Too Much, Too Soon? The Changes in Greece’s Land Administration Organizations during the Economic Crisis Period 2009 to 2018

Evangelia Balla (), Jaap Zevenbergen, Ana Mafalda Madureira and Yola Georgiadou
Additional contact information
Evangelia Balla: Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC), University of Twente, P.O. Box 217, 7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands
Jaap Zevenbergen: Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC), University of Twente, P.O. Box 217, 7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands
Ana Mafalda Madureira: Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC), University of Twente, P.O. Box 217, 7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands
Yola Georgiadou: Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC), University of Twente, P.O. Box 217, 7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands

Land, 2022, vol. 11, issue 9, 1-24

Abstract: Land administration is the managing of spatial and legal data pertaining to land. Land administration organizations provide services for land ownership and are essential to a well-functioning land administration system to secure land and property rights for all and support real estate markets. This article reviews the case of the Hellenic Land Administration Reform and the associated changes in the land administration organizations during the economic crisis period (2009–2018). We qualitatively analyze these changes and their actual effects through a set of legislative initiatives according to the orders of change of the enactive theory of reforms and the concept of isomorphism. The study is informed by interviews with key informants involved in the land administration policy domain, and by secondary data, such as legislative documents and reports. Findings show that the legislative initiatives aimed to bring efficiency, transparency, and rationalization to the land administration policy domain by centralizing the collection of land transaction fees and nationalizing the land administration organizations., The enacted legislative initiatives encompassed organizational (second-order) changes within a short period, instead of incremental technical or managerial measures (first-order) to improve ineffective practices and services for citizens. They ended with a drastic organizational transformation, resulting in “premature load bearing” in the involved organizations, which complexified the implementation of an ambitious land administration reform and impacted the smooth operation of the real estate market. The article increases the current insight on the merger of land administration organizations and its implications. It contributes to the land administration scholarly literature on the establishment of new organizations to create a modern cadastral system from a public policy perspective through the orders of change of the enactive theory of reforms.

Keywords: land administration reform; land administration organizations; Hellenic Cadastre System; first-order change; second-order change; third-order change; isomorphism; premature load-bearing; Greece; sustainable real estate markets (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/11/9/1564/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/11/9/1564/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jlands:v:11:y:2022:i:9:p:1564-:d:914605

Access Statistics for this article

Land is currently edited by Ms. Carol Ma

More articles in Land from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().