https://toarcheio.org To Archeio project site Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:09 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.4.1 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/voting-with-their-feet-highly-skilled-emigrants-from-southern-europe/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:30 +0000 http://arc.local/items/voting-with-their-feet-highly-skilled-emigrants-from-southern-europe/ Continued]]> In this article, the authors present new empirical data on highly skilled emigrants from two southern European countries, Italy and Greece, which have been particularly hit by the global financial and Eurozone crisis. The data have been generated by an e-survey conducted in late spring and summer 2013. Through analyzing the responses of Greek and Italian citizens who have chosen to emigrate, the authors present new insights on their educational backgrounds, the conditions that have motivated their decision to emigrate, and the way in which they have defined their migration project. It is argued that the decision to migrate is driven by a sense of severe relative deprivation as a result of the crisis and a deep frustration with the conditions in the home country. The crisis seems to have magnified the “push” factors that already existed in Italy and Greece and that now nurture this migration wave. At the same time, however, this migration is also framed within a more general perspective of a vision of life in which mobility and new experiences are valued positively and also seen as part of one’s professional identity.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/civil-compliance-and-political-luddism-explaining-variance-in-social-unrest-during-crisis-in-ireland-and-greece/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:29 +0000 http://arc.local/items/civil-compliance-and-political-luddism-explaining-variance-in-social-unrest-during-crisis-in-ireland-and-greece/ Continued]]> When badly hit by the same global financial and economic crisis in the early 2000s, the Irish and the Greek societies reacted in quite different ways. Whereas Ireland remained largely acquiescent and displayed a high degree of civil compliance, Greeks took massively to the streets using violence and attacking specifically the state and the state personnel, a phenomenon we refer to as “political Luddism.” It is shown that the two countries are quite similar in terms of their economic condition, cultural background, social composition, ideological profiling, and party system dynamics, among other factors. What, then, explains the two countries’ dissimilar reactions to crisis? Through a detailed analysis of the cases, the article offers evidence that the most compelling explanation relates to the varying ability of the Greek and Irish states to continue providing basic public goods and other state-related services to their respective societies.

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