ABSTRACT
The global economic crisis that originated in 2008 in the US financial sector spread quickly across the Atlantic bringing a number of European economies to the brink of collapse. The crisis also shifted into the political domain as governments at the periphery of the Eurozone increasingly faced the prospect of insolvency or “default”. Greece was perhaps one of the countries most severely affected by the economic and political fallout from the crisis. The repeated joint EU/IMF “rescue” loans it received marked a desperate attempt by international bodies to stave off a possible default and were accompanied by unprecedented austerity measures and an unpopular debt restructuring deal. Given these dramatic events it was highly likely that voters would seek to vent their frustrations in subsequent elections. Few observers, however, could have predicted the seismic shift that took place in the Greek party system following the crisis. The dramatic fall in the popularity of PASOK and New Democracy in the May
2009 national election left these two (former) major parties unable to lay claim to
Introduction
The global economic crisis that originated in 2008 in the US financial sector spread quickly across the Atlantic bringing a number of European economies to the brink of collapse. The crisis also shifted into the political domain as governments at the periphery of the Eurozone increasingly faced the prospect of insolvency or “default”. Greece was perhaps one of the countries most severely affected by the economic and political fallout from the crisis. The repeated joint EU/IMF “rescue” loans it received marked a desperate attempt by international bodies to stave off a possible default and were accompanied by unprecedented austerity measures and an unpopular debt restructuring deal. Given these dramatic events it was highly likely that voters would seek to vent their frustrations in subsequent elections. Few observers, however, could have predicted the seismic shift that took place in the Greek party system following the crisis. The dramatic fall in the popularity of PASOK and New Democracy in the May
2009 national election left these two (former) major parties unable to lay claim to
a majority of seats in parliament and thus to form a coalition government. This result occurred even with the 50-seat bonus for the top-ranked party that was designed to secure a single-party majority in parliament. The refusal of the Coalition of Radical Left (SYRIZA) and of the Democratic Left to participate in a coalition government meant that Greeks had to return to the polls in June. This time the 50-seat bonus awarded to the first party saw the system move towards a new configuration of two-partyism, with New Democracy and SYRIZA sharing power. At first glance the two elections appear to constitute textbook cases of economic
voting. The economic crisis Greece faced was the most serious it had encountered since the end of the civil war in 1949. The dismal state of the economy provided a backdrop not only for the election but seeped into all aspects of social life and public discourse. The PASOK government that presided over the explosion of the debt bomb and negotiated the terms of the first bailout deal in 2010, saw its vote share decline dramatically from 44% in October 2009 to just over 13% inMay 2012 and a further percentage point in June. Much of the decline of PASOK was picked up, not by New Democracy, but by smaller parties of the left, SYRIZA in particular, which saw its share increase dramatically to 16% in May 2012 and 27% the following month. On the surface the causal narrative thus appears fairly straightforward. The electorate
attributed the blame for the crisis to the main incumbent party and punished it accordingly for its poor economic record. Beyond this immediate outcome, however, given the extreme nature of the economic crisis experienced in Greece there is a question of whether it had deeper system-level effects that resulted in more than just shortterm electoral losses for the incumbent. Our argument is that the economic crisis in Greece has acted as a catalyst for the acceleration of longer-term processes in much the same way as the Tangentopoli affair1 triggered the transformation of the Italian party system after 1992. The growing levels of political cynicism and antiparty sentiments, especially among the post-authoritarian generation in Greece, we contend were reinforced by the crisis and turned indifference into open hostility towards the political class, and specifically towards the two major parties (PASOK and New Democracy). This outrage was particularly strong among the younger generation which, largely unconstrained by the affective ties of their parents and grandparents to specific parties, gravitated to newer anti-system variants that were sceptical or even overtly hostile towards parliamentary politics in general. The widening nature of the debate further underscored its deeper systemic impli-
cations. After a few months the debate shifted from the government’s plan to deal with the crisis and issues of economic performance to concerns over a loss of national sovereignty and the merits of EU membership. Within the opposition and the heterogeneous protest movement, attention centred on what was seen as the endemic corruption of the political class and alternatives to parliamentary rule. Furthermore, there was a growing preoccupation with immigration control and the protection of national identity and the Greek way of life. The goal of this article is to examine the argument that the effects of the recent
global economic crisis on Greek politics went much deeper than conventional economic voting models would presume, i.e. a shift in voter preferences in a given election
The Implosion of the Two-Party System in Greece 223
Introduction
The global economic crisis that originated in 2008 in the US financial sector spread quickly across the Atlantic bringing a number of European economies to the brink of collapse. The crisis also shifted into the political domain as governments at the periphery of the Eurozone increasingly faced the prospect of insolvency or “default”. Greece was perhaps one of the countries most severely affected by the economic and political fallout from the crisis. The repeated joint EU/IMF “rescue” loans it received marked a desperate attempt by international bodies to stave off a possible default and were accompanied by unprecedented austerity measures and an unpopular debt restructuring deal. Given these dramatic events it was highly likely that voters would seek to vent their frustrations in subsequent elections. Few observers, however, could have predicted the seismic shift that took place in the Greek party system following the crisis. The dramatic fall in the popularity of PASOK and New Democracy in the May
2009 national election left these two (former) major parties unable to lay claim to
to punish those parties responsible. Instead the crisis provoked a serious fracture and significant reconfiguration of the existing party system. We test this argument by presenting a series of over-time and cross-sectional analyses of voting patterns in the Third Republic. First we contrast the nearly three decades of party system stability with the post-2009 period to show how a new era of dealignment and fluidity emerged after the economic crisis hit. Specifically we use aggregate and individual-level indicators to highlight the discontinuities in the pre-and post-crisis party system and contextualize these changes within the wider society and Greek political culture. In a second step we probe more deeply into the post-2009 situation and identify the demographic and structural characteristics associated with the dealignment process. Finally we trace the relative impact of a range of issues that dominated the spring 2012 electoral campaign. Here we show how the shift in political discourse from economic performance issues to highly contentious and polarizing socio-cultural issues affected the electoral choice of voters.
