence over larger but more diffuse sections of society.
Putnam, Robert D., Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, Simon & Schuster, 2000. On social capital, networks and the relationship between social organisation and political functioning.
Granovetter, Mark, “The Strength of Weak Ties”, American Journal of Sociology, 1973. A foundational sociological study of social networks and the transmission of information and opportunities between different social groups.