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The International SpectatorItalian Journal of International Affairs

ISSN: 0393-2729 (Print) 1751-9721 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rspe20

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

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03932729.2014.877222

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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: deplan@otenet.gr. 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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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

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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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16This continued to be the case even after the arrest of the party leadership in October 2012 on charges ofrunning a criminal organisation.

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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