Vasilopoulou, S., Halikiopoulou, D. and Exadaktylos, T., (2013), “The primary response by Greek parties to the crisis has been to divert political accountability through populist blame-shifting”, LSE European Politics and Policy Blog, 18 December.
Greece has been hit harder by the financial crisis than any other EU member state, with the economic fallout threatening to undermine the country’s democratic system. Based on an analysis of political speeches, Sofia Vasilopoulou, Daphne Halikiopoulou and Theofanis Exadaktylos assess the response to the crisis by the five parliamentary parties in Greece between 2009 and 2011. They find that populist rhetoric and blame-shifting has been a key component in the responses of all five parties.
The global financial crisis has significantly impacted on European economies. In comparison to other Eurozone countries facing similar external financial pressures, such as Ireland, Portugal and Spain, Greece has presented the most problematic case, having been often described as the ‘sick man of Europe’. Why is Greece Europe’s weakest link?
The Greek predicament may not be fully understood without a reference to Greece’s endemic problems. This is, essentially, the paradox of sustaining a democratic institutional system, while not progressing beyond the deeply embedded clientelistic and rent-seeking networks that permeate Greek political culture. The coexistence of these contradictory systemic features during the post-dictatorship era has facilitated the establishment of what Takis Pappas describes as a ‘populist’ democratic system. This system allowed Greece to develop politically and economically during periods of international financial stability, but at the same time rendered the country unable to withstand external shocks.
Our work takes this argument further, by testing the ‘populist’ democratic system theory through the use of a sophisticated framing analysis of speeches delivered by the leaders of the five parties in parliament during the 2009–11 period. More specifically, if the theory is correct and populism is a defining feature of the Greek political system, then it is likely to be expressed through the narratives of Greek political actors.
The question that derives from this initial hypothesis is how this may manifest itself during times of crisis. If populism is the main justification upon which the system rests, and crisis opens up political opportunities for smaller actors in the system, then we may expect that a populist master narrative is likely to be observed across the party system. In other words, populism is likely to be widespread across the political spectrum and is independent of party ideology.
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Σχετικές Αναρτήσεις
- Konstantinidis, I. and Xezonakis, G., (2013), “Sources of tolerance towards corrupted politicians in Greece: the role of trade-offs and individual benefits”, Crime, Law and Social Change, September.
- Fokas, Ε., Bozhilova, D., Vraniali, E., Prasopoulou E. and Chalari, A., (2013), Social Issues in Focus: New Generation Research on a Changing Greece, Athens: KERKYRA Publications SA – Economia Publishing.