When and how do crises lead governments to centralize decision-making? Join us for a discussion with Kevin Featherstone and Dimitris Papadimitriou about their book Greek Prime Ministers in the Eye of the Storm (Oxford University Press, 2025) which examines how successive Greek prime ministers organized and deployed Crisis Response Networks (CRNs) between 2010 and 2018 to manage negotiations with international creditors and coordinate the domestic implementation of bailout conditionality. Drawing on multiple strands of literature and interviews — including Greece's four prime ministers who governed during the crisis — Featherstone and Papadimitriou will analyze the evolving interaction between prime ministerial agency and key governmental actors across different phases of the crisis.

Featherstone and Papadimitriou will also assess the extent to which the “bailout years” reconfigured established patterns of executive coordination and decision-making within the Greek state. More broadly, this discussion will contribute to ongoing debates on executive empowerment, crisis governance, and the political consequences of emergency politics in Europe, with comparative implications for the United States and the Middle East.