Populism and the crisis in Greece

In 2010, Greece suddenly ceased to be a stable and economically sound democracy at the heart of Europe. The state went bankrupt and has since been kept afloat by loans, unemployment soared, the old party system collapsed with a bang, the once-powerful PASOK has all but vanished, Nazi sympathisers have entered Parliament, whilst another left-wing party has, in a short space of time, leapt from the political fringes to power, offering fresh promises and hope. The Metapolitefsi is now a thing of the past, but no one yet knows what the future will hold. So what went wrong in Greece? This book is the first comprehensive analysis of the crisis afflicting the country. It covers the entire historical period that began with the transition to democracy in 1974 and ended with the 2012 elections. The book’s central thesis is that the Metapolitefsi served as the arena in which political liberalism and populism clashed in Greece, with the latter emerging victorious. The analysis is based on an original conceptualisation of the populist phenomenon, a detailed examination of the micro-mechanisms that contributed to its prevalence, and a wealth of primary empirical material. If the future is indeed guided by an understanding of the past, and if populism is indeed corrosive to liberal democracy and its institutions, this book has useful conclusions to offer.

My paternal grandfather was born in 1875, my father in 1913 and I in 1960. If we could join hands to form a chain, the three of us alone would span almost a century and a half of modern Greek history. What would we talk about? Under what national circumstances did each of us live our lives? What kind of experiences would each generation have to offer, and what valuable knowledge would we realise has been forgotten over the years? And what, I wonder, would I, the penultimate link in the chain, gain from a conversation with my ancestors that I could pass on to my own children? As history itself shows, in the past every emergence from a crisis was achieved through the political mediation of capable political leaders, who, often with foreign assistance, managed to create new, appropriate institutional environments for the autonomous development of the middle classes, primarily the social classes. So where do we stand today? To what extent do the conditions necessary for the country to emerge from this already protracted crisis exist?