Polarization and Nonproportionality: The Greek Party System in the Postwar Era

Abstract

This paper examines the evolution of the Greek party system in the postwar era. It is well known that parties are but a subsystem of a polity. Yet, by virtue of the fact that they constitute a central intermediate structure between society and government,' they provide invaluable clues for the understanding of the overall performance of this polity. Until very recently, research on parties was almost totally absent from modern Greek historiography,2 and it is not an exaggeration to say that we do not have a single treatment of the party system qua system, that is, as a bounded whole with concrete and patterned interactions of its parts (the parties) that may influence in its own right other spheres or systems of the polity. Thus, when not totally disregarded, parties have always been portrayed as responding to-but never shaping--societal tensions. In this respect, Greece has been the wonderland of what Sartori called sociological reductionism.'3 This work aspires to contribute to reversing this trend. Let it be understood right from the beginning that the underlying assumption here is not that parties can create and impose upon civil society tensions which the latter totally lacks. The point is rather that the character of interparty competition qua party system clearly influences the dynamic of these tensions and potentially accentuates or minimizes them.