https://toarcheio.org To Archeio project site Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:12 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.4.1 https://toarcheio.org/items/a-new-populism-index-at-work-identifying-populist-candidates-and-parties-in-the-contemporary-greek-context/ Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:12 +0000 https://toarcheio.org/items/a-new-populism-index-at-work-identifying-populist-candidates-and-parties-in-the-contemporary-greek-context/ Continued]]> Interrogating available indexes from a discourse-theoretical point of view, this paper utilizes a reformulated populism index in order to identify populist parties. In particular, the index is applied in a candidate survey carried out in Greece in 2015. Findings indicate that this index allows for a clear differentiation between populist and non-populist parties. Based on candidate attitudes, SYRIZA and ANEL belong to the first group whereas New Democracy, PASOK and River to the second. The examination of additional survey items reveals a clear ideological division within the populist camp: right-wing populism is exclusionary, while left-wing populism more inclusive and pluralist.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/european-populist-parties-in-government-how-well-are-voters-represented-evidence-from-greece/ Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:11 +0000 https://toarcheio.org/items/european-populist-parties-in-government-how-well-are-voters-represented-evidence-from-greece/ Continued]]> In this paper we focus on the two populist parties, one radical left and one radical right, that have formed a coalition government after the January 2015 elections in Greece: SYRIZA and Independent Greeks (ANEL). Using data from the Greek Candidate Study 2015 and the Greek Voter Study 2015 we study the congruence between party voters and party elites for these two parties, also comparing them with mainstream, non‐populist parties. Employing a slightly modified ‘many to many’ approach, we measure congruence on a variety of issues (economic policy, austerity, Euroscepticism, immigration, law and order) and ideological divides (left/right, populism/anti‐populism) in order to assess the factors explaining the paradoxical resilience of Greek populism in power. The evidence generated can help us account for the trajectory of political antagonism in the Greek context throughout 2015 and in drawing some broader conclusions and challenges for future populism research.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/populism-anti-populism-and-crisis/ Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:10 +0000 https://toarcheio.org/items/populism-anti-populism-and-crisis/ Continued]]> This article focuses on two issues involved in the formation and political trajectory of populist representations within political antagonism. First, it explores the role of crisis in the articulation of populist discourse. This problematic is far from new within theories of populism but has recently taken a new turn. We thus purport to reconsider the way populism and crisis are related, mapping the different modalities this relation can take and advancing further their theorization from the point of view of a discursive theory of the political, drawing primarily on the Essex School perspective initially developed by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. Second, this will involve focusing on the antagonistic language games developed around populist representations, something that has not attracted equal attention. Highlighting the need to study anti-populism together with populism, focusing on their mutual constitution, we will test the ensuing theoretical framework in an analysis of SYRIZA, a recent and, as a result, under-researched example of egalitarian, inclusionary populism emerging within the European crisis landscape.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/paradoxes-of-polarization-democracys-inherent-division-and-the-anti-populist-challenge/ Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:09 +0000 https://toarcheio.org/items/paradoxes-of-polarization-democracys-inherent-division-and-the-anti-populist-challenge/ Continued]]> This article carries out a theoretical analysis of the relationship between democracy and polarization. It utilizes examples from a variety of premodern and modern societies to argue that difference and division are inherent to a vibrant democratic life and to representation itself. At the same time, a stable and pluralist democratic culture presupposes the establishment of a common ground required for reflexive democratic decision making. To take into account both requirements, this must be a special type of common ground: an agonistic common ground. Agonism, as opposed to both the politics of raw antagonism and the postpolitics of consensus, values the existence of real alternatives and even ideological distance but aims at sublimating their pernicious effects. However, an agonistic outcome is always the result of a delicate balancing act between oligarchic and populist tendencies. In modernity, it predominantly took the form of a paradoxical blend of the democratic and the liberal tradition. The current crisis of liberal democracy and its postdemocratic mutation obliges one to ask whether democratic crisis may cause polarization, rather than the other way around, and puts in doubt the ability of the “moderate center” to deal with it in ways consolidating democracy. The article illustrates its theoretical rationale with examples from populism/antipopulism polarization in contemporary Greece, where elite-driven antipopulist discourse has consistently employed dehumanizing repertoires enhancing pernicious polarization.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/the-populism-anti-populism-frontier-and-its-mediation-in-crisis-ridden-greece-from-discursive-divide-to-emerging-cleavage/ Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:09 +0000 https://toarcheio.org/items/the-populism-anti-populism-frontier-and-its-mediation-in-crisis-ridden-greece-from-discursive-divide-to-emerging-cleavage/ Continued]]> Along with other South-European countries, since 2008, Greece has experienced deep economic and social dislocation, leading to a crisis of representation and triggering populist mobilisations and anti-populist reactions. This article focuses on the antagonistic language games developed around populist representations, something that has not attracted much attention in the relevant literature. Highlighting the need to study anti-populism together with populism, focusing on their mutual constitution from a discursive perspective, it articulates a brief yet comprehensive genealogy of populist and anti-populist actors (parties and media) in Greece, exploring their discursive strategies. Moving on, it identifies the main characteristics this antagonistic divide took on within the newly contested, crisis-ridden sociopolitical field, highlighting the implications for a contemporary understanding of cleavages, with potentially broader implications

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/dynamics-of-polarization-in-the-greek-case/ Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:07 +0000 https://toarcheio.org/items/dynamics-of-polarization-in-the-greek-case/ Continued]]> This article focuses on the dynamics of polarization emerging within Greek political culture in the postauthoritarian setting. Following a brief historical framing, we trace Left–Right polarization between the two major parties of the period: Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) and New Democracy (ND). The party-based polarization of PASOK/ND was arguably the main axis of political antagonism in Greece from the 1970s until the end of the 2000s. By 2009, polarization had ebbed due to an ideological convergence of the two parties toward the center, but the onset of the 2009 economic crisis dislocated the established two-party system and facilitated the emergence of a new political landscape comprising many new political actors, most notably the Coalition of the Radical Left, SYRIZA. Using a predominantly quantitative methodology, we focus on a set of dimensions of polarization brought forward or re-activated within the context of economic crisis.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/revisiting-the-nationalism-populism-nexus-lessons-from-the-greek-case/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:49 +0000 http://arc.local/items/revisiting-the-nationalism-populism-nexus-lessons-from-the-greek-case/ Continued]]> This article explores the relationship between people and nation by focusing on the Greek case, which has attracted considerable political and media attention throughout the last few years. The article traces the ways in which populism and nationalism have been related within Greek political culture diachronically, inclusive of the current crisis conjuncture. We follow this trajectory from the 1940s and the Greek Civil War up until today in order to capture the unexpectedly dynamic and ambivalent relationship between the two and account for its multiple mutations. The conclusions drawn from this country-specific exploration are expected to have wider implications for populism research internationally.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/the-indignant-citizen-anti-austerity-movements-in-southern-europe-and-the-anti-oligarchic-reclaiming-of-citizenship/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:48 +0000 http://arc.local/items/the-indignant-citizen-anti-austerity-movements-in-southern-europe-and-the-anti-oligarchic-reclaiming-of-citizenship/ Continued]]> This article discusses the change in political vision of anti-austerity movements in southern Europe in comparison with previous protest movements. It focuses on the emergence of a discourse of citizenship at the core of the new protest wave, as seen in frequent references to ‘citizens’, ‘citizenry’ and ‘citizenship’ in movement manifestos, and the resolutions and declarations of popular assemblies. I investigate the meaning and motivations of this ‘citizenism’ and how it reflects the change in economic conditions and popular perceptions in the aftermath of the 2008 economic crisis. The analysis draws from movement documents, and in-depth interviews with 40 protest organisers and participants from the Indignados movement in Spain and the Aganaktismenoimovement in Greece. I argue that within these movements, the idea of citizenship has acted both as a source of popular identity interpellating a diverse set of demographics, and as a central demand, organising calls for greater popular participation in decision-making, freedom of expression and against corruption. Anti-austerity movements put forward an anti-oligarchic view of citizenship, which is different from the liberal, civic-republican and social democratic approaches, in its understanding of citizenship as the power of the dispersed ‘citizenry’ against the concentrated power of economic and political elites. This grassroots re-appropriation of citizenship highlights how anti-austerity movements in southern Europe have departed from the anti-statism of autonomous movements and have developed a more positive view of the state as a basis of social cohesion and a possible means of ‘people power’.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/the-people-in-the-here-and-now-populism-modernization-and-the-state-in-greece/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:47 +0000 http://arc.local/items/the-people-in-the-here-and-now-populism-modernization-and-the-state-in-greece/ Continued]]> The term ‘populism’ has gained renewed prominence in Greece during the Eurozone crisis, in both public and academic debates. In this article I conceptualize populism as a discourse of territorial and temporal particularism, which challenges the way a state has been incorporated into the international political and economic system. Based on this definition, I question whether oppositional discourses employed by partisan actors or official power are wholesale and genuine expressions of populism. Thus, I contest the notion that Greece failed due to populism. Instead I draw attention to a failure in the official legitimation of modernization by state elites that long preceded the crisis.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/the-impact-of-the-greek-indignados-on-greek-politics/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:38 +0000 http://arc.local/items/the-impact-of-the-greek-indignados-on-greek-politics/ Continued]]> The burden of this paper is to assert the significance of the 2011 movement of the Greek indignados for Greek politics during the Great Recession. Acknowledging the systematically feeble analysis of the nexus between non-institutional and electoral politics in social movement literature, the authors analyze the emergence, development, and heritage of the Greek indignados, focusing squarely on their impact on public opinion and the domestic party system, both at the level of interparty, as well as intraparty dynamics. The authors’ conclusions are drawn mainly from an analysis of political party discourse, public opinion data, and interviews conducted on the field, catering equally for the supply and demand side of the novel political claims that surfaced during the first years of the Greek sovereign debt crisis. The authors point to the crucial contribution of the movement’s discourse in facilitating voter defection from the traditional two-party system that ruled Greece for more than thirty years, and argue that the indignados functioned as a beacon of populist discursive tropes, which cemented the emergence of a new divide in Greek society between pro- and anti-bailout citizens. Conclusively, the authors take the position that the imprint of the indignados on the Greek psyche has had tremendous repercussions in consolidating a new party system, by undermining traditional political forces and legitimizing new, anti-establishment contenders.

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