Competing frames and policy change: Greece's land administration reform from the mid-1990s to the economic crisis (2009–2018)

Land administration is a multidisciplinary process that records and manages spatial and legal data about land to improve tenure security. However, current land administration literature lacks in-depth analysis of how diverse actors frame policy problems and solutions during state-led land administration reforms, particularly under financial duress and external pressure due to policy conditionality. This study addresses that gap by examining the Hellenic Land Administration Reform (HLAR) in Greece - a state-led reform launched in the mid-1990s to replace legacy land registry systems with the Hellenic Cadastre System (HCS) and enhance legal certainty over land tenure. We ask how key actors understood the problem and what they considered should be done. Adopting a qualitative approach based on expert interviews and secondary data, we found that a range of public and private actors held competing frames about the reform’s goals and means. These competing frames were eventually accommodated under conditions of financial duress, external pressure, and policy conditionality during Greece’s economic crisis, paving the way for a major policy shift toward a centralized digital cadastre.