Takis S. Pappas in Kathimerini: Our useful history

On Sunday 28 May, *Kathimerini* published a very interesting article by Takis S. Papas, summarising ten conclusions (and useful lessons) he drew whilst writing his latest book, On a Tightrope: National Crises and Political Acrobatics from Trikoupis to Tsipras. We republish the text below: Like all of us in this country, which for many years now has been struggling in the throes of a crisis with no positive outcome in sight, I too have tried to understand the deeper causes of the crisis, to explain the dynamics of the current situation and to predict what lies ahead. I felt that the best – if not the only – way was to look back at the long historical past. And so I wrote a book entitled ‘On a Tightrope: National Crises and Political Acrobatics from Trikoupis to Tsipras’ (Ikaros Publications), which is based on three key observations. Firstly, that what we call a ‘crisis’ is not a single event but a spiralling sequence of many crises with an as yet unknown outcome; secondly, that the current spiral of crisis bears striking similarities to three historical crises that also took the form of a spiral or vicious circle; and, thirdly, that previous crises offer us valuable lessons that we must not allow to go to waste.The first of the aforementioned crisis spirals began with the bankruptcy of 1893 and ended with Eleftherios Venizelos’s first premiership in 1910. The second began with the Venizelist military coup of 1935 and lasted until 1952, when another military figure, Alexander Papagos, established a – certainly ultra-conservative – regime of political stability, which formed the basis of post-war economic development. The third spiral of crisis began to unfold with Georgios Papandreou’s demagogic ‘Uncompromising’ policy, until finally, following the dictatorship and the partition of Cyprus, it culminated in the establishment of our current democratic system.&I summarise ten conclusions – and some useful lessons – that I have drawn from writing this book. With four successive spirals of crisis in the space of just five 25-year periods, modern Greek political history resembles a rollercoaster. It climbs and then plunges at terrifying speed, yet none of us can imagine the final outcome. We all, however, feel a sense of vertigo. Periods of uninterrupted (relative) stability are brief, with the most significant exception being the post-dictatorship era, a fact mainly attributable to Greece’s accession to the then EEC, now the European Union. Conversely, periods of spiral crisis are exceptionally long, averaging 15 years. This, obviously, is not a good sign. The incubation stage of each spiral crisis lies within the preceding period of relative stability. Thus, the crisis of the late 19th century was primarily due to unfulfilled nationalism; the crisis that began in the 1930s was due to national division; the crisis of the 1960s has its roots in the post-civil war anti-communist regime, whilst the current crisis would not have occurred without the prevalence of populism in the post-dictatorship political system. The common feature in all the above cases is the delegitimisation of the parliamentary democratic process and, consequently, the erosion of – albeit imperfect – parliamentarism. In summary, I propose the following general interpretation: The country’s enduring political problem is that parliamentarism has never acquired universal and fully established legitimacy in our country. When the country enters a spiral of crisis, and throughout its duration, three negative developments are observed. Firstly, the succession of unsuitable leaders to power; secondly, the rapid further erosion of parliamentary institutions, mainly due to polarisation; and, thirdly, the rapid weakening of the middle classes and the rise in emigration. Of these three developments, the most crucial is ‘poor’ leadership, as political polarisation and the sense of social suffocation depend primarily on this. A way out of the crisis is always linked to new, strong and appropriate leadership. It took Eleftherios Venizelos to halt the first spiral of the crisis, Papagos to initiate a virtuous cycle of stability and growth following the second spiral, and Constantine Karamanlis to usher in the Metapolitefsi. What is most interesting is that all the above leaders shared six common characteristics. All of them (a) had a long and successful political or military background, (b) an ambitious national vision and a specific political programme, for the realisation of which (c) they created new parties which they staffed with new political personnel, (d) established a new legal and institutional framework, which (e) gained broad support from the middle classes, whilst (f) they enjoyed significant foreign political and economic support. If ‘good’ leadership is associated with emerging from crises, ‘bad’ leadership appears immediately after every ‘turning point’ in our national history, that is, precisely when the country has just achieved something significant, with disastrous consequences. Thus, following the victorious Balkan Wars, the divisive political star of King Constantine II shone brightly; after Liberation, the utterly unsuitable leadership of the Communist Party of Greece; following the so-called post-war ‘economic miracle’ the demagoguery of G. Papandreou, following the early post-dictatorship liberalism; the populism of And. Papandreou; and, following the country’s entry into the Eurozone, a whole chain of unsuitable leaderships stretching right up to the present day. If history teaches us anything, it is that the only way we will ever emerge from the crisis is by electing a leader who embodies (most of) the characteristics of ‘good’ leadership. However, the way out will again be temporary and conditional. That is why we must never forget the obvious: namely, that in a representative parliamentary democracy, leaders are elected (both in government and in opposition) by the people’s vote, that is, on our own responsibility alone. Modern Greek political history unfolds neither linearly nor cyclically. Nor is it teleologically predetermined, perhaps with a final and redemptive ‘triumph’. In the relentless reality of history, the situation in the country always unfolds as an endless loop (akin to the myth of Sisyphus) which, to be broken once and for all, requires the establishment of a liberal and consensual parliamentary democracy. Yet this has been the country’s great, enduring quest since the end of the 19th century.