From grand theory about institutions to the everyday reality of managing EU funds for farmers.
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
When you first read Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, it feels like a grand theory of history. Some countries prosper, others get stuck, not because of culture or luck, but because of how power and incentives are organised within their institutions. Inclusive institutions spread opportunity and constrain power. Extractive ones do the opposite: they allow narrow groups to capture value and block everyone else.
Re-reading the book after a short period inside a huge public organisation that manages critical flows of money to the agricultural sector, it no longer feels abstract. The distinction between inclusive and extractive institutions ceases to be just a chapter heading and becomes part of a daily checklist.
In agriculture, the consequences are tangible. When a farmer does not trust how the state counts his animals, assesses his entitlements or pays his subsidies, this is not “just” bureaucracy. It is institutional failure. Every opaque rule, every grey zone, every delay in payment or clarification is a small extraction of value from people who actually produce wealth in rural areas: time lost, plans postponed, investments never made.
Seen through the lens of Why Nations Fail, the usual discussions we have in Greece about agriculture are strangely incomplete. We obsess over milk prices, input costs and the next reform of the CAP. We speak far less about the “plumbing”: the quality of the data, the transparency of the rules, the way decisions are documented and communicated, the information and digital systems that should make all this visible and predictable for everyone.
In my own field – livestock, CAP payments and rural development – this distinction is anything but theoretical. It is the line between a country that merely “handles EU funds” and one that uses them to build real, productive capacity. A paying agency, for example, can behave like a cash machine whose only mission is to survive the next audit. Or it can serve as an institutional backbone, producing trust, credible data and shared knowledge for farmers, cooperatives, banks and policymakers.
The photo of the Greek edition of Why Nations Fail on my desk with my wooden Holstein cow is a reminder that if we want to stop talking obsessively about “exceptions”, “temporary measures” and “crisis management” in agriculture, we need to have the more complicated conversation about our institutions: how they are designed, when, who they serve, and how accountable they really are.
Ultimately, the question Acemoglu and Robinson pose is brutally simple: do our institutions enlarge the circle of people who can participate and invest in the future? In Greek agriculture, the answer to that question will matter far more than any single price, subsidy or regulation. It will determine whether the sector continues to live from one emergency to the next, or whether it can finally change trajectory.
The Greek edition of “Why Nations Fail” is on my desk – with a wooden cow as a reminder that institutions matter just as much as milk prices.