About Political Change in Greece

Emmanouil Mavrozacharakis,Stylianos Tzagkarakis

doi:10.2139/ssrn.2799555

Abstract

There have been almost 40 years after the restoration of democracy in Greece and a peculiar prosperity, which was consciously cultivated by the leaders of political and economic elites, was promoted before the onset of the financial crisis. However, from the beginning of the financial recession, the temporal illusions have been revealed and the need of a complete transformation of the financial policies has been expressed, while a significant transformation of the entire political culture has started. Parties such as SYRIZA, Independent Greeks (ANEL) and Golden Dawn took advantage of the growing social discontent by propagating their selves as exponents of ordinary people and of their concerns or their fears, as the expression of resistance against an avoidable sellout of public values. However, crisis has exposed a number of successive truths which were elaborately hiding in the underbelly of the detaining political and socioeconomic system. These truths were exteriorized once it became clear that the foundations on which the Greek society was based after the restoration of democracy, were weak and insufficient to guide the country’s way towards a modern future.

Highlights

There have been almost 40 years after the restoration of democracy in Greece and a peculiar prosperity, which was consciously cultivated by the leaders of political and economic elites, was promoted before the onset of the financial crisis
There is wide literature about the “political change” in Greece after 1974 and the restoration of democracy, but a few are wondering about its main characteristics
Within a very condensed approach we try to define this political change as the transition from a long period of entrenched parliamentarism, which resulted in a brutal dictatorship, to a modern constitutional democracy

Summary

The main achievement of the political change of 1974

There is wide literature about the “political change” (μεταπολίτευση-metapolitefsi) in Greece after 1974 and the restoration of democracy, but a few are wondering about its main characteristics. Kondylis uses the term “parasitic consumerism” to characterize the weakness of Greece “to produce everything that it consumeswithout having sufficient restraint - and dignity - so as not to consume more than can produce and in order to consume it parasitizes in two directions: internally, bymortgaging the future resources, turning them into current repayments, and externally, byborrowing large amounts of money not for future –fruitful- investments, but in order to pay these vast quantities of consumed products, which were mainly imported” (Kondylis, 2015) This position,as reasonable as it may seem, it is simplistic as long as it ignores a whole range of material needs which had to be covered after the restoration of democracy.

Some irrefutable truths

The anti-political stateness

The replacement of“anti-political” parties by an“anti-political” populism

Basic directions of a progressive response to the crisis