Chania Conclusions on the Crisis

The business of predicting the future course of the present eurozone financial crisis is a risky one, with developments occurring with a frequency and irregularity that leave one constantly uncertain what will happen next. However, sufficient time may have passed to venture a number of tentative predictions as to what the outcome of the crisis will be.

Greece: The Erosion of National Democratic Politics

The results of the May 6 parliamentary elections have heralded the end of an era in its post-dictatorial democratic politics (metapolitefsi) characterized by alternation in power by two catch-all parties, cartelization of government, and heavy statism. The people have expressed a strong aversion to established political elites of the center-left PASOK and the center-right New Democracy (whose respective vote shares added up to 32%, less than half of their sum total in the 2009 elections). The rise of SYRIZA, a pre-electoral coalition of left-wing movements, has been the major story so far. However, the existing electoral system – designed by New Democracy in 2006 as a buttress for an entrenched two-party system and stable single-party government – has led to a significant distortion of the democratic will in terms of the translation of vote shares into seats (New Democracy gained more than a third of the seats with only 19% of the vote).

Δυνητικές ιδεολογικές κατασκευές: Η σημασία των εξεγέρσεων του Δεκέμβρη 2008 σε σχέση με την εικόνα της Ελλάδας στην παγκόσμια πολιτική

Εισαγωγή

Αλλά όπως μια πολύ μικρή δόση αυτοσεβασμού παρεμποδίζει το άτομο να υψώσει το ηθικό του ανάστημα, έτσι και μια κουτσουρεμένη εθνική περηφάνια καθιστά αδύνατη την ενεργητική και αποτελεσματική συζήτηση για την εθνική πολιτική.[1]

Το παραπάνω απόσπασμα αναφέρεται στην επιθυμία για μια αποτελεσματική εθνική πολιτική. Η συζήτηση που προτείνω εδώ δεν σκοπεύει καθόλου σε μια αναζήτηση εθνικής πολιτικής για την Ελλάδα ή την ανύψωση του ηθικού αναστήματος του ‘Έλληνα. Το αντίθετο μάλιστα, τέτοιες λογικές είναι κατά τη γνώμη μου υπεύθυνες για την ανικανότητα της Ελληνικής πολιτικής μηχανής να λειτουργήσει σε επίπεδο που να βάζει πρώτο τον άνθρωπο κι όχι μόνο τον ‘Έλληνα, πρώτο τον πολίτη κι όχι την κρατική μηχανή, και πρώτη την πολιτική ανάλυση και την υλοποίηση της αλλαγής του κοινωνικού συστήματος, κι όχι την επιφανειακή τσαπατσούλικη κομματική ιδεολογία, που μόνο σκοπεύει στην επιβίωση του κόμματος στην εξουσία και την ικανοποίηση συγγενικών και πελατειακών σχέσεων.

National Democracy in Crisis – Lessons from the Greek Elections

The Greek political system has come under intense scrutiny in the past few months. The two successive electoral contests that took place on May 6 and June 17 opened a Pandora’s box, so to say, of democratic ailments: extremism, populism, witch-hunting, and fearmongering. Viewed from the perspective of five successive years of recession, unprecedented levels of austerity, and acute economic uncertainty, this should come as no surprise. The interested observer will of course also wonder about possible contagion effects, not only with respect to Greece’s economic woes but also its political maladies. The logical path of inquiry into this question will have to address the root causes of the unfolding crisis and the extent to which they are idiosyncratic, systemic, or a combination of both. My goal in this article is to examine the latest election results as manifestations of either systemic or endemic democratic trends.

Transnational social space between Greece and Germany

The theories about transnationalism are since twenty years a new attempt to approach migration and diasporic phenomena. The intention to explore different kind of transnational relationships, contacts and ties, which cross the lines from the nation-states and to focus on the transnational agents, networks and organizations, are the primary research field of the transnational migration studies. In continental Europe these field is developing in the last 10 years.

The conditions of the Greek migration to Germany in the sixties allowed the establishment of a transnational social space between the two nation states. This space nurtured not only by the bidirectional mobility of the Greek migrants in this period, but mainly through compatible and comparable sociopolitical developments between the two countries. This allowed the emergence of social and political issues and concerns in the transnational social space, which could be capitalized and were transferable between the two countries.