The Disassembly of the Greek Welfare State under the Troika

Abstract

Having broken from half a century of binary political choice between Greece's two established political parties, SYRIZA's rise to power in the 2010s represented an opportunity for the country's welfare state to resist intrusions by European entities and institutions. This paper analyses Greece’s history and political interaction during this period, arguing that Greece has now, in folding to the EU, completed its transition from a relatively liberally-spending welfare state to what Wolfgang Streeck calls a “consolidation state.” Relevant to this analysis is a set of historical details leading up to the SYRIZA election and the 2015 referendum—seen as the high-water mark of opposition to austerity and cuts to the welfare state. In turn, the impact of austerity on the Greek population is quantified and substantiated, demonstrating that austerity measures predominately impacted the welfare state, more often than not resulting in direct reductions to pension and other monetary payments to the citizenry. Finally, these factual conditions are squared with theoretical descriptions and conceptualisations of the welfare state as existing under neoliberalism. Ultimately, what can be drawn from this research is that Europe's institutions are unyielding in their prioritisation of an ordoliberal, single-market ideology over individual Member States’ varying conceptions of locally implemented fiscal policy. Keywords: Austerity; Consolidation state; Neoliberalism; Ordoliberalism; Referendum; Welfare state; SYRIZA