Throughout the period under examination, both the official discourse concerning the economy and the analyses made by intellectuals of the time, especially in the press, focused systematically on how the country could transcend its economic frailty and secure the conditions for economic growth. Indeed, from the time of the Regency to the end of the century, this pursuit was the common ground upon which political programmes were drawn up, opposition tactics organized and press articles written. Epameinondas Deligiorgis and Alexandros Koumoundouros, two of the country's most active politicians, who had taken part in the anti-dynastic struggle, in the developments of the 1862-66 period and in the events that shaped the next decade, claimed that the aim of their policy was a radical intervention in the economy and the remedy for underdevelopment. In the case of Koumoundouros, his work provides clear evidence that he indeed made an effort to implement measures to this end; chief amongst these are the Agrarian Reform of 1871, the settlement of foreign loans in 1878 and the contracts awarded for major works which, however, were to a large part revised by Charilaos Trikoupis.

The last quarter of the century saw two different approaches to economic policy confronting one another. They were expressed by the two parties in power, the one headed by Trikoupis and the other by Deligiannis. Both agreed that their object was the pursuit of growth. Nonetheless, it is quite clear that in the discourse and practice of Trikoupis there was coherence and consistency, however onerous the measures he took might have been for the lower social classes and even if his choices concerning foreign loans eventually drove public finances into an impasse. The discourse of Deligiannis on the other hand expressed the social layers that depended for their reproduction on the conservation of long-established economic practices. The verbal acceptance on the part of some of Deligiannis's supporters of the need to make drastic changes was not in tune with their actions. When Deligiannis was in power, he defended the gigantism of the public sector and abolished all the changes made earlier by Trikoupis. His polemic against 'plutocrats' and 'chrysocantharous' (gold-bugs) entrepreneurs related to the defence of the interests of the state-employed middle classes who formed his clientele. In general, he overcame its inability to produce persuasive arguments on the nature of the economic transformations the Greek society needed by resorting to irredentist policies, which eventually impacted on the country's financial condition.