The people in the ‘here and now’: Populism, modernization and the state in Greece
| Author | Angelos Chryssogelos |
| Date | 01 September 2017 |
| Published date | 01 September 2017 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0192512117702524 |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0192512117702524
International Political Science Review
2017, Vol. 38(4) 473 –487
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/0192512117702524
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The people in the ‘here and now’:
Populism, modernization and
the state in Greece
Angelos Chryssogelos
King’s College London, UK
Abstract
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.
Keywords
Populism, Greece, state, modernization, international, particularism, discourse, crisis
Introduction
With the onset in 2010 of the Greek debt crisis and European Union (EU)-dictated austerity, new
parties arose in the Greek party system combining opposition to austerity with resentment towards
the political system – a prototypical populist message. This article argues that the intensity of pop-
ulism in Greece during the crisis is not solely due to the severity of the economic downturn
(although this is relevant as well). It also is the culmination of a long-standing failure of state elites
to underpin adaptation to the demands of European integration with inclusive visions of the politi-
cal community.
Populism is defined here as a response to tensions between territorial political rule and external
pressures on the state prescribing specific modes of incorporation into the global economy.
Populism puts forth territorially and temporally circumscribed representations of the political com-
munity mobilized by disenchantment with how the political system mediates between domestic
Corresponding author:
Angelos Chryssogelos, Department of European and International Studies, King’s College London,
Virginia Woolf Building 4.19, 22 Kingsway, London WC2B 6LE, UK.
Email: angelos.chryssogelos@kcl.ac.uk
702524IPS0010.1177/0192512117702524International Political Science ReviewChryssogelos
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