Reform in Name Only: The Risks Behind Greece’s Mass Evaluation of Public Services

Greece’s proposed approach lacks institutional depth, methodological clarity, and—most importantly—a genuine commitment to self-reflection at the top levels of power.

The Greek government’s latest initiative, announced by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, proposes that citizens directly evaluate public

services through mass-distributed questionnaires. At first glance, the idea might seem progressive—a modern, democratic gesture aimed at empowering citizens to have a say in how the state functions. But in reality, the plan raises more questions than it answers, and its substance appears worryingly thin.

For those familiar with the Greek administrative system and its history, the promise of “horizontal evaluation of public services by citizens” seems more like a well-timed public relations move than a meaningful tool for governance. The plan reportedly involves sending surveys to around four million people. Yet mass opinion collection of this scale, especially without a solid methodological foundation, is unlikely to produce results that are either reliable or actionable. In the absence of clear analytical frameworks and a commitment to follow through, such an initiative risks being reduced to noise—loud but largely inconsequential.

There is also a deeper issue at play. Citizens tend to judge public services through the lens of their personal experience or broader political dissatisfaction, rather than through objective criteria of performance or institutional efficiency. While such feedback has value, using it as a basis for administrative decisions can distort the reality of how public services actually function. A survey of opinions is not a substitute for the expertise and scrutiny that come from trained evaluators and oversight bodies.
It’s important to recognize that many critical aspects of the public sector—such as resource management, legal compliance, and internal effectiveness—cannot be properly assessed by the general public. These are technical and institutional matters that require professional evaluation. Citizens can and should contribute to the conversation, but they are not equipped to replace institutional checks and balances. The current proposal conflates democratic participation with administrative oversight in a way that oversimplifies both.

What is more troubling is the broader political pattern this move reflects. Rather than accepting the responsibility to reform and evaluate public administration from within, the government appears to be outsourcing that responsibility to the public. In recent years, Greece has often invoked the notion of “individual responsibility” to deflect attention from institutional failures, particularly during crises such as wildfires or natural disasters. This new initiative echoes the same logic: asking citizens to become the evaluators of a system over which they have limited influence, while those in power remain shielded from direct scrutiny.

In this context, the citizen questionnaire begins to look less like a step toward accountability and more like a rhetorical shield. The risk is that data collected from such surveys could be selectively interpreted or presented in ways that suit the government’s narrative, rather than providing a true picture of what works and what doesn’t. It opens the door to political instrumentalization of public opinion under the guise of democratic feedback.

Another critical point often overlooked is the chain of command in public services. These services do not operate in a vacuum; they are shaped, staffed, and funded by political leadership. Ministers, not bureaucrats, define strategic priorities, allocate budgets, and appoint key officials. When a public service underperforms, it is often because of political decisions—or the lack thereof. Any serious evaluation of state performance must therefore begin with those at the top. Shifting the focus to citizens evaluating front-line services ignores the deeper mechanisms of dysfunction.

In democratic systems, true accountability begins with political leadership. Civil servants execute decisions, but it is elected officials who chart the course. When those leaders are not evaluated or held to account for the services under their control, reform is little more than a slogan. Citizens already have the ultimate evaluative power at the ballot box. That is where they judge the broader direction of government—not just the symptoms, but the causes of dysfunction.

Looking internationally, there are models where citizen feedback has improved public services—but always as part of a structured, methodologically sound system. In the UK, for example, public satisfaction surveys for specific services like the National Health Service are targeted, narrow in scope, and rigorously analyzed. In Canada, initiatives like “Citizens First” are run by independent institutions and are geared toward service improvement, not political messaging. Sweden incorporates citizen feedback into a broader performance framework that includes quantifiable metrics and institutional evaluation. In Estonia, often praised for its digital governance, citizens can give real-time feedback—but that feedback is never treated as the sole or definitive assessment of performance. Across all these cases, the common thread is that citizen evaluation is one element among many in a professionalized system of public accountability.

By contrast, Greece’s proposed approach lacks institutional depth, methodological clarity, and—most importantly—a genuine commitment to self-reflection at the top levels of power. What is being presented as democratic participation risks becoming a way to shift blame downward while allowing the true centers of decision-making to remain untouched.