The Stability Quotient of Greece's Post-1974 Democratic Institutions

Abstract

The Stability Quotient of Greece's Post-1974 Democratic Institutions* Theodore A. Couloumbis and Pródromos M. Yannis As we are drawing close to ten years of uninterrupted democratic rule, it is timely and appropriate to assess the stability quotient1 of Greece's post-1974 democratic institutions. It is our view that Greece can no longer be classified as a praetorian state,2 as, it could be argued, was the case in the pre-1967 years of political troubles which led to *Paper presented at the International Studies Association Conference, Mexico City, Mexico, (April 5-9, 1983.) 'Stability here is defined in terms of continuity of constitutional arrangements, permitting national elections at regular intervals among two or more political parties, and involving no direct military intervention in politics. 2Elsewhere we have described praetorianism in Greece as a condition where ". . . political elites [were described] as conflictful, conspiratorial, corrupt, and levantine; the Greek citizens' 'national character' ... as deeply family-centered but without civil consciousness; the . . . political parties ... as personalistic, clientelistic, non-principled, centrifugal, disorganized, short-lived, and numerous; the system of education ... as stiff, archaic, and formalistic; the middle classes as opportunistic and vacillating between authoritarian and democratic patterns of governance; the press as yellow and inflammatory ; the church as ritualistic and socially indifferent." Theodore A. Couloumbis, John A. Petropulos, and Harry J. Psomiades, Foreign Interference in Greek Politics (New York, 1976) p. 143. The literature on military intervention in politics is quite diverse. It ranges from "clinical" studies into the causes of military intervention, such as Samuel P. Huntington's Political Ordei- in Changing Societies (New Haven, 1968) and Morris Janowitz's Military Institutions and Coercion in the Developing Nations (Chicago, 1977) to studies viewing the military as an engine of development and modernization in Third World states such as John J. Johnson, ed., The Role of the Military in Underdeveloped Countries (Princeton, 1962) to studies viewing the military as a conservative and even retrogressive agent in the process of political and economic development such as Eric Nordlinger's Soldiers in Politics: Military Coups and Government (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1977). For a thoughtful and relatively comprehensive review of the literature dealing with the role of the armed forces in societies see, Gwyn Harries-Jenkins and Charles C. Moskos, Jr., "Trend Report: Armed Forces and Society," Current Sociology, 29 (Winter 1981), 1-75. 359 360 Theodore A. Couloumbis and Pródromos M. Yannis the military coup of April 21, 19673 and to the establishment of dictatorial rule from 1967 to 1974. The thesis of this paper is that in the nine-year period (1974— 1983) since the collapse of the dictatorship,4 the democratic structures that have been erected in Greece have taken root and are passing major tests of efficiency and legitimacy.5 To examine the above proposition , we will proceed with an assessment of stability /instability indicators that have been operative since 1974 in an attempt to identify those factors which have contributed to stability and those that have worked in the opposite direction. The post-1974 dramatic departure from previous patterns has been the product of good leadership, structural changes in the Greek society (its political culture and its economic system), and regional reformulations, especially in the troubled post-1974 Greek-Turkish relationship. The smooth transition in 1974—75 from dictatorship to legitimate (not just self-proclaimed) democracy is probably a textbook case. The formula which was used by Constantine Karamanlis, the architect of this transition, could be summarized as follows: "Remove elements of destabilization from past political structures without creating new and 3A sample of the literature on the period of the Greek military junta includes the following works: Keith R. Legg, Politics in Modern Greece (Stanford, CA, 1969); Richard Clogg and George Yannopoulos, eds., Greece Under Military Rule (New York, 1972); Stephen G. Xydis, "Coups and Countercoups in Greece, 1967—1973," Political Science Quarterly, 89 (Fall 1974); Theodore A. Couloumbis, "The Greek Junta Phenomenon," Polity, 6 (Spring 1974), 345-374; and Laurence Stern, The Wrong Horse: The Politics of Intervention and the Failure of American Diplomacy (New York, 1977). following the assumption of power by a government of National Unity headed by Constantine Karamanlis (July 23...