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The International SpectatorItalian Journal of International
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ISSN: 0393-2729 (Print) 1751-9721 (Online) Journal homepage:
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Broken and Cant be Fixed: The Impact of theEconomic Crisis on
the Greek Party System
Susannah Verney
To cite this article: Susannah Verney (2014) Broken and Cant be
Fixed: The Impact of theEconomic Crisis on the Greek Party System,
The International Spectator, 49:1, 18-35,
DOI:10.1080/03932729.2014.877222
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03932729.2014.877222
Published online: 28 Mar 2014.
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Broken and Cant be Fixed: The Impact ofthe Economic Crisis on
the Greek PartySystemSusannah Verney
The Greek election of May 2012 failed to produce a
government,resulting in repeat elections six weeks later. This
shock outcome was asymptom of a broader delegitimation of the
national political system. Overthe past decade Eurobarometer data
show a much more extensive loss ofcondence in political
institutions in Greece than in the European Unionas a whole. In a
rst phase, rising political discontent was managed withinthe
traditional political framework through alternation in power
betweenthe two major parties. In contrast, the second phase,
following the out-break of the Greek sovereign debt crisis, led to
the dramatic fragmentationof the party system and changed the mode
of government formation. Thisprocess is not reversible and entails
serious democratic dangers.
Keywords: Greece, 2012 elections, public opinion, radical left,
far right
The Greek election of 6 May 2012 sent shockwaves around Europe.
This countrywith its strong tradition of one-party majority
governments was unable to produceeven a coalition. No individual
party gained as much as 19 percent of the vote (seeTable 1). The
well-entrenched two-party system simply collapsed. The combinedvote
share of the two major parties, consistently in the region of 80
percent for theprevious thirty years, plunged to 32 percent. PASOK,
long the lynchpin of theparty system and one of the most
electorally successful parties of the European cen-tre left, saw
its vote fall to around one-third of its usual level. The other
core partyin the system, the centre-right New Democracy (ND),
scored a vote little over halfits previous all-time low. Meanwhile,
the communist party (KKE), traditionally themost important channel
for protest voting in Greece, saw only a minor increase inits vote
share. Instead, the protest vote was dispersed in multiple
directions.The smallest party in the previous parliament, the
Radical Left Coalition
(SYRIZA), more than tripled its vote, emerging as Greeces second
political force.Meanwhile, almost one in ve ballots was cast for
parties which failed to meet the
Susannah Verney is Assistant Professor at the University of
Athens and co-editor with Anna Bosco of SouthEuropean Society and
Politics. Email: [email protected]. The author would like to thank
the journals twoanonymous referees for spurring her to greater
efforts and Gabriele Tonne for her patience during thewriting and
revision process.
The International Spectator, Vol. 49, No. 1, March 2014, 1835
ISSN 0393-2729 print/ISSN 1751-9721 online 2014 Istituto Affari
Internazionale http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03932729.2014.877222
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three percent parliamentary threshold. These included a new
party, founded by apublic relations consultant less than two months
before the election, which won2.2 percent of the vote. The number
of parties represented in parliament, neverabove ve from the 1980s
onwards, increased to seven. Perhaps most disquietingof all, among
the three new parliamentary entrants was the anti-system
GoldenDawn, previously part of the lunatic fringe of the Greek
political system, whoseseven percent vote share was 24 times its
score in the previous parliamentaryelection of 2009.1
This striking meltdown of the party system appeared to leave
Greece ungovern-able. However, a repeat election held six weeks
later modied this result.2 Withthe pressure for government
formation heightened by the imminent danger of adisorderly exit
from the eurozone, a signicant proportion of the electorate
changedits preferences. The vote for extra-parliamentary parties
dropped below six percent.The 50-seat bonus offered to the rst
party under the electoral law encouragedaround one in ve voters to
switch to one of the parties most likely to emergeahead. The result
was an increase of over 10 percent of the total vote each for NDand
SYRIZA, stabilising their position as the two new major parties.
There was norepetition of the extreme dispersal of the vote among a
large number ofextra-parliamentary parties, whose support returned
to a level not much higherthan that of the preceding three
elections. An initial consolidation of the newseven-party
constellation which had emerged in May was indicated when the
same
Table 1. Vote share (%) of parties winning parliamentary seats,
2009-12.
PARTY June 2012 May 2012 2009
ND 29.7 18.9 33.5SYRIZA 26.9 16.8 4.6PASOK 12.3 13.2
43.9INDEPENDENT GREEKS 7.5 10.6 -GOLDEN DAWN 6.9 7.0 0.3*
DEMOCRATIC LEFT 6.3 6.1 -KKE 4.5 8.5 7.5
Source: Ministry of Interior election data,
http://www.ypes.gr/El/Elections.Note:
*
below 3 percent parliamentary threshold.
1On the May 2012 election, see inter alia Dinas and Rori, The
2012 Greek parliamentary elections,Dimitrakopoulos, The Greek
elections of 2012, http://www.sieps.se, and the collection of brief
essays edi-ted by R. Gerodimos, First thoughts on the 6 May 2012
elections in Greece, Greek Politics SpecialistGroup, 2012,
http://www.gpsg.org.uk/publications/pamphlets/. For detailed
analysis of exit poll data, see I.Nikolakopoulos, A discussion
about the election [in Greek], video, 10 May 2012,
http://www.aformi.gr/2012/05/----2012a.2On the June 2012 election,
see inter alia Dinas and Rori, The 2012 Greek parliamentary
elections,Vasilopoulou and Halkidiopoulou, In the shadow of Grexit,
R. Gerodimos, First thoughts on the June2012 elections in Greece,
Greek Politics Specialist Group,
http://www.gpsg.org.uk/publications/pamphlets/,and Nikolakopoulos,
The day after the elections of 17 June [in Greek], 18 June 2012,
video, http://www.koinonia-demo.gr/2012/06/.
The Economic Crisis and the Greek Party System 19
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group of parties was re-elected. The June election allowed the
formation of athree-party coalition government, centred on ND and
PASOK but also includingthe Democratic Left (DIMAR), which was
founded in 2010 as a breakaway fromSynaspismos, the lead party in
SYRIZA. These developments may suggest thatsome kind of
stabilisation has taken place.The fact that the traditional parties
of power have remained in charge of the govern-
ment after June 2012 could be taken as indicating that the
crisis of traditional politicalrepresentation in Greece was less
dramatic than it rst appeared. Furthermore, oneyear later, the
breakdown of the tripartite government agreement and the
withdrawalof DIMAR was followed by the continuation of the
coalition between PASOK andND without provoking new elections.
Optimistic analysts might even predict thatonce the Greek economy
begins to improve, Greek voters will abandon their moreradical
recent choices, especially Golden Dawn, and revert to more
traditionalpreferences. This article aims to show that such
assumptions would be mistaken.It is argued here that the May 2012
election was a symptom of a much deeper
malaise. Specically, a sweeping breakdown of societal trust has
resulted in thedelegitimation not only of the previous governing
parties but also of the politicalsystem as a whole. This
delegitimation developed rapidly under the impact of theGreek
sovereign debt crisis. The latter emerged as a political issue both
domesti-cally and internationally in October 2009, when the Greek
government announcedthat the annual budget decit was at least twice
as high as previously reported andover four times the permitted
eurozone limit of three percent of GDP. Yet a clearsignal that
there was something rotten in the state of Greece had already been
sentalmost a year earlier. In December 2008, the police shooting of
a 15-year oldschoolboy precipitated a spontaneous and inchoate
youth revolt, involving differentgroups with different agendas,
some of them engaging in considerable violence andextensive damage
to property.3 It seems that the death of AlexandrosGrigoropoulos
acted as a catalyst for an outpouring of political discontent.
Thissuggests that a political crisis was already developing even
before the shockannouncement of impending national bankruptcy in
October 2009.
This article investigates the loss of legitimacy by the Greek
political system. Ituses data on the changing picture of trust in
political institutions as measured bythe biannual Eurobarometer
surveys.4 An important advantage of the Eurobarome-ters is that
they allow trends in a particular country to be viewed within
thebroader context of changing opinion across the European Union as
a whole.The article aims, rst, to establish the extent of
delegitimation, viewing the Greekcase in comparison with the EU
average. Then, by examining the chronology of
3For participants views on the December 2008 events. see
Schwartz, Sagris and Void Network, We are anImage from the Future;
for analyses from a range of ideological viewpoints, see inter
alia, Sotiris, Rebelswith a cause; Economides and Monastiriotis,
The Return of Street Politics?; Karamichas, The December2008 Riots
in Greece; Andronikidou and Kovras, Cultures of Rioting and
Anti-systemic Politics.4European Commission, Standard
Eurobarometer.
20 Susannah Verney
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this process, it seeks to illuminate its causes. Particular
attention is paid to the roleof the Greek sovereign debt crisis in
this process. Moving on to the electoral conse-quences, the article
considers whether the extraordinary fragmentation of the votein
2012 can be attributed to technical causes and specically to the
inuence of anew electoral law. In outlining the party system
impact, it seeks to identify thepoint at which disappointment with
particular governments and parties translatedinto a crisis of the
political system. This is followed by the nal conclusions.
The extent of delegitimationEurobarometer data present a clear
picture of the way in which the Greek politicalsystem has lost
public condence over the past decade. To a certain extent, this
isnot an exclusive Greek phenomenon. As Figures 1-3 show, the
average level oftrust in political institutions has declined in the
European Union (EU) as a wholeduring this period. However, in the
Greek case, this decline has been moreextreme, starting from a
higher point and culminating at a lower level.Ten years ago, Greece
had just entered the eurozone, confounding earlier expecta-
tions when it was considered the country furthest from meeting
the entry criteria. Afterdecades of talk of a two-speed Europe in
which Greece would be relegated to a secondspeed, the adoption of
the euro was regarded as a national triumph which wouldguarantee
Greece a place at the inner core of the European Union. As a
eurozonemember, Greece beneted from lower borrowing costs. The
rapid expansion of cheapcredit was nancing rising living standards
and indeed a wave of consumerism.The country was preparing to host
the 2004 Olympic Games and a new nationalself-condence was exuded
by major infrastructure projects including the AthensMetro and the
new Athens airport. These visual symbols reected the changing
imageof a country once regarded as Europes poor relative. At this
point, the Greek politicalsystem enjoyed signicantly higher
legitimacy than the EU average. In Spring 2003,a majority in Greece
(54 percent) trusted parliament compared to just over onethird (35
percent) in the EU; 43 percent of Greek respondents trusted
thenational government compared to 31 percent in the EU; while an
equal proportion(17 percent) trusted political parties always the
weak point for system legitimacy.Ten years later, system legitimacy
in Greece had not only fallen below the EU
average but had also reached strikingly low levels. While in the
EU as a whole, onein four respondents trusted their government and
parliament, in Greece the gurewas only one in ten.5 This is a
dramatic drop if one considers that a decade earlier,more than one
in two Greeks had trusted the national legislature compared to
onein three in the EU as a whole. During the intervening period,
almost one in twoGreeks (44 percent) had lost faith in parliament
and one in three (34 percent) in
5Specically, in 2013, ten percent of Greeks trusted parliament
and nine percent the government, com-pared to the EU averages of 26
and 25 percent, respectively.
The Economic Crisis and the Greek Party System 21
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the government. Meanwhile, the level of trust in Greek political
parties at fourpercent was one-quarter of its 2003 level, while the
EU average (16 percent) hadremained almost stable.
Furthermore, in the Greek case, delegitimation extended beyond
the executive,legislature and political parties to embrace other
institutions whose legitimacy was
FIGURE 1. Trust in the national government: Greece and the EU
average compared, Spring2003-Spring 2013.Source: authors
elaboration of Eurobarometer data.
FIGURE 2. Trust in the national parliament: Greece and the EU
average compared, Spring2003-Spring 2013.Source: authors
elaboration of Eurobarometer data.
22 Susannah Verney
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unaffected in the EU as a whole. Between autumn 2003 and autumn
2010, thelast time this question was asked by the Eurobarometer, 27
percent of Greeks lostfaith in the justice system. Levels of trust
fell from 68 to 42 percent, while the EUaverage remained stable at
47 percent. During the same seven-year period, trust inthe Church
fell from 60 to 40 percent compared to a marginal decline from 42
to40 percent in the EU as a whole. Even in the case of the police,
which in 2013still retained the trust of a small majority of
Greeks, trust fell from 67 to 52 per-cent while in the EU it
remained unchanged at 64 percent. Therefore, not only isthe Greek
political system facing a serious legitimacy crisis, but that
crisis alsoseems to have become all-embracing.
So what lies behind this dramatic opinion shift? To what extent
was it causedby the economic crisis? To answer these questions, it
is helpful to understand whenthe change occurred.
The chronology of delegitimationPrelude to the storm
As Figures 1-3 show, the beginning of the downward spiral in
Greek politicalsystem legitimacy predated the sovereign debt
crisis. The year 2003 marked the lastphase of a PASOK tenure of
government lasting three consecutive parliamentaryterms. At this
point, there was considerable popular fatigue with a party whichhad
been in power for 18 of the previous 22 years and whose resulting
close
FIGURE 3. Trust in political parties: Greece and the EU average
compared, Spring 2003-Spring2013.Source: authors elaboration of
Eurobarometer data.Note: The question was not asked in Spring 2007,
Autumn 2010 or Spring 2011.
The Economic Crisis and the Greek Party System 23
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identication with the state had repeatedly led to scandals.
Despite this, theautumn 2003 Eurobarometer recorded its Greek
respondents as almost evenly splitbetween those who trusted the
government (47 percent) and those who did not(50 percent).
Meanwhile, a majority (54 percent) trusted parliament. The
hopesassociated with a change in power, through the March 2004
election of a NewDemocracy government whose initial byword was
modest and humble, werereected in a rise in trust in all the basic
political institutions between autumn2003 and spring 2004 (to 55
percent for the government, 63 percent for parlia-ment and 28 from
20 percent for political parties).
This initial outburst of optimism seems to have dissipated
rapidly. One reasonfor this may have been the government
announcement just a few months later ofrevised budget decit gures
for the previous ve years well above the three percentof GDP
permitted to EU member states. The suggestion that Greeces
eurozoneentry had been due to creative accounting damaged both
governmental credibilityand national self-condence. Greeces
subsequent entry into the EUs excessivedecit procedure was
especially humiliating so soon after joining the euro.
The next few years also saw a new outbreak of corruption
scandals. Among themost spectacular was the structured bonds
affair, entailing the simultaneouspurchase of a 280 billion euro
government bond at above market prices by 16social insurance funds,
following a transaction chain passing through a series ofhedge
funds and during which millions of euros were siphoned off. Perhaps
themost signicant governmental scandal because it was long-term and
thereforeimplicated both parties of power concerned large-scale
bribery by the Germanconglomerate, Siemens, systematic winner of
major public works contracts over theprevious twenty years. Other
scandals affected a range of institutions. Revelationsconcerning
systematic and widespread bribery of judges caused a crisis in the
judi-ciary, while the Orthodox Church was tainted by a series of
allegations includinginvolvement in judicial corruption and selling
stolen antiquities. Corruption, whichundermines equality and a just
distribution of resources, tends to be particularlycorrosive of
political trust. Nevertheless, although there were some uctuations
inlevels of institutional trust as measured by the Eurobarometers,
at the end of 2007these once again reached levels analogous to
autumn 2003, meaning they remainedsignicantly above the EU
average.
First phase of delegitimation
In contrast, the year 2008 appears to be a turning point. By the
end of that year,levels of trust in political institutions had
fallen below the EU average. Betweenautumn 2007 and autumn 2008,
trust in the government fell by half (from 46 to23 percent). This
is particularly striking, given New Democracys recentre-election,
winning a convincing four percent lead over PASOK in September2007.
Meanwhile, during 2008, trust in parliament dropped by over
one-third
24 Susannah Verney
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(from 52 to 32 percent) and in political parties by a similar
proportion (from 21to 14 percent). Thus, one in ve Greeks lost
condence in government and parlia-ment during this year. During the
same period, faith in the justice system fell from58 to 44 percent.
With regard to the Church, the question was not included inthe
Eurobarometers for 2008 or 2009. However, while trust was still
high at 55percent in the autumn of 2007, it had fallen to 40
percent by the nextmeasurement in autumn 2010.Viewed against this
background of generalised institutional devaluation, the
December 2008 riots do not seem a surprise. They came three
months after theLehman Brothers collapse, which triggered a crisis
throughout the internationalnancial system. In addition, in the
last quarter of the year, the Greek economyentered recession.
However, these events came too late to explain the disaffectionwith
the Greek political system which had been growing throughout the
year not least because at this early stage there seemed to be a
widespread feeling inGreece that the international crisis would
pass the country by.6 The explanationfor this primarily
youth-driven outburst of protest and violence seems rather to liein
the nancial insecurity already besetting a generation expecting to
have a worselife than their parents. By the late 2000s, the growing
inequality in the distributionof wealth which was rising rapidly on
a global scale was already becoming veryapparent in Greece. Amidst
the conspicuous consumption fuelled by cheapeurozone credit, the
700 euro generation, the most highly educated in Greek his-tory,
could expect salaries below a living wage and insecure employment
withoutfull insurance rights, even in the public sector. Their
prospects were also blockedby the traditional mode of functioning
of the state, permeated by clientelism andmore focused on serving
particularistic interests than broader societal goals,including
economic development.Greece was an unjust society in which, to
quote George Katrougalos, if there is
a permanent dividing line, it is one which separates social
strata having a symbioticrelationship with the political power and
those deprived of any special relationshipwith it.7 The system was
blatantly unfair, with ofcial tolerance of systematic taxevasion
keeping the costs of public spending unevenly distributed. Public
goodswere of low quality, including a seriously skewed social
welfare system, offeringprivileged pensions for certain groups
while failing to provide a safety net, notablyfor the long-term
unemployed. Meanwhile, as Sotiropoulos shows by identifyingnine
usual paths to reform failure, change was systematically blocked.8
The resultwas a society characterised by extended income
inequality, an unsatisfactorylevel of the rule of law and an
unsatisfactory level of voice and accountability.9
6On this point, see the chapter The Carefree Country in Tsimas,
Crisis Diary.7Katrougalos, Memoranda, 97.8Sotiropoulos, Paradox of
Non-reform in Reform-ripe Environment. For a range of case studies
examin-ing reform blockage in different sectors, see Kalyvas et
al., From Stagnation to Forced Adjustment.9Sotiropoulos, A
Democracy under Stress, 36.
The Economic Crisis and the Greek Party System 25
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A further trigger for discontent concerned the domestic scandals
which rose toa new crescendo during 2008. Particularly prominent
was the Vatopedi affair,concerning monks building a business empire
based on lucrative sales of publicland, after government ministers
signed away state property rights worth hundredsof millions of
euros. The prevalence of corruption had systemic
consequences,undermining democratic institutions and the rule of
law. For several years, therehad been a persistent governmental
tactic of referring corruption cases to the judi-ciary without
permitting a parliamentary investigation. This consistent
sideliningof parliament undermined both its constitutional role and
its public prestige.Meanwhile, the judiciary, in handling
government corruption cases, systematicallyfound there was no case
to answer, creating a public perception that the rule oflaw did not
apply to the political class. In the Vatopedi affair, the deputy
prose-cutors handling the case recommended its referral to
parliament, only to beimmediately overruled by their superiors. But
in this case, the ensuing public out-cry indicated that popular
patience had nally come to an end. The change inpolitical mood was
indicated when the ofcial opposition led a lawsuit againstthe
Supreme Court Prosecutor on the grounds of undermining the
constitutionalorder.Nevertheless, at this point the loss of popular
condence was still reversible,
as was demonstrated one year later. In autumn 2009, following
the election ofa new PASOK government, levels of trust in political
institutions returned totheir pre-2008 levels, briey making the
latter year look like a temporary aberra-tion. Between spring and
autumn 2009, trust in the government jumped from25 to 44 per cent,
in parliament from 33 to 47 per cent and in political partiesfrom
15 to 19 percent, in all three cases putting Greece back above the
EUaverage. However, this new outburst of systemic condence rapidly
proved afalse dawn.
The second phase of delegitimation
The six months between autumn 2009 and spring 2010 provided a
rudeawakening for the Greek public. The new governments shock
announcementabout the true state of public nances triggered
repeated downgrades of Greecessovereign credit rating, culminating
in April 2010 with the countrys relegation tojunk status and its
exclusion from the international money markets. As the
countryteetered on the brink of bankruptcy, the PASOK government,
after some initialhesitation, abandoned the expansionary economic
policy based on the slogan themoneys there with which it had won
the election. Instead, it embarked on atough austerity policy
including tax raises and public sector pay and pensioncuts. But
nothing seemed to appease the markets and on 3 May 2010,
thegovernment entered into a bailout agreement with the European
Union and
26 Susannah Verney
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the International Monetary Fund, entailing a 110 billion euro
loan and aMemorandum of Understanding committing the country to
drastic scalconsolidation and extensive structural reform.
Aggravating the national humiliationwas the outburst of derogatory
comment in the international press, often tarring allthe Greeks as
lazy slackers.The spring 2010 Eurobarometer, conducted between 7
and 23 May, just days
after the bailout, saw a dramatic new drop in public condence in
politicalinstitutions, which in the space of six months dived to
half the autumn 2009levels. Condence both in parliament, which had
ratied the bailout agreement,and in political parties, was now
appreciably below the levels of autumn 2008while trust in the
government, at 25 percent, was just marginally above thatprevious
low point. Unlike 2008-09, the second phase of delegitimation has
beencontinuous and cumulative, with the loss of trust in the system
gaining momentumafter the rst bailout.That this should have
happened hardly requires explanation, given that the
austerity policy so clearly marked a dead end. The speed of the
Greek scal adjust-ment unprecedented within the OECD plunged the
real economy ever deeperinto recession, bankrupting businesses,
boosting unemployment and ruling out anyprospect of Greece being
able to outgrow its debt. Meanwhile, the content of thescal
adjustment seriously aggravated existing injustices. Horizontal
wage andpension cuts hurt the better-paid less, while rising taxes,
coupled with the contin-uing failure to combat tax evasion, meant
the cost of public spending was evenmore unfairly distributed.
Among the outcomes were a developing humanitariancrisis affecting
more vulnerable social groups and a signicant redistribution
ofwealth, including the dispossession of many in the middle-income
strata. Youthunemployment spiralled. The nancial insecurity which
previously had mainlyaficted young people now became a generalised
phenomenon. In addition to thesocial costs, the clear loss of
national sovereignty was underlined by the periodicvisits of the
technocrats representing the international lenders, whose ability
to turnoff the funding tap resulted in repeated public climbdowns
by the Greekgovernment.Against this background, a sharp new drop in
institutional legitimacy occurred
in 2011, a year in which the economy shrank by a startling 6.9
percent and unem-ployment jumped to almost 18 percent. Reecting
this, the Eurobarometer showsthat between autumn 2010 and autumn
2011, the already low trust in politicalinstitutions halved again,
falling to minimal levels: from 21 to 8 percent for thegovernment
(a drop of 60 percent), from 24 to 12 percent for parliament,
andfrom 9 to 5 percent for parties. As Figures 1-3 show, this lost
legitimacy has neverbeen recovered. The next question to consider
is how this accumulation ofdisillusion manifested itself in
electoral terms.
The Economic Crisis and the Greek Party System 27
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Electoral consequencesFirst phase, 2004-09: throwing the rascals
out
During the rst phase of declining trust in political
institutions, popular discontentwas managed within the existing
party system. The latter retained its usual shape:centred on the
two major parties and sole government contenders, who wereanked by
a small number of minor players in permanent opposition.
Disappoint-ment with one of the two established parties of
government simply led, inaccordance with the classical democratic
recipe, to the electorate throwing the ras-cals out and turning to
the opposition. The swings between the two parties werequite sharp.
In 2007, PASOKs 38.1 percent was its lowest vote share since
the1970s. Two years later, the party returned to power with an
unprecedented lead ofover ten percent over ND. The latter then saw
its vote drop by over eight percent,producing its lowest vote and
seat share since the party was founded in 1974.10
Nevertheless, the electoral outcome was a simple alternation in
power: as alreadynoted above, power passed from PASOK to New
Democracy in 2004 and thenback again from ND to PASOK in 2009. The
rise in systemic condence whichaccompanied these elections suggests
that at this point, there was a public opti-mism that what was
wrong could be xed by a change in government. As a result,at this
stage the decline in trust in political institutions did not
present a challengeto the two-party system.
This is particularly interesting given the change in the
electoral law, essentiallyeliminating the lost vote syndrome for
small parties. The new law, which cameinto force for the 2007
election, essentially prescribes a proportional allocation
ofparliamentary seats based on each partys total national vote.
There is a threepercent parliamentary threshold and a bonus for the
rst party, originally of 40seats, increased to 50 in 2009. The rst
two elections held under the new systemsaw a minor attrition of the
two-party domination of the system. In the nine previ-ous elections
from 1981 onwards, there had only been one occasion (in 1996)when
the combined vote share of PASOK and ND had fallen below 83
percent.In 2007, however, it fell just below 80 percent with a
further small fall to 77.4percent in 2009. At the time, a few
analysts saw this as signicant, even suggestingthat it might herald
the end of the bipolar system.11 However, given the incentivewhich
the new law offered to those sympathetic to small parties to cast
their votefor them, perhaps what is more striking is not that there
was some reduction inthe vote share of the two big parties, but
just how limited the change in votingpreferences was. In any case,
the degree of change in these rst two elections boreno comparison
to the dramatic drop of 2012, as depicted in Figure 4 below.
10Verney, The Eurozones First Post-bailout Election,
199-200.11For example, Tsirbas, The Retreat of Bipolarism, and
Vernardakis, From Bipolarism to Multi-partyism.
28 Susannah Verney
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At this point, the minor decline of the two main parties did not
produce impressivegains for the two minor parties of the radical
left which, along with PASOK and ND,had formed the other stable
elements of the Greek party system, present in every par-liament
since 1996. In 2007, each of these parties saw a small rise in its
vote share, of2.3 percent of the total vote for the communist party
and 1.7 percent for SYRIZA,raising their combined vote from 11 to
just over 13 percent. In 2009, however, bothsaw their votes
squeezed by the victorious PASOK, resulting in their joint share
fall-ing to 12.1 percent. Again, this bears no comparison to the
radical left breakthroughwhich was to occur with SYRIZAs emergence
as second party in 2012.Perhaps the most important change in 2007
was the entrance into parliament of
the radical right LAOS as the fth party. A fth party was hardly
unprecedented inthe Greek political system: while the parliaments
of 2000 and 2004 had only fourparties, there had been ve during the
three previous parliamentary terms (see Table2). Moreover, LAOS had
won a European Parliament seat in 2004, so its
nationalparliamentary success with a vote share a little above the
parliamentary threshold was hardly unexpected. In 2009, NDs
crushing defeat allowed LAOS to retain itsparliamentary presence
with a 1.8 percent increase in its vote. Despite the opportu-nities
offered to small parties by the new electoral law, in 2009 a sixth
party, theEco-greens, failed to breach the national parliamentary
threshold, although they hadelected a EuroMP only a few months
earlier. In relation to the previous picture ofthe number of
parties elected to parliament, the elections of 2007 and
2009appeared to be very much business as usual, as indicated in
Table 2.Meanwhile, in both these elections, the total vote share
for parties which failed
to enter parliament, at ve percent, remained around the same
level as before (seeTable 3). This suggests that the change in the
electoral system had not encouraged
FIGURE 4. PASOK and ND: combined vote share, 1981-2012.Source:
authors elaboration of Ministry of Interior election data,
http://www.ypes.gr/el/Elections/.
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voters to look far beyond the existing parliamentary parties
again, in marked con-trast to what was to happen in 2012. But even
then, the electoral law did notbecome a primary cause of change.
Rather, when a sea change in voter preferencesoccurred, its effect
was to magnify the result, translating it into an even more
dra-matic outcome in terms of seat distribution.
Second phase after 2010: breaking the mould...
As shown above, the onset of the sovereign debt crisis was
followed by a radicaldeepening of the pre-existing disaffection.
The voters ceased swinging between thetwo traditional parties of
government and began to swing away from them instead.Both the main
parties were blamed by the public for the years of
economicmismanagement which had led Greece into the crisis. They
were also held toaccount for the way in which they had handled the
crisis and particularly for the sec-ond EU/IMF bailout of February
2012, negotiated by the coalition government inwhich both
participated. Both PASOK and ND became a clear target for the
angerof a public suffering stringent cuts in living standards after
years of economic growth,experiencing the rolling back of welfare
and labour rights, and frightened by the de-stabilisation of
Greeces position in the eurozone. The drop in their combined
voteshare is graphically illustrated in Figure 4. Notably, even
after the repeat election ofJune, it only recovered to 42 percent,
around half its traditional level.The decline of the established
parties of power was paralleled by the rise of the
radical left to a level previously unprecedented in Greece.12
From the 13 percentof 2009, the combined vote share of the three
parties in this part of the politicalspectrum, KKE, SYRIZA and the
breakaway DIMAR, more than doubled, exceed-ing 31 percent almost
one-third of the electorate then rising further to 37 per-cent in
June. Within the radical left camp, SYRIZA emerged as the clear
winner,supported by over one in four June voters. This was also a
surprise as, since 1977,
Table 2. Number of parties winning parliamentary seats in the
elections of1981-2012.
ELECTIONS 2000-2012
Election June 2012 May 2012 2009 2007 2004 2000
Number of parties 7 7 5 5 4 4
ELECTIONS 1981-19961996 1993 1990 Nov 1989 June 1989 1985 19815
5 5 4 4 4 3
Source: authors elaboration of Ministry of Interior election
data, http://www.ypes.gr/el/Elections/.
12The only other occasion on which a left party had polled an
equivalent percentage was 1958 (24.2 per-cent) but this was
exceeded by the combined KKE-SYRIZA vote in both elections of
2012.
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the communist KKE had consistently emerged as the third party in
every electionbut one. For the past twenty years, it had always had
a higher vote share thanSYRIZA and the latters predecessor,
Synaspismos. Yet in 2012, voters casting aprotest vote largely
bypassed the communist party. In May its vote rose only mar-ginally
compared to 2007 and then fell in June to 4.5 percent. This was
equivalentto the partys historic low in 1993 following the breakup
of the Soviet Union andan intra-KKE split. The partys failure to
capitalise on the crisis can be attributedto its strategy of grand
isolation, refusing to contemplate government collaborationwith any
other political forces. While for many years, the strength of the
two-partysystem ruled out such a possibility, this strategy became
electorally damaging oncecoalition government formation entered the
agenda. Thus, not only the parties ofgovernment but also the KKE as
the leading party of protest were displaced fromtheir traditional
positions in the party system. The KKEs relegation to fth
parlia-mentary party in May and seventh (and smallest) in June
marks another importantmanifestation of the rejection of
traditional patterns of representation.In many ways, the rise in
the rightwing protest vote was equally as striking as
the increase in the radical left. While the latter had been a
minor force throughoutthe post-Cold War period, it was a long
established component of the Greek partysystem, with the history of
the communist party dating back to the 1920s. Thepost-dictatorship
far right, on the other hand, had made only a passing appearancein
the Greek parliament in 1977-81 before disappearing from the
parliamentaryscene until the 2000s. Making its rst parliamentary
reappearance with LAOS in2007, the rightwing protest vote exploded
following the new phase of politicalsystem delegitimation in
2011.In 2012, two new parties won parliamentary seats, displacing
LAOS which failed
to pass the parliamentary threshold. The Independent Greeks, an
ND breakawayformed after the vote on the second EU/IMF bailout, is
a nationalist party opposedto compliance with the terms of the
international lenders. Golden Dawn is a neo-Nazi party, organised
with military discipline around an all-powerful leader andknown for
its violent attacks on immigrants and political opponents.13 The
fact
Table 3. Percentage of total vote received by parties falling
below theparliamentary threshold (3 percent) in the elections of
2000-12.
June 2012 May 2012 2009 2007 2004 2000
6.0 19.0 4.9 3.8 4.9 4.8
Source: authors calculation based on Ministry of Interior
election data, http://www.ypes.gr/el/Elections/.
13On Golden Dawn, see Georgiadou, Rightwing Populism and
Extremism, and Ellinas, The Rise ofGolden Dawn. Since the 2012
elections, the party has been the subject of a number of
journalisticaccounts in Greek, of which the most illuminating is
Psarras, The Black Book of Golden Dawn. In contrast,there seems to
have been very little publishing interest in the Independent
Greeks.
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that such a party could be elected to parliament in a country
with no previousstrong far right tradition is in itself indicative
of the corroding effects of the crisis.Also striking was that in
May 2012, one in ve voters opted for one of these threeparties to
the right of New Democracy. Indeed, their combined vote was
greaterthan the 18.9 percent won by ND. Even in June, despite the
pressure to choose aparty capable of coming rst and winning the
50-seat bonus, the three rightwingprotest parties garnered 16
percent of the vote. The new extent of far right supportand its
distribution among several parties suggests that the rightwing
protest votehas come to stay.
...but keeping the rascals
From spring 2011 onwards, all national opinion polls suggested
that neither of thetwo main parties would be able to win a
parliamentary majority in an election.Hence, it was no longer
possible to defuse political discontent, as in the earlierperiod,
through an alternation in power between them. Meanwhile, since
thecollapse of the PASOK government in November 2011, it had been
clear that noparty could bear the burden of implementing the
bailout programme alone orindeed gain the necessary electoral
support to do so. The economic crisis, bringingthe end of
bipolarism, has therefore changed the mode of government
formationfrom one-party majority to coalition government. But the
way in which the Greekparty system mould was broken, with such a
drastic shrinking of the political cen-tre and extensive
reinforcing of the systems radical wings, creates an obstacle
togovernment formation. The distance between the parties on the
political spectrummakes it difcult in many cases to envisage
programmatic agreements among them.This is aggravated by the Greek
tradition of confrontational rather than consensuspolitics.In the
two years since November 2011, there have been three changes of
govern-
ment,14 two of them without elections. All these governments
have been based onan alliance between the old adversaries, ND and
PASOK, the parties closest to thecentre of the political system.
The Eurobarometer surveys show that, in contrast to2004 and 2009,
these government changes did not bring any signicant upwardswing in
the public mood. The rst, in November 2011, allied PASOK and NDwith
the radical right LAOS under the technocratic premiership of
formerEuropean Central Bank Vice President, Lucas Papademos. The
autumn 2011Eurobarometer, conducted during the negotiations for the
new government andimmediately after its formation,15 showed trust
in all the main political institutionsto have reached what at that
time was an all-time low (8 percent for the
14This does not include the caretaker government which ran the
country for a few weeks between the dualelections of 2012.15The
autumn 2011 Eurobarometer was conducted in Greece between 5 and 20
November 2011. Thenew government was formed on 11 November.
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government, 12 percent for parliament and 4 percent for
parties). The secondgovernment was the ND-PASOK-DIMAR coalition of
June 2012. The nextEurobarometer after its formation, conducted in
autumn 2012, found trust in bothgovernment and parliament, at 7 and
9 percent respectively, to be even lower thanone year earlier while
trust in political parties remained at the same low level of
5percent. Finally, for the ND-PASOK coalition formed in June 2013,
there is notyet any Eurobarometer data. However, the ndings of
national opinion pollssuggest the public mood remains at least as
bleak as in autumn 2011.This is not surprising as the rapid
succession of governments since the onset of
the economic crisis has represented continuity rather than
change. In a countrydependent on international loans, new
governments have not meant new policy.Instead, each government in
succession has continued to implement the economicausterity
programme with its cumulatively corrosive effects on living
standards andthe real economy. There has also been considerable
continuity in personnel.Despite the participation of minor parties
in two cases, all three governments havebeen dominated by the
traditional parties of power with which the Greek publichas become
so disillusioned. Thus, although the majority of the Greek
electorateclearly wanted to throw the rascals out in 2012, the
dynamic of the 50-seat bonusand the difculties of building an
alternative coalition have kept them in power.
ConclusionThe electoral contests of 2012 left the Greek party
system in shards. Although thesubsequent parliament includes all
four parties which have been elected consistentlysince 1996 (along
with three new ones), the relationship among them has
changedcompletely. Not least, the election result, by overturning
previous patterns of gov-ernment formation, has turned all
parliamentary parties into potential governmentparticipants. The
examination of Eurobarometer data shows that the 2012
electionresults were not a passing moment of protest. They were
built on a deep andlong-term loss of trust in political
institutions, greatly exceeding anything that washappening in the
European Union as a whole. The delegitimation of the Greekpolitical
system began some years before the outbreak of the sovereign debt
crisis.However, the latter made it deeper and almost universal. The
December 2008 riotswere a spontaneous outburst by a dispossessed
younger generation facing a grimfuture. In the 2012 elections, the
cry of rage and despair extended to the electorateas a whole.Before
the sovereign debt crisis, the situation was contained within the
existing
system and appears to have been reversible, with the hope
generated by theelection of new governments leading to an upswing
of condence in the system asa whole. After autumn 2009 and
particularly accelerating in 2011, though, thecrisis of condence in
the political system reached dramatic proportions and
The Economic Crisis and the Greek Party System 33
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currently shows no sign of coming to an end. During this period,
governmentchange has failed to act as a lightning rod for political
discontent. Three newgovernments in 20 months, from November 2011
to June 2013, have brought noimprovement in public
sentiment.Opinion polls since the 2012 elections show a surprising
stability, with the seven
parties elected in 2012 likely to return to parliament in the
next election. Thiscontinued rejection of past political afliations
suggests there is no going back tothe patterns of the past.
Characteristic is the continued decline of PASOKregistered in the
opinion surveys. PASOK was the systemic party par excellence,
inpower for 19 of the 30 years from 1981 to 2011. Its fate is
paradigmatic of that ofthe past party system as a whole. Meanwhile,
no poll to date has shown either ofthe two new main parties
increasing their electoral support by more than a fewpercentage
points. The systemic shift to coalition government is thus likely
tobecome a permanent feature of the new political landscape.The
most alarming post-electoral development concerns the rise of
Golden
Dawn, since September 2013 consistently polling as third
party.16 The support forthis extreme anti-system force should be
seen in the context of broader trends ofdemocratic disaffection. In
spring 2013, the Greek Eurobarometer respondentswho said they were
not satised with democracy in their country amounted to 85percent.
Only one percent professed to being very satised while a striking
47percent almost every second person said they were not satised at
all,compared with less than one in ve in the EU as a whole. The
extent of disillusionis not so surprising given the continuing
economic catastrophe. In 2013, the Greekeconomy continued to
contract at a rapid pace. By the end of the year, GDP wasexpected
to have fallen by 25 percent compared to the pre-crisis period.
Thoseassuming the current phase of political instability in Greece
will quickly pass oncethe economic crisis is over should reect on
how long that is likely to take, giventhe countrys dire economic
straits.
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The Economic Crisis and the Greek Party System 35
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Abstract The extent of delegitimation The chronology of
delegitimation Prelude to the storm First phase of delegitimation
The second phase of delegitimation
Electoral consequences First phase, 2004-09: throwing the
rascals out Second phase after 2010: breaking the mould... ...but
keeping the rascals
ConclusionReferences