How the Greek Radical Left and Extreme Right are Perceiving Democracy: A Research Attempt at a Social Epistemological Explanation

Abstract

The outbreak of the unprecedented financial crisis in Greece and the ensuing fundamental change of the political landscape have brought to the fore serious problems in the functioning of the democratic order and institutions. Two political actors have played a major role in the challenging of democratic principles, namely the Radical Left Party SYRIZA and the extreme neo-fascist party Golden Dawn. The former has advanced from a small radical left party to the main opposition and - recently - the governing party, while the latter has become established, from a formerly old neo-nazi pariah party, as the third political power in parliament. This study tackles the long addressed problems of democratic order building in Greece. It is based on the working hypothesis that the malfunctioning of the democratic institutions in Greece is connected with the “pre-political” cognitive infrastructure of the Greek society, which originates in the past and is an integral element of the self-instituting political community “texture”. Our research method includes qualitative comprehensive interviews with party members and voters of SYRIZA and Golden Dawn. The main research objective is to reach an in-depth understanding of the interviewees, in the sense of uncovering their indigenous concepts concerning the democratic idea and practices, and to interpret the material in a permanent interaction between the interpretation frame and the facts concerning the research object. It will be asked, how the interviewees comprehend the key prerequisites for the construction of a democratic order, what is their socially-historically founded ideological horizon, how the links are formed between the ideas, images, models in mind and the incorporated collective memory with respect to the democratic principle. It will also be asked whether these problems with democratic understanding could be valid across party lines.