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After Greece’s transition from authoritarian rule in 1974, only a few segments of civil society grew, consisting of well-organised liberal professions and public sector workers, while the majority of NGOs, informal networks and social movements remained underdeveloped (Mouzelis/Pagoulatos 2005, Clarke/Huliaras/Sotiropoulos 2015). Civic activism was noticeable only in very few policy sectors, such as in environmental policy, yet environmental NGOs were rarely consulted by policy-makers. Voluntarism did not develop either, except for a brief period before the Athens Olympic Games of 2004.

The reason for civil society's underdevelopment was the early emergence of strong party organisations, such as the organisations of the socialist (PASOK) and communist parties (KKE, KKE Interior) and later that of the conservative party (ND), which created their front organisations or factions after the democratic transition of 1974. Examples were party-led factions within the labour movement, the civil service, the personnel of state-owned enterprises (SOEs), the local government, the student movement and even the women's movement. For instance, the nationwide Confederation of Workers of Greece (GSEE), which was completely dominated by unionists of the banks and the SOEs, and the corresponding confederation of civil servants (ADEDY), reacted or refrained from reacting to government policy measures, depending on whether the governing party controlled the majority in the leading organs of the confederations or not.

As a result, parties were present in every single sector of civil society, stifling any autonomous collective action. At the same time, the central government [68] also intervened by subsidizing the functioning of particular civic associations, as ministers had a free hand in distributing funds to associations of their electoral district in a typical patronage fashion (Mavrogordatos 1993).