Georgios Karyotis

Who Protests in Greece? Mass Opposition to Austerity

The widespread opposition to unprecedented austerity measures in Greece provides a unique opportunity to study the causes of mass protest. We report the results of a survey of the adult population, with two thirds of the respondents supporting protest and 29 per cent reporting actual involvements in strikes and/or demonstrations during 2010. Relative deprivation is a significant predictor of potential protest but does not play any role in terms of who actually takes part in strikes or demonstrations. Previous protest participation emerges as a key predictor of actual protest. We attempt to set these results in the context of Greece as compared with other countries facing similar challenges and discuss the implications for the future of austerity politics.

Religion, securitization and anti-immigration attitudes: The case of Greece

This article revisits securitization theory of the Copenhagen School by addressing an empirical overemphasis on political actors and offering a quantitative extension to typically qualitative assessments of the theory. Using Greece as a case study, it explores the dynamics of competition and the relative discursive power of two actors, political and religious elites, regarding migration. After first documenting a divergence in the two actors’ rhetoric through discourse analysis, it proceeds to measure the relative impact of their discourses on public immigration attitudes, employing structural equation modelling of European Social Survey data. Findings demonstrate that exposure to the securitizing religious discourse through church attendance immunizes citizens from the softening effect of the political message. This, in turn, explains the survival of the security frame on migration in Greece, even as political elites begin to move towards the desecuritized pole of the continuum. Crucially, the analysis of this case suggests that a methodological synthesis of qualitative and quantitative research methods to study securitization is possible despite limitations. The authors call for greater efforts to combine the two methods which would allow for a better understanding of securitization and desecuritization processes.

EUROPEAN MIGRATION POLICY IN THE AFTERMATH OF SEPTEMBER 11: The security–migration nexus

Many studies have explored the security logic of EU policies on migration and asylum, which served as the legitimizing factor for adopting restrictive measures and for cutting back the rights of third-country nationals. The involvement of the European Commission in this policy area after the Treaty of Amsterdam came into force signalled a move towards more liberal immigration policies, which recognized the positive contributions made by labor immigrants. However, the terrorist attacks of September 11 brought the liberalization of European migration policy to a halt. In the context of these developments, this paper aims to readdress the security–migration nexus, utilizing but also extending the concept of ‘securitization’, developed by the ‘Copenhagen School of Security Studies’. By analyzing institutional developments in the area of internal security in the EU, it demonstrates that the events of September 11 did not initiate the insecurities, uncertainties, ambiguities and complexities in regards to migration policy; rather they accelerated dynamics that were already deeply rooted in the emerging European internal security regime. The paper concludes that the discourse that links migration to security is a construction that is both exaggerated and problematic, yet it has been further reinforced in the post-September 11 context.

Blame and Punishment? The Electoral Politics of Extreme Austerity in Greece

Can governments that introduce extreme austerity measures survive elections? Contrary to economic voting expectations, the PASOK government in Greece initially appeared to cope quite well, claiming victory in regional elections in 2010 despite widespread anti-austerity protests. In this article, we interpret this result with the help of a post-election survey, which also covered future voting intentions. The explanatory power of models based on theories of economic voting and blame attribution as well as the electoral impact of the governments representation of the crisis as an existential threat are assessed. Our analysis challenges the interpretation of the 2010 election as an indication of support for PASOKs austerity policies and reveals weaknesses in its support base, which help contextualise its downfall in the 2012 parliamentary elections. The article also underlines the importance of studying the impact of crisis discourses on voting choice, particularly since blame attribution receives little support in this case.

Representation and austerity politics : attitudes of Greek voters and elites compared

Drawing on surveys of voters and MPs in Greece, this article analyses elite–mass interaction on key policy (austerity, European integration, immigration) and ideological issues after the 2012 elections. We find that while for the government parties, New Democracy and PASOK, the level of congruence is quite high, MPs from opposition parties (SYRIZA, Golden Dawn) place themselves in more exposed positions in comparison with their voters. The observed substantial variation in the intensity and direction of congruence, across parties and issue preferences in Greece, reinforces the view that the dimensionality of political contestation is not reducible to a single ideological dimension.

Qui Bono? The winners and losers of securitising migration

It has become commonplace to argue that migration in most host states is socially constructed primarily as a security threat, a process known as ‘securitisation’. Political elites and security professionals are identified as the main agents that promote this particular framing of the issue. While securitisation is often implicitly considered as a goal-orientated process, paradoxically few studies have explored its actual consequences on policy and the securitising actors themselves. Adopting a consequentialist ethics approach, this article assesses the implications of the securitisation of migration in Greece, drawing on face-to-face interviews with security professionals, discourse analysis and other primary data. It demonstrates that securitisation harms the interests not only of migrants but also, counter-intuitively, of the state and the elites that supported it in the first place. This leaves only parties of the far right as the main winners of the security frame that has characterised Greeces stance on immigration since the early 1990s, and that continues to pose obstacles to its development of a coherent immigration policy with a long-term view.

The three waves of anti-austerity protest in Greece, 2010-2015

The apparent ubiquity of protest in recent years and the rise of Occupy movements across the world have fuelled claims that a new style of mobilisation is emerging which is markedly different from previous social movements. Analysing a series of original survey data, this article engages with this debate by providing a panoramic account of how the anti-austerity movement evolved in Greece, comparing the drivers of protest in three distinct protest waves. Contrary to expectations, the rise of the Greek version of the Indignados during 2011 did not decisively transform the anti-austerity movement that emerged in 2010, which mainly displayed characteristics typically associated with ‘old’ social movements. However, elements of the ‘new social movements’ approach featured more prominently in the third wave of protest, beginning in mid-2012 and culminating in January 2015 with victory for SYRIZA, the party which channelled the anti-austerity movement into the political scene. The model developed to study protest in non-electoral arenas also performs well to explain the success of SYRIZA in the electoral arena, highlighting the reciprocal but understudied relationship between mobilisation and electoral politics.

Austerity politics and crisis governance: lessons from Greece

In the early hours of Thursday, 3 November 2011, while EU leaders at the G-20 Cannes Summit were negotiating the prospect of a possible Greek referendum that could have had a dramatic impact on the future of the eurozone, one of this chapter’s authors spent the best part of an hour speaking to a journalist from one of the world’s largest international news organisations. What was meant to be a discussion about public attitudes in Greece soon developed to a desperate attempt to persuade the interviewer that not all Greeks thought that ‘all Germans are Nazis’, as the question put it — in fact, probably, very few people thought so. Nevertheless, the journalist was not really interested in analysing or interpreting the institutional, political or economic implications of what was being discussed in Cannes; the piece was instead going to focus on the parallels that were being drawn ‘with Nazi involvement in Greece during the Second World War’. This was by no means an atypical example of how the world’s media approached the crisis in Greece, of how reporters often engaged with a highly complex story in a sensationalist manner, and of the work required to educate global mediators and opinion-makers about the reality on the ground.

Protest participation, electoral choices and public attitudes towards austerity in Greece

The Great Recession that originated in the United States but quickly spread globally had a tremendous effect on all aspects of social and political life in Europe. Southern European countries were particularly badly hit by the economic downturn, none less so than Greece, that, after a decade of substantial economic growth (Matsaganis, 2011b), found itself at the centre of the storm. In 2003, before the crisis, the Greek economy was growing at an impressive rate of 5.9% of its GDP, significantly above the EU average of 1.6%. In a striking reversal of fortunes, Greece experienced negative growth of -3.5% in 2010 and an EU record of -6.9% in 2011, with its national gross debt skyrocketing to 163% of its GDP in 2011, up from 97% in 2003.t1

Introduction: Dissecting the Greek Debt Crisis

In 2007, the global financial markets were hit by a ‘black swan event’, an event so unlikely to occur that it surprised policy makers as much as most economists (Taleb, 2007). The bursting of the housing bubble in the United States (US) and its domino effect on global financial institutions after years of deregulation contributed to a rapid decline in international trade, credit availability and market confidence (Levchenko, Lewis and Tesar, 2010). Global economic imbalances, growing inequality and excessive liberalisation of the financial sector, as well as weaknesses in aggregate demand in both the US and Europe that had previously been disguised by weak regulation and low interest rates were among the underlying problems (Wolf, 2014). The result was the 2008–2012 global recession, the likes of which had not been predicted or seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Its intensity and symptoms varied cross-nationally, but for many countries involved a slowing down of their economic activity, an inability to finance budget deficits, and huge social costs in terms of rising unemployment and relative deprivation levels.