“To ‘give character’ to your character—a great and rare art!”
Friedrich Nietzsche
ΣΧΕΤΙΚΑ ΑΡΘΡΑ
Whatever label one might attach to him, Stefanos Manos was, at his core, a Nietzschean character: he cultivated a highly personal style during his involvement in politics. Nietzsche writes in *The Gay Science*: “The [art of cultivating a personal style] is practiced by those who examine all the strengths and weaknesses their nature has to offer and then incorporate them into an artistic design, until each element appears as art and logic, and even the weaknesses delight the eye.” Just as an artist works with his imperfect material, striving to give it form, St. Manos crafted his political persona with whatever nature and his upbringing had endowed him with.
His endowment was bountiful. He was born in 1939 in Athens to a well-to-do family that valued the best possible education. He attended Athens College, studied mechanical engineering at the best polytechnic in Europe, ETH Zurich (1963), and went on to earn a master’s degree in Business Administration from Harvard (1965). He worked for 11 years in management positions at the family-owned company Allatini S.A. He entered politics in 1977 with the New Democracy party, and since then, politics has been his main occupation, serving as a member of parliament, a minister, and the leader of two small parties. He entered public life as a seasoned businessman, not as a product of the party machine.
Whatever his shortcomings were, they were the extreme version of his strengths—a technocratic approach that, taken to the extreme, ignores history, emotion, and political persuasion; the self-confidence that, at times, turns into obstinacy and an aloof perspective; the sincerity that, at times, turns into bluntness and a disregard for the instinct of political survival. His personal style stemmed not from the elimination of weaknesses, but from the synthesis of all his traits into a distinctive form. Stefanos Manos was a figure because he gave himself form.
This quintessentially anti-theoretician possessed a “theory” of politics and understood his role within it. For St. Manos, politics concerns the effective management of collective problems, within the framework of the rule of law, incorporating both the principles of the market economy and the fundamental principles of the welfare state. Politics, he believed, must be conducted with honesty, rationality, and determination. The role of the politician is, first and foremost, that of a rational planner, who creates and reforms institutions so that individuals may pursue the “good life” in conditions of freedom.
He brought to politics the mindset of an engineer and a manager, which converged in the role of institutional designer and problem-solver—a kind of institutional engineering. He approached public affairs with his proverbial rationality: he identified the problem, gathered data, evaluated it, formulated alternative solutions, and selected the best one. He placed enormous emphasis on effectiveness, which is why he insisted on quantifying problems and benefits. He believed in institutional learning: act, evaluate the results, act again.
Manos did not have a theoretically developed ideology. His liberalism—both political and economic—was instinctive. Equally instinctive was his conception of the common good. He regarded economic freedom as the cornerstone of a free society, but he recognized its limits, such as when it imposes costs on society as a whole.
His stance was complex and pragmatically liberal. He was a liberal without dogmatically believing in liberalism. For example, he supported mandatory vaccination of healthcare workers during the pandemic because he prioritized the good of public health over that of individual freedom. He viewed an effective (not a large) state as the expression of the collective will, without being a statist. He would ask: What is the best institution for producing a good? He answered: Where a competitive market can exist, it should, in principle, be preferred—this is what experience shows. Where a public good must be protected, the state must act—this is dictated by common sense.
His work as Minister of Spatial Planning is a case in point. The architectural character of Plaka is a public good, which property owners do not necessarily serve, since they are concerned with maximizing their individual interests. Government intervention is essential.
His staunch opposition to arbitrary and unplanned construction, his stance against organized union interests, as well as his insistence on privatization and fiscal discipline, had made him unpopular among large segments of the electorate whose interests were being undermined. The opponents were organized and wielded electoral influence, while those who stood to gain were unorganized, with the benefits to be realized only in the long term. Machiavelli had predicted who would prevail. Manos was left alone.
The problem with the politician’s role as an institutional engineer is that he tends to treat politics as a technical problem, when it is not. Politics has a foundation of values and identity; it evokes emotions and requires a narrative, not mere “solutions.” While, for example, St. Manos correctly emphasized the need for performance evaluations in the public sector, he did not give due importance to their prerequisites: trust between the evaluator and the evaluated. Trust, however, is not a technical problem, but a historical, social, and behavioral one. People do not evaluate policies based solely on cost-benefit calculations, but also on value-based and emotional identifications. A politician is not only a problem-solver but also an inspirational leader and a healer of collective hang-ups. The political reformer must be, at the same time, a reformer (promoting change) and a politician—balancing interests and ensuring his political survival.
A figure like Stefanos Manos is rare in political life. He was inspired by the words of Edmund Burke (1774): “Your representative owes you not only his labor but also his judgment. And he betrays you, rather than serves you, if he sacrifices it for your opinion.” He chose to serve the citizens by standing by his convictions, even at the cost of his political survival. He was a politician with character, ideas, courage, and a passion for public service. A rare figure.
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