Dynamics of Polarization in the Greek Case

• Date: 01 January 2019
• Published date: 01 January 2019
• DOI: 10.1177/0002716218817723
• Subject Matter: III. Democratic Careening and Gridlock

817723ANN
The Annals of The American AcademyDynamics of Polarization in the Greek Case
research-article2018
this article focuses on the dynamics of polarization
emerging within Greek political culture in the postau-
thoritarian setting. Following a brief historical framing,
we trace Left–right polarization between the two
major parties of the period: Panhellenic Socialist
Movement (PASOk) and New Democracy (ND). the
party-based polarization of PASOk/ND was arguably
the main axis of political antagonism in Greece from
the 1970s until the end of the 2000s. By 2009, polariza-
Dynamics of tion had ebbed due to an ideological convergence of
the two parties toward the center, but the onset of the
Polarization in 2009 economic crisis dislocated the established two-
party system and facilitated the emergence of a new
political landscape comprising many new political
the Greek Case actors, most notably the Coalition of the radical Left,
SYrIZA. Using a predominantly quantitative method-
ology, we focus on a set of dimensions of polarization
brought forward or re-activated within the context of
economic crisis.
Keywords: crisis; europe; Greece; polarization; pop-
ulism
By
IOANNIS ANDreADIS
and
YANNIS StAvrAkAkIS
When can one conclude that a legitimate
democratic agonism (meaning the
respectful assertion of distinct political alterna-
tives) has escalated into raw antagonism and
that polarization has reached a risky threshold,
mutating into a pernicious phenomenon? What
role do political parties and other agents play in
this process? How does Left/right (L/r) polar-
ization intersect with other culture-specific
types of “formative rifts” (Somer and McCoy,
this volume)? Is it possible to support qualita-
tive accounts with quantitative data to make
Ioannis Andreadis is an associate professor of quantita-
tive methods in the social sciences at the Aristotle
University of Thessaloniki. He is a member of the steer-
ing committee of the Comparative Candidate Survey,
and national collaborator for the Comparative Study of
Electoral Systems.
Correspondence: john@polsci.auth.gr
DOI: 10.1177/0002716218817723
ANNALS, AAPSS, 681, January 2019 157

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tHe ANNALS OF tHe AMerICAN ACADeMY
sense of polarization’s trajectory in a particular setting? In this article, we address
such questions by analyzing polarization in postauthoritarian Greece, from 1974
until 2015. We use historiographical, discourse, and quantitative analysis to
explain polarization in the Greek case.
In Greece, party polarization along the L/r axis was exacerbated by its civil war
(1945–49), which ended when pro-Western forces backed by Britain and the
United States defeated the communist-led alliance. the anticommunist legacy of
the ensuing right-wing state, and of the military dictatorship (junta) that followed
in 1967–74, laid the foundation for ideological antagonisms that followed the
junta’s collapse. that traditional cleavage has co-existed with other types of polari-
zation organized around the ambivalent relationship between Greece and europe,
as well as Greece’s relationship with populist and antipopulist strategies.
Greek political culture has been historically conceptualized in terms of a fun-
damental division that reflects the country’s vacillating position within the
european framework. the story goes back to the formation of the modern Greek
state at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Since then, europe has func-
tioned for Greece as both a model and an observer. We know from historical
research that Greek citizens, persistently feeling the ambivalence from other
europeans—who were both fascinated by ancient Greece and disappointed by
modern Greece—increasingly resented the continuous need to prove to europe
the worth of modern Greek achievement. Greeks felt continuously judged on the
progress of the new state following its war of independence (1821–1830) and on
its acceptance into mainstream europe, the european economic Community
(eeC), the european Union (eU) and, finally, the euro-zone. Harvard anthro-
pologist Michael Herzfeld has described this potent yet ambivalent relation as
crypto-colonialism (Herzfeld 2002, 25).
In this context, the standard explanation for the polarized dynamics of Greek
political culture posits a division between two distinct, antagonistic, cultural, and
political orientations. the theory of cultural dualism, introduced by Nikiforos
Dianandouros, understands the Greek political/cultural space as divided between
two camps: pro-european modernizers and euro-skeptical traditionalists. In
essence, this schema implies that the construction of a modern state in Greece
led to “intense social, political, and cultural struggles in which potential benefi-
ciaries and potential losers in the redefinition of power relations within Greece
played the central role” (Diamandouros 1994, 8).
Most important, this division has often been associated with the debate around
populism that has diachronically marked the Greek case—after all, Greece is
often described as a populist democracy marked throughout by a deeply polar-
ized political culture (Pappas 2014, 8). to the extent that Diamandouros’s second
camp of euro-skeptic traditionalists is predominantly populist (he himself calls it
an “underdog culture”), polarization in Greek politics has been described as
tending to “reduce the space for party competition to a single dimension, which
Yannis Stavrakakis has worked at the Universities of Essex and Nottingham and is currently a
professor of political discourse analysis at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Since 2014
he has been directing the POPULISMUS Observatory.

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DYNAMICS OF POLArIZAtION IN tHe Greek CASe
159
presumably exists between a majority (the masses, the people, the underprivi-
leged, the poor) and some minority (the elites, the establishment, the privileged,
the rich)” (Pappas 2014, 58). Although this picture does not adequately capture
periods in which “modernization,” the “middle ground,” or the “center” has func-
tioned as the holy grail of party competition and identification (1996–2009), it
can illuminate important periods of recent history.
Over time, the relationship between the dimensions of polarization has fluctu-
ated between a L/r cleavage, a pro-european/anti-european cleavage, and a
populist/anti-populist one. Whether we call it crypto-colonialism or cultural dual-
ism, none can deny that polarized dynamics have marked political culture in
postauthoritarian Greece and require urgent attention, especially in times of
crisis that threaten the cohesion of many polities internationally. In what follows,
we develop many of these analytical angles, briefly covering some of the high-
lights of the early period in question but placing more emphasis on recent devel-
opments to capture how all these cleavages have interacted with each other,
ushering in a period of instability and democratic careening.
Axes of Polarization in Postauthoritarian Greece
The polarization matrix in the early 1980s
the 1980s were dominated by Andreas Papandreou and his Panhellenic
Socialist Movement (PASOk), a Left-wing populist party (Stavrakakis 2014,
2016) that highlighted the socioeconomic demands of sectors of the population
that had been largely excluded in the long period between the civil war (1945–49)
and the junta (1967–74). In the 1981 general election, PASOk won an outright
majority in parliament with more than 48 percent of the vote. Politically, “PASOk
opted for polarization rather than moderation. Indeed, the new government
adopted an openly and consistently confrontational political strategy” (kalyvas
1997, 84). this is not surprising given that PASOk represented social strata that
had felt alienated from equal rights and legitimate access to decision-making for
a long time (katsambekis and Stavrakakis 2017, 6–7).
the polarization strategy was not limited to PASOk. Both PASOk and the
right-wing New Democracy (ND) party used a “discourse which presented the
social and political space as divided into two opposed fields” (Lyrintzis 1987, 671).
they claimed to represent incompatible political camps and made conscious and
unrelenting efforts to undermine one another’s legitimacy. Depictions of the
enemy were thus instrumental in constructing the distinct identity of the two
camps. On one hand, PASOk claimed that ND stood for authoritarianism, the
oligarchy, and foreign interests (kalyvas 1997, 86). thus, “the right was depicted
as one and indivisible from the collaborationist Security Battalions of the Second
World War through the Civil War, the subsequent repressive parliamentary
regime and then the military dictatorship, up to its most recent reincarnation as
New Democracy” (Pridham and verney 1991, 46). On the other hand, “ND
argued that PASOk’s ultimate objective was to subvert the democratic regime,

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tHe ANNALS OF tHe AMerICAN ACADeMY
FIGUre 1
Left/Right Polarization in Greece 1985–2015
while the government was often referred to as the ‘junta of PASOk’” (kalyvas
1997, 88). Importantly, polarization was not just an elite phenomenon but affected
the whole social fabric: it “was particularly felt at the mass level of politics as soci-
ety became bitterly divided between the seemingly irreconcilable supporters of
the two major parties.” even coffee shops were separated “throughout the country
into ‘green’ and ‘blue’...