Suchergebnisse

When Alexis Tsipras went to vote on June 17, 2012, television channels from all over the world gathered around the school auditorium where he was casting his ballot. Someone unfamiliar with Greek politics might have supposed that this blaze of publicity was focused on a rock star or world leader. Who, after all, was Alexis Tsipras? As the head of the parliamentary group of SYRIZA (Coalition of the Radical Left), he had led a motley confederation of small leftist parties to an underwhelming 4.6 percent of the vote in the 2009 elections. That same year, his position as informal leader had been vehemently challenged even within the coalition.

When Alexis Tsipras went to vote on June 17, 2012, television channels from all over the world gathered around the school auditorium where he was casting his ballot. Someone unfamiliar with Greek politics might have supposed that this blaze of publicity was focused on a rock star or world leader. Who, after all, was Alexis Tsipras? As the head of the parliamentary group of SYRIZA (Coalition of the Radical Left), he had led a motley confederation of small leftist parties to an underwhelming 4.6 percent of the vote in the 2009 elections. That same year, his position as informal leader had been vehemently challenged even within the coalition. Nevertheless, the absence of any alternative leadership combined with his own tenacity and tactical flexibility enabled Tsipras to survive inside SYRIZA. As roulette players know, if you can stay in the game, you may be able to turn it around. With 26.9 percent of the vote in the June 2012 elections (and just 29.7 percent for the center-right New Democracy), SYRIZA has turned its self-destructive tendencies into a political triumph. By making Greece the first case in the West since the collapse of communism where the radical left has overtaken the traditional social democratic mainstream, SYRIZA has become a critical political force within Greece and an object of fascination (and scorn) without. Thirty-one years earlier, in 1981, during another earthquake election, PASOK (the Panhellenic Socialist Movement), Greece's traditional party of the left, laid the foundations for its long rule in Greek political life. In 1981 PASOK was riding the crest of a great electoral wave that had carried it from just 13.58 percent of the vote in 1974 to the 48.7 percent that it received that October. This realignment produced one of the most stable party systems in Europe, with very low electoral volatility, organized around two parties: PASOK's socialists and New Democracy's conservatives. Adapted from the source document.

Résumé Cinq facteurs expliquent la domination électorale du PASOK (1981-2004) et du PSOE (1982-1996) : (a) La faiblesse idéologique de la droite ; (b) la mise en place de politiques sociales plus avancées que par le passé ; (c) la modernisation politique (la démocratisation) entreprise par les gouvernements socialistes ; (d) la modernisation culturelle (le libéralisme au niveau des valeurs et de la sphère privée) ; d) la modernisation économique. Notre hypothèse centrale est que le PASOK et le PSOE ont produit, adopté ou mis en chantier (une fois au gouvernement) des idées que la droite de ces deux pays n'était pas en mesure de produire ou pas encore prête à accepter ou à mettre en œuvre. Aujourd'hui, le cycle politique qui s'est amorcé à l'effondrement des régimes autoritaires est clos dans les deux pays. Un « cycle ordinaire » succède au cycle de domination de la période précédente. Les systèmes de partis grec et espagnol sont devenus nettement plus équilibrés que par le passé.

Five factors explain the electoral dominance of PASOK (1981-2004) and PSOE (1982-96): (1) The ideological weakness of the Right; (2) the implementation of more advanced social policies than in the past; (3) the political modernization (i.e. democratization or political liberalism measures) undertaken by the socialist governments; (4) cultural modernization (liberalism at the level of values and private sphere); and (5) economic modernization. The main hypothesis is that PASOK and PSOE over the long term took a lead over their opponents, by generating, adopting or setting in train (once in power) ideas which parties of the right in these countries were either incapable of generating or not yet ready to implement. Today, the long political cycle that began with the collapse of authoritarian regimes has come to a close in both countries. An "ordinary cycle" has thus replaced the preceding cycle of domination. The Greek and Spanish party systems are in the process of becoming significantly more balanced than they were. Adapted from the source document.