Party System Change in Greece Konstantinos Athanasiadis

Party System Change in Greece

Konstantinos Athanasiadis

1

Introduction

Forty years after the restoration of democracy (1974-2014), Greece undergoes a

political, economic and cultural crisis that questions the main features of the Third

Hellenic Republic. Indeed, the Third Hellenic Republic coincides with what is

broadly coined in the Greek parlance the Metapolitefsi, implying the change of regime

and the introduction of a new ethos in the conduct of politics.

Significantly, the Metapolitefsi was hailed as a period of smooth transition from the

Colonels’ dictatorship to the entrenchment of democracy, the rule of law and the

peaceful alternation of governments. Crucially, most political organisations, and

actors tried to distance themselves from the practices that defined the ancien régime

thus manifesting volition for change, oblivion of past differences and reconciliation.

This willingness was most explicitly reflected firstly, in the legalisation of the Greek

Communist Party (KKE), -by Constantinos Karamanlis- widely persecuted by the

dictatorship and the rightist governments of the past and secondly, the referendum

which expressed the popular will against the restoration of monarchy.

Moreover, the accession of Greece into the European Economic Community (1981)

heralded the return of the country to the forefront of international developments but

also the accession to a community of values which were essentially part of a common

legacy. Interestingly, membership into the EC was viewed also as a shield against the

possible reemergence of the authoritarian practices of the past.

Within this context, Greece prospered, Greeks fully enjoyed freedoms to an extent

unknown in the past, whilst the society went through a cultural transformation that

changed the attitudes, and the values of the citizenry. In what regards the political



2

system, the period of Metapolitefsi has been an era of relative stability. Two main

parties, the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK), and the New Democracy (ND)

rotated in the government by enjoying a usually strong popular will. Therefore, the

Greek political system came to be defined by a strong two-party system, polarised

during the 80s but gradually converging to the centre as Europeanisation permeated

the playing field.

Thus, the twin elections of 2012 (May and June), conducted under the threatening

prospect of a Greek exit from the Eurozone and the conditionality clauses embedded

in the bail-out plan, mark an abrupt rupture from the past, utterly culminating in the

inglorious end of the Metapolitefsi. The characteristics of this change are most vividly

manifested in the political system. This paper will argue that the Greek political

system passes through a phase of transition, where party system change is the defining

feature as reflected in the realignment of voting preferences, the collapse of traditional

parties, the emergence of new cleavages and the emergence of new actors.

2009 elections: Bipolarity’s last stand?

The September’s 2009 legislative elections epitomise perhaps the end of bipolarity as

a main feature of the post-1974 political system. The elections emerged as an

unescapable result of the growing pressure for the implementation of a series of

urgent structural reforms. Simultaneously, the parliamentary elections ensued also due

to the eroding effects of a number of scandals and violent events that undermined not

only the legitimacy of Constantinos Karamanlis’s –nephew of the founder of the ND

party and former prime minister, and president of the Hellenic Republic Constantinos

Karamanlis- ND government (ND ruled Greece from 2004), but also of the political

system as a whole.



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Specifically, under the Karamanlis’s administration, public debt skyrocketed from

183,2 billion euros in 2004, when ND returned to power after 11 years in the

opposition, to 299, 5 billion euros by the end of 2009. Public expenditures increased

from 45,4% of the GDP to 54% of the GDP in three years (2006-2009). Still, the

fiscal deficit in 2009 reached 15,7% of the GDP (Ellis, Varvitsioti and Palaiologos

2014). Mounting pressures by the European Commission led the Karamanlis’s

government to hastily adopt some measures that entailed mainly the increase of

consumption taxes on cigarettes, beverages, luxury cars and yachts, which were not

considered enough though. Therefore, as the Finance Minister of the Karamanlis’s

government admits “elections were indeed indispensable for the sake of legitimacy

due to the hard times coming ahead” (Ibid.).

In the eve of the elections, the Greek electorate found itself in an awkward position: it

had to select between a party (ND) that surprisingly spoke for the inexorable necessity

of hard reforms and another party (PASOK) that tried to alleviate popular fears by

framing the electoral process under the slogan “the money there is” and by promising

a €3 billion stimulus package (Vasilopoulou and Halikiopoulou 2013, 526). Crucially,

the 2009 elections manifested a widespread sense of sybaritism that echoed the

cultural transformations that the Greek society has been going through. As

Koliopoulos and Veremis remark “gone are the scarcity and want that inured Greeks

to hardship and produced the fierce competitiveness of a seafaring people

(Koliopoulos and Veremis 2010, 200). This does not imply that the Greeks suddenly

became lazy or lax but that they lost their orientation amidst a culture of consumerism

and individualism unheard of in the past.

Apart from the economic and cultural crisis, the 2009 elections signal the end point of

a cumulative institutional crisis that though occasionally felt (as in the violent protests



4

of 2008), it was carefully concealed under the façade of a clientelistic and populist

political system (Lyritzis 2011, 10). Indeed, it was the highly educated Greeks, the so

called ‘700 euro generation’ that found themselves entrapped in a system of

corruption and lack of meritocracy working often without full insurance rights that

reacted in the first place.

This institutional crisis was evident in the Eurobarometer surveys and embraced

almost the entirety of the public sphere. By 2008 “levels of trust in political

institutions had fallen below the EU average” (Verney 2014, 24) ‘inflicting’ not only

the government (23%) but also the parliament (32%), the political parties (14%), the

justice system (44%) and the Church (Ibid. 24-25).

Thus, the 2009 elections can be succinctly framed under the dilemma ‘reforms or

business as usual’. Both main political parties ran in the elections with heirs of two

great political families and hence political legacies. ND on the one hand ran with

Constantinos Karamanlis on its head, who had managed to win the two previous

parliamentary elections of 2004 and 2007. On the other hand, Georgios Papandreou

led the centre-left party of PASOK carrying the legacy of his father Andreas (founder

of PASOK and prime minister) and his grandfather Georgios Papandreou (minister,

prime minister, leading figure of the centre-left for decades), who had run also as

leader of PASOK in the 2007 parliamentary elections (PASOK received 38,1 %

which was the lowest share since 1977).

A new electoral law was introduced that kept proportionality at its epicentre.

According to it, proportionality would be more accurate thus eliminating the ‘lost

vote’ syndrome for small parties. It retained the 3% parliamentary threshold, whilst

endowing the first party with 50 seats in the parliament instead of 40 that was the rule



5

in 2007 (Ibid. 28). The law intended to enhance stability and address injustices

committed in the past elections against the smaller parties mainly of the left (KKE and

Synaspismos) but also to disfavour the second party.

PASOK triumphantly returned to power achieving a 43,92% figure, ND received

33,47%, the Communist Party 7,54%, the Orthodox Popular Rally (LAOS) 5,82% -a

rightist populist party whose leader left ND- and SYRIZA (Coalition of the Radical

Left) 4,60% -Synaspismos is the main party of the Coalition which was created in

2004- (Ministry of Interior 2012). Hence, the 2009 parliament included five parties.

The two largest parties managed to gain 77,4% of the vote indicating the persistence

of bipolarity albeit in a diminishing rate. Indeed, “there has been only one occasion

(in 1996) when the combined vote of PASOK and ND had fallen below 83 percent. In

2007, however, it fell just below 80 percent” (Verney 2014, 28), whilst in 2009 the

rate was further reduced to 77% as mentioned above. Nevertheless, the parties of the

Left did not manage to capitalise from the proportional electoral law, their results

slightly going diminished in comparison to 2007 (KKE -0,61% and SYRIZA -0,44%)

(Ministry of Interior 2012). The latter resulted chiefly from the polarisation of the

popular vote that PASOK managed to achieve. Hence, bipolarity remained the rule of

the day, which was to be reassuringly reiterated in the local elections that followed in

2010.

The twin elections (May and June 2012): from stability to uncertainty

The 6 May elections

The May 2012 elections were to a large extent a foretold story. The ratification of the

Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), the compromise of fiscal sovereignty and the

abrupt character of structural adjustment that followed, were a heavy burden for the



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PASOK government to sustain alone in the long run. Moreover, the resignation of

Georgios Papandreou from the premiership that succeeded his failed attempt to ask

for a referendum, made matters worse. In November 2011, the first coalition

government in 21 years was formed, including three parties. PASOK was the main

pillar of the coalition together with ND and LAOS, under the premiership of Lukas

Papademos, a technocrat that previously held the position of the Vice President in the

European Central Bank (ECB).

Under the Papademos administration, the Greek parliament voted in favour of the

second bail-out plan and the debt restructuring programme (February 2012) attached

to it. In the tumultuous procedure that preceded the voting, the two main coalition

partners found themselves severely wounded since in total 45 MPs were expelled on

reasons of party discipline (Dinas and Rori 2013, 276). The ND dissidents formed a

new party that would acquire henceforth its own dynamic, the Independent Greeks

(ANEL), who based their agenda on an inflammatory anti-European, nationalist

rhetoric.

The Independent Greeks were not the only party to be formed by dissidents of ND.

The Liberal Alliance led by Dora Bakoyanni also left ND representing the most

centrist and liberal wing of ND to re-join the party later on in June 2012. The People’s

Chariot and the Social Agreement were two splinter groups that left PASOK and ran

in the May 2012 elections (they later joined the Independent Greeks and SYRIZA

respectively). Previously (June 2010), four PMs that belonged to the Synaspismos

(main faction of SYRIZA) decided to found a new party (Democratic Left-DIMAR)

(Vasilopoulou and Halikiopoulou 2013, 527) that would function as a pole of

responsibility covering the middle ground between SYRIZA (radical left) and

PASOK (social democracy).



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Hence, the moving sands of the May 2012 elections stress utterly the demise of the

ancient régime and the beginning of a new era of fragmentation and intense

polarisation as it will be shown below. The two main parties of the coalition

government received together 35% of the vote, thus highlighting the shattering of old

political givens and in particular the preponderance of PASOK. SYRIZA scored

16,72%, which was a record high for a party that until then hardly achieved the 3%

threshold. The Communist Party did not manage to capitalise from the crisis receiving

8%. Still, DIMAR fared satisfactorily in its first electoral battle winning around 6%

of the vote.

Yet, it was on the right of the political spectrum that the political and electoral impact

of the financial crisis would be most resoundingly felt. The Independent Greeks came

in the fourth place with an impressive 10% of the vote. But it was the emergence of

the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn that shocked the political system. The last time an

extreme right party entered the Greek Parliament was in 1977 (Ellinas 2013, 545). Its

meteoric rise echoed the appeal of the anti-systemic discourse among many Greeks

who viewed the party as the sheerest and strongest articulation of an alleged popular

disdain against the foreign creditors, illegal migration and corruption. Ultimately, it

underlined a growing apathy if not approval towards the employment of violent

tactics by a certain part of the Greek society which was strengthened further by the

ailing capacity of institutions to tackle perennial pathologies of the Greek society at

large.

Interestingly, 19% of the electorate voted for parties that did not reach the 3%

threshold, which, apart from being an unprecedented figure in the records of Greek

parliamentary elections, it also pointed to the fluidity governing the preferences of the

electorate. Finally, the turnout was 65% (Ministry of Interior 2012) which is a very



8

low rate in comparison to previous parliamentary elections and especially for a

country, where voting is compulsory.

The 17 June elections

Given the inability of the Greek political parties to form a coalition government, the

elections of June appeared as a constitutional sine qua non. Polarisation reached its

zenith as ND and SYRIZA tried to attract voters from the smaller parties in order to

enhance their prospects of governability.

Therefore, “the electoral result was a priori understood as either a vote to remain in

the eurozone or a vote for anti-Memorandum parties for whom eurozone membership

was not necessarily a priority and who could risk a potential exit” (Vasilopoulou and

Halikiopoulou 2013, 529). ND framed its electoral campaign in existential terms

regarding the future of Greece, whilst SYRIZA spoke for a restoration of democracy,

social justice and solidarity through an anti-bailout, progressive government of the

Left (Ibid. 529-532) and through the progressive awakening of the people of the

European South.

The electoral results were quite controversial as they were conducive to the formation

of a new coalition government (the second in less than 9 months) on the one hand, but

on the other confirmed the blurring of older cleavages. Indeed, the pro- anti-

Memorandum cleavage came to transcend old barriers of Left-Right thus

complicating ideological divisions. ND managed to increase its share by receiving

almost one third of the votes (29,66%). SYRIZA followed closely (26,89%), whilst

PASOK continued its hemorrhage (12,28%). The Golden Dawn and the Democratic

Left held their ground albeit with minor losses (6,92% and 6,25% respectively). The

Independent Greek saw their percentages partially diminished (7,51%), whilst the



9

Communist Party, contrary to all expectations was weakened considerably receiving

one of the worst shares in its history as a legal political formation (4,50%). Turnout in

June diminished further by 260,000 voters (62,49% instead of 65% in May) (Ministry

of Interior 2012). As Vasilopoulou and Halikiopoulou indicate, “the extent of

abstention contradicts the fundamentals of Greek political culture and the high levels

of politicization. Rather than indifference, abstaining may be interpreted as

disapproval of the political system” (Vasilopoulou and Halikiopoulou 2013, 533).

Thus, the new parliament would be composed by seven parties. Crucially, this

unprecedented fragmentation was representative of the confusion, frustration and

agony of the Greek electorate. It should be noted, that in both cases the electoral law

under which elections were held was PR with a bonus of 50 seats for the first party,

which implied no modifications into the rules of the game.

Why party system change?

The late Peter Mair has noticed already in the 90s (Mair 1997) that party systems of

western European countries were moving towards a different direction than that

described by the freezing hypothesis Lipset and Rokkan have formulated some

decades ago. Electoral re-alignment, emergence of new cleavages, drop in party

identification, evolution in the character of the party per se were all considered

symptoms of a new brave world in the realm of political parties and party systems.

The case of Greece cannot be perhaps fully explained based on Mair’s approach due

to the different paths of historical development, which to a large extent are dictated by

the geography of the country. Indeed, lying in the periphery of Europe, Greece has

been feeling the repercussions of developments taking place in the heart of Europe

later than other countries of the European core. Interestingly, and related somehow to



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the above, ideals related to modernity and national independence acquired a solid

basis in Greece due to the presence of the Greek diaspora all around Europe and the

Ottoman Empire, thus injecting the revolutionaries with the spirit and the fervour of

the French Revolution (Koliopoulos and Veremis 2002, 7). This temporal asynchrony

is manifested also in the reverberations of the financial crisis that became felt in

Greece later than it did in the rest of Europe (commencing with the collapse of the

Lehman Brothers in 2008 in the US).

Nevertheless, there are patterns that can insightfully be explained by employing

concepts put forward in the study of party systems of western Europe. To begin with,

a system entails a sum of patterned interactions, whose sum is greater than that of its

respective parts to a degree that the former can ‘shape and shove’ (Waltz 1986, 336)

the units embedded in it. In what regards the party system, it “is precisely the system

of interactions resulting from inter-party competition” (Sartori quoted in Mair 1997,

51).

Therefore, Mair indicates as a potential standard of party system change the

transformation “from one class or type of party system into another” (Ibid. 51-52).

Following the classification proposed by Sartori relying on the number of parties and

the ideological distance (1976) within a given party system, Greece is indeed in a

process of systemic transformation. From 1981 to 2009 (10 electoral battles), the

number of relevant parties winning parliamentary seats fluctuated between 3-5. Yet,

the latter elections of May and June 2012 produced a parliament of 7 parties (Verney

2014, 30). Political fragmentation is coupled with ideological polarisation reflected in

the exchange of harsh accusations in the public sphere and the Parliament but mainly

it is mirrored in the presence of two anti-systemic parties (GD and the Communist



11

Party) in both sides of the political spectrum. Therefore, a pronounced shift from

moderate to polarised pluralism can be plausibly deduced.

Polarised pluralism in the parliament notwithstanding, party system change is further

defined by “a transformation of the direction of competition or the governing

formula” which is related to the systemic role of a particular party “and the extent to

which its presence or absence might alter with the direction of competition in the

system or the process of government formation” (Mair 1997, 52). In this case, the

collapse of PASOK does not involve simply an electoral re-alignment or a Protean

change in the party’s character but importantly produces systemic implications.

Indeed, PASOK has been since 1981 the main ruling party in Greece (19 years ruling

in one-party governments and since 2010 as member of a coalition government). The

precipitous fall of its popularity within three years (from 44% in 2009 to 12% in

2012) was conducive to the adoption of new governing formulas under the guise of

technocratic and political coalition governments which were a rare phenomenon in

Greece (two coalition governments in 1989-1990) given the polarised Greek political

culture (Vasilopoulou and Halikiopoulou 2013, 525) and the partitocrazia (Lyrintzis

2011, 2) that permeated all aspects of the public sphere.

Furthermore, additional evidence in favour of a party system transformation is

furnished by the levels of electoral volatility which are inherently intertwined with the

rearrangements in the realm of cleavages. Thus, “the May 2012 election was

characterised by the highest level of electoral volatility ever seen, not only in post-

dictatorship Greece but also in Southern Europe. The volatility index of 48.7 per cent

meant that, at a minimum, almost half the voters changed their party choices in the

two-and-a-half years between September 2009 and May 2012. In the June repeat

election, volatility remained at a very high level (21.1 per cent), exceeded only in



12

1974–81, when the new Greek party system was still in a fluid state. The 2012

elections thus marked a major rupture with the cycle of stabilisation of electoral

behaviour which had started after the 1993 election” (Verney and Bosco 2013, 417).

Hence, there was no restoration of “prior electoral balance” (Mair 1997, 67) but rather

a confirmation of the state of fluidity which augurs the birth of the new. It remains

nevertheless to be seen if this observed fluidity will persist in the lapse of time or it

will whither away in line with a potential effacement of the pro- anti-Memorandum

cleavage.

Indications of change are also remarked in the patterns of alternation in government.

The Third Hellenic Republic was up to 2011 defined by wholesale alternation in

power between the parties of PASOK and ND, which were the main units of the party

system. The only exception has been the short technocratic government of 1989 (six

months). Under the ‘state of emergency’ entailed by the country’s sovereign debt

crisis, new modalities of governance were devised based on wholesale and partial

alternation.

Firstly, PASOK had to share part of its power or more accurately, of the responsibility

in order to legitimise the endorsement of the necessary structural reforms. Being the

strongest party of the coalition, PASOK formed a government with ND and LAOS as

aforementioned under the technocratic cloak of Lucas Papademos’s premiership.

Secondly, an interim technocratic government led by Panayiotis Pikramenos, -former

judge-, undertook to rule Greece in the period in between the May 6 and June 17

elections. Thirdly, the results of the June elections produced a coalition government

between ND, PASOK and DIMAR. Nevertheless, ND was to be the primus inter

pares given its pyrrhic victory in the preceding elections. Therefore, PASOK

participated as the second in size coalition partner, whilst DIMAR also participated in



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the government just two years after the party’s foundation. Significantly, Greece is

now ruled by ND and PASOK -since DIMAR’s decision to leave the government-, in

what would be characterised in the pre-2009 era as a grand coalition.

These formations are undoubtedly innovative in the short- and the mid-term. Yet there

is nothing to preclude that they will ossify in the long run, thus signifying a re-

arrangement of interactions within the new structure or that they will fade away. For

the time being, this structure is closed for the parties coined above as anti-systemic/

‘outsiders’ such as the Golden Dawn and the Communist Party. However, the

Communist Party represents an oxymoron: whilst it is portrayed as a potential

coalition partner by SYRIZA (Rizospastis 2012) the party’s leadership vehemently

denies any cooperation with it on ideological grounds.

Therefore, until the new party system is consolidated, predictability should be

excluded. Given the perplexities that stem from the entanglement of the old Left-

Right cleavage with that of pro- and anti-Memorandum, scenarios on the possible

shape of the coalition government appear elusive. Thus, in the event of a victorious

SYRIZA, cooperation with the rightist party of the Independent Greeks would seem

credible as the presidents of the two formations are searching for ground of common

political action against the creditors and the Memoranda (Skai 2012, in.gr 2013).

Nevertheless, fragmentation is so deep that new parties (e.g. To Potami-The River,

Symfonia gia ti nea Ellada- Agreement for a New Greece, Nea MERA-New Reform

Radical Reconstruction) are constantly formed thus reinforcing uncertainty and

confirming the demise of Metapolitefsi as a given set of actors, attitudes and state of

affairs.



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Conclusion

Metapolitefsi undoubtedly signified a period of stability, reconciliation and prosperity.

During this period, democracy became so deeply consolidated that return to

authoritarianism would be unthinkable. Nevertheless, the ethos that it supposedly

accompanied that era of change was permeated and undermined by patterns of

corruption, clientelism and partitocrazia.

Thus, the sovereign debt crisis revealed not only a financial crisis, but also a crisis in

the institutions, the values and the beliefs of the Greek society at large. The

pathologies of the Greek society that were working in parallel with the financial crisis

were most expressly articulated in the outcomes of the 2012 elections. The bail-out

package deal and the Damoclean sword of the Grexit, impacted heavily upon the party

system, changing dramatically attitudes, preferences, and givens that hallmarked

Metapolitefsi.

A shift from moderate pluralism to a more polarised milieu of fragmentation could be

in the medium run transient until the vacuum in the system left by PASOK is filled by

another party. Yet novel elements embedded in the political field born out of the

financial crisis and the related pro- anti-Memorandum will likely persist.

The most prominent among them is the end of bipolarism as reflected in the formation

of coalition governments between ideologically opposite parties. Coalitions were

unimaginable during the Third Hellenic Republic with the only exception being the

failed short-lived experiment of the ‘ecumenical government’ (November 1989- April

1990/ included ND, Synaspismos and the Communist Party).

Moreover, the effacement of the pro- anti-Memorandum cleavage in the future could

be conducive to a further re-arrangement of alignments and voters’ preferences thus



15

implying a return to the pre-2012 preponderance of the Left-Right cleavage.

Nevertheless, the effacement of the Memorandum cleavage could also signify a move

to the centre as SYRIZA will strive to win moderate voters, whilst the biggest parties

will attempt to manage the economy under the shadow of the European monitoring

mechanisms.

Yet predictions are risky given the moving sands of party formation, electoral

volatility and incredibility of poll surveys. Certainty embraces only the need for

reflection, re-organisation and responsibility among the political forces and the

electorate as Greece navigates into the uncharted waters of the post-Metapolitefsi era.

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Party System Change in Greece Konstantinos Athanasiadis

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