The Evolution of Descriptive Representation in Greece: Comparing the Period Before and After the Economic Crisis

This section strives to determine whether different trends of descriptive representation can be depicted for the periods before and after the economic crisis in Greece. The first observation is that the composition of the Greek parliament changed. Immediately before the general elections of May 2012, more than one-third of MPs in the Greek parliament broke away from their former parliamentary groups, with many forming or joining new political parties. Moreover, almost half of the members of parliament following the May 2012 election had been elected for the first time (Kakepaki 2016: 23). The extremely fluid and fragmented political landscape after the 2012 double earthquake elections is reflected in the composition of the Greek parliament. The predominant pattern until 2009 was of little parliamentary representation of communists or the radical left, but a majority group of either socialists or centre- right MPs. This situation changed with the onset of the crisis. After the 2015 national elections in particular, the majority of MPs were from the radical left and parliament consisted of communists, socialists and centre-right representatives, as well as MPs from new parties (the centrist liberal party, Potami, the neo-fascist party of Golden Dawn and the radical right populist party of Independent Greeks). Moreover, there was an increasing number of independents in parliament. After the general elections of July 2019, the composition of the Greek parliament differed from the previous one in three aspects. Most MPs come from the centre-right party ND. with MPs representing SYRIZA (Coalition of the Radical Left) forming the second-largest parliamentary group. Golden Dawn did not achieve the 3 per cent electoral threshold, so none of its candidates were elected. Two new parties entered parliament: the new populist party of the radical right, Greek Solution, and the radical left-wing European Realistic Disobedience Front (Mera25). The other MPs are from the communist and socialist parties. Overall, we can conclude that since the onset of the economic crisis, many new political forces have entered the Greek parliament and that the political landscape had still not stabilised during 2019.

Are these changes also reflected in the socio-demographic profile of the MPs themselves? Or in other words, has the entrance of the new parties to parliament and the collapse of the old two-party system challenged the typical profile of the Greek political elites?

The findings on women’s participation in the Greek parliament reveal that the most common patterns are of low participation, women do not occupy cabinet seats and that few are re-elected. The evidence highlights the problem of reconciling family duties with a career as an MP (Panteli- dou-Malouta 2006; Kakepaki 2016). Using the Socioscope database (from the period between 1989 and 2019) we conclude that the parliamentary term during which SYRIZA was in power following the January 2015 general election was the one with the highest proportion of female MPs (23.2 per cent), while the parliament elected in June 1989 had the lowest proportion of female MPs (only 4 per cent). Overall, as Kakepaki. Koun- touri. Verzichelli and Coller (2018: 185) note, during the crisis there was no swift change towards a more gender-balanced Greek parliament; nevertheless, more women have been elected since 2009 than during the previous period (see also Table 2.1). Based on the Socioscope data for the period 1989-2019 we can assume MPs have a traditional profile: middle- aged men who have attended higher education and who come from traditional political professions, especially lawyers and doctors (Kakepaki 2016; Kakepaki and Karayiannis 2016). This notwithstanding, the traditionally high percentage of lawyers elected to parliament starts to decline in 1996 and registered a particularly sharp fall in 2012 (from 32.6 per cent in the 1996-2000 parliamentary term to 23 per cent in July 2019). We also see a rise in the number of university professors elected to parliament at the height of the crisis (8.3 per cent in 2012 and 8.9 per cent in 2015) compared to the post-crisis period (6.7 per cent in 2019). It became increasingly important for politicians to have a more technocratic background, perhaps due to the crisis.

Table 2.1 summarises some of the socio-demographic data for MPs from the pre-crisis period (March 2004 election) to its peak (June 2012 election) and the post-crisis period (July 2019 election). It can be argued that the different ideological backgrounds of MPs after the June 2012 elections also reflect the differentiation in their professional occupation background. The age of MPs has also changed slightly, with MPs elected during the crisis period being younger than those in the other two parliamentary terms. In terms of occupational groups, university professors, doctors, engineers, lawyers and journalists are significantly over-represented, while skilled and unskilled service and manual workers (who make up the majority of the employed population) have virtually no representation in parliament - with the interesting exception of the national elections of June 2012 (see Table 2.1), perhaps because of the higher number of MPs representing SYR1ZA.

Moving to some other distinctive characteristics, the recruitment channels changed with the onset of the crisis; more specifically, party organisations are no longer the main source of recruitment. For example, the MPs in parliament after the January 2015 elections were also recruited on the basis of technical expertise (academics), their participation in civil society or due to previous involvement in social movements and trade unions. Previous experience in local authorities and/ or in positions in European institutions was scarce, especially among SYRIZA MPs when the party was in government between 2015 and 2019 (Karoulas 2015; Kountouri 2018). Another main finding is that education is a very important indicator for a parliamentary career and is strongly related to previous party experience. The percentage of MPs with a doctorate fell slightly after the onset of the crisis. In addition, there is a positive association between a high level of educational attainment and experience in cabinet or EU-level positions (Kountouri 2018). Finally, family ties among parliamentarians became less common in the 2012 elections than they were before the

Source: Authors’ data elaborated from the Socioscope database (wwww.socioscope.gr).

economic crisis. However, as Patrikios and Chatzikonstantinou (2015: 107) argue, this conclusion does not apply to notable political families.

Evidence of Substantive Representation in Greece

Moving to the main findings on substantive representation in Greece, there are two research strands related to the main themes of this edited volume. The first is on the attitudes of the Greek political elites towards the EU (and in comparison with voters) and the impact of the economic crisis. The second set of findings addresses ideological and attitudinal congruence.

The Greek Political Elite's Attitudes to Europe vis-a-vis those of the Electorate

The Greek political elite’s attitudes towards the (EU) European Union. European integration and the European identity before and after the onset of the economic crisis tend to be the research topics most frequently analysed. Evidence from previous studies of political elites in Southern Europe (Conti et al. 2010) usually confirm that before the Great Recession, Southern Europe was generally pro-European; so regional economic and political integration did not prove to be particularly divisive topics, despite the growing politicisation of grievances towards the EU, particularly from smaller parties on the left and right (Teperoglou and Tsatsanis 2011).

Before the economic crisis, the Greek electorate and political elites (with the exception of the Communist Party, KKE) were overwhelmingly pro-European (Teperoglou, Chadjipadelis and Andreadis 2010). However, the bailout, austerity packages and EU solutions for the debt crisis clearly changed these attitudes. While most of the blame for the economic recession was attributed to national actors rather than to the EU or the banking system or the banking system (Teperoglou, Freire, Andreadis and Viegas 2014), some Greek citizens held the EU responsible for the deterioration of both their individual and the nation’s economic conditions (Freire, Lisi, Andreadis and Viegas 2014). Tsirbas and Sotiropoulos (2015) conclude that the crisis influenced MPs’ perceptions of representation in the EU. On the one hand, they found that, with the exception of Golden Dawn and Independent Greek MPs. European identity was stronger in 2014 than in 2007, even among SYR1ZA MPs. On the other hand, in 2014 a vast majority (more than 80 per cent) of Greek MPs were of the opinion that Greek interests were not being taken into account in the EU’s decision-making centres (compared with fewer than 30 per cent of MPs in 2007). The findings of the IntUne survey show that the views of the Greek political elites in 2007 depended on political ideology and party affiliation. European identity was only supplementary and ethnocentrism was a main characteristic among MPs (Nezi, Sotiropoulos and Тока 2010). Finally, the study by Freire, Moury and Teperoglou (2014) shows that the radical-left and the radical-right elites in Greece are more supportive of the EU than their voters, and that the central (left and right) political elite are always much more supportive of the EU than their constituents.¹ 'Another interesting finding is that while there was a decline in voter support for the EU in 2012, the authors do not detect a similar trend among the political elite. In other words, there has been almost no change in the level of support from the political elite perspective. Moreover, leftist positions (extreme position on the left-right scale or pro-state intervention values) are associated with lower support for the EU. Finally, comparing attitudes towards the EU in association with the bailout agreements, the analysis in this paper shows that negative evaluations of the troika agreement are associated with lower support for the EU, both in instrumental (EU membership) and political (further EU unification, evaluation of the performance of EU democracy) terms. This is especially evident among Greek voters, although less to among candidates.

Candidate-Voter Congruence on Ideological and Attitudinal Stances

Turning to the study of congruence on different ideological and attitudinal stances, it is impossible to reach any generalised conclusions due to the lack of appropriate studies. Andreadis and Stavrakakis (2017) analysed congruence between voters and candidates on various matters (positions on the economic left-right index, positions on cultural issues, attitudes towards the austerity measures enforced during the economic crisis, etc.) and found high levels of congruence between PASOK voters and candidates on almost all items, and low levels of congruence between SYRIZA voters and candidates in most aspects. More specifically, SYRIZA candidates are farther to the left than voters in the left-right self-placement.¹² In another study, Freire et al. (2018) compare data from 2007 and 2015 on the left-right self-placement of candidates and voters, and concluded that the overall level of ideological congruence was relatively low over this timeframe, despite the increase in party supply. Furthermore, candidates are located farther to the left than voters on economic policy, while candidates of the current incumbent party seem to adopt more positive stances towards immigrants than their electorate. Finally, voters give more conservative responses to the battery of questions on law and order than candidates (Andreadis and Stavrakakis 2017). The only dimensions in which there are high levels of congruence between SYRIZA candidates and voters are populist attitudes (calculated by the ‘populist index’, see Andreadis and Stavrakakis 2017) and anti-austerity measures. This confirms the extreme polarisation between those who saw the bailout and the Memorandum of Understanding (mnemonio) as a lifeline for the Greek economy (mnemoniakoi) during the crisis period and those who actually believed it was why the economic crisis was so severe and protracted (anti- mnemoniakoi) (Teperoglou, Tsatsanis and Nicolacopoulos 2015: 336). These anti-bailout stances were accompanied by populist rhetoric and gave the leader of SYRIZA, Alexis Tsipras, ample space for manoeuvre in the formation of governments (Andreadis and Stavrakakis 2017).

The study by Teperoglou, Freire, Andreadis and Viegas (2014) compares the responses of Greek voters and candidates to various statements about the first bailout and finds most Greek voters evaluated the bailout negatively. Moreover, the results show that the bailout agreement is almost entirely rejected by the majority of candidates standing in the 2012 general election. Overall, we observe exceptionally high levels of congruence, possibly because the candidates for the 2012 elections expressed even more negative opinions about the decision to accept the bailout agreement than their voters. As for the issue of responsibility for the crisis, the candidates tended to blame their own government and bankers and attribute less blame to the EU.

We conclude that the Greek elite were more ideologically consistent and had more coherent views on the economic crisis and bailout agreements during the economic crisis than the electorate. Furthermore, the fact SYRIZA candidates and voters share the same positions on the bailout, anti-austerity policies and populist attitudes and not on other ideological and attitudinal stances indicates the importance of attitudes towards the economic crisis in voter choice. Alternatively, this could also be an indicator of the low quality of representative democracy.