There are times when academic
witticisms really hit the nail on the head. When the organisers of the latest instalment
of the Greek Public Policy Forum decided on headlining the Nottingham meeting
“No Country for Old Systems”, they surely could not have predicted the tragic
irony that their intended pun now encapsulates. On 3rd April a 77
year old retired pharmacist puts a gun to his head and commits suicide in the
middle of Syntagma square. In a dramatically lucid suicide note he explained
that the only act of resistance left to him before ending up looking for food
in the trash, was a dignified end of his own choosing. While the jury is still
out on what will happen to countries with “old systems” that fail to meet the standards
of the global free market, Greece appears to be rapidly becoming “no country
for old men”. If soaring youth unemployment, gender inequality indices and the
growing waves of emigration are added to the equation, it is doubtful whether
younger men and women will fare any better for the foreseeable future.
Setting aside for a moment the
eventually unavoidable task of identifying reasons and culprits, the immediate
question should be where to go from here. The general elections of 6th
May will put an end, at least temporarily, to a short-lived but symbolically
significant governmental experiment. For the second time in its recent
political history, the Greek parliament decided to entrust the running of the
country to a coalition government headed by a technocrat. After the late
Xenofon Zolotas, who became interim Prime Minister of the so-called
“ecumenical” government in 1989, another high-profile economist, Lucas
Papademos, accepted the responsibility to fill the governmental void created when
former Prime Minister Papandreou decided to step down at the end of 2011 in
favour of a governmental schema supported by a wider parliamentary majority.
Apart from the academic debate on the constitutionality of Papandreou’s
decision, a fierce political debate also ensued on the substantive democratic
legitimacy of the choice to forego immediate elections and entrust an unelected
technocrat with the helm of the country.
Despite the fact that the
Papademos government has now run its course, the political question at the
heart of this debate is far from a moot point for two reasons. First, the electoral
result of 6th May will determine not only whether the Troica bailout
plan is an acceptable compromise for the Greeks alone, but also whether it
continues to be a politically viable solution within a disenfranchised European
South. Ardent advocates of the European vision should already feel rather
uncomfortable with the “unholy” EU / IMF alliance that amounts to nothing less
than a blatant admission on the part of the Union of its incompetence or
unwillingness to address European problems through European solutions. With
Italy, Spain and Portugal on similar paths as Greece, it is now impossible to
deny that the Greek sovereign debt crisis, notwithstanding the failings of the
Greek state, is part of a wider problem that reveals the endemic deficiencies
of the Eurozone. An unequivocal “anti-Memorandum” Greek vote may produce
incalculable reverberations across the European political edifice, as it will cast
doubts over the legitimacy of the EU-led technocratic governance paradigm and
arguably put the current Italian government under severe political pressure. One
must not forget, after all, that the Papademos and Monti experiments in Greece
and Italy respectively, despite their differences, can be viewed as a
national-level replication of the infamous democratic deficit, which has
plagued the Union since its inception and continues to dominate discussions on its
future. Although it may seem impertinent to overplay the impact of a 10-million
strong electorate on a Union of more than 500 million, it is reasonable to
assume that the Greek electoral result may be the trigger forcing the Union to
take decisions that will determine its future one away or the other.
The second reason why the Greek
elections of 6th May are significant for the “democracy / technocracy”
dilemma, both within Greece and across Europe, is a pragmatic one. Given the legally
binding commitment of the outgoing Papademos government, supported by a wide
parliamentary majority, to the latest instalment of the Troica bailout plan, the
democratic expression of the will of the Greek people may have been
irreversibly compromised ex ante. Despite the undeniable political symbolism
that an “anti-Memorandum” result will connote, the pragmatic issue is none
other than the actual room for manoeuvre that any future Greek government will
have against the backdrop of legitimately signed and ratified international
agreements. This is not to deny that a democratically elected government will
have the constitutional right and responsibility to renegotiate existing
agreements and recalibrate national policies along the lines of its mandate.
But it would be myopic to completely deny the fact that any future Greek
government will have to operate within certain political and legal constraints.
It is exactly on this hurdle
that the dominant political rhetoric that attempts to pre-interpret - and
possibly pre-empt - the electoral result seems to fall flat on its head. The
conflation of an anti-Memorandum vote with an automatic reinforcement of
representative democracy at the expense of a technocratic model of governance
is conceptually flawed in every respect. It beggars belief that any criticism
levelled against a particular economic recipe, which has proved as yet
unsuccessful to turn the tide in our favour, is equated with a total rejection
of the need for technocratic expertise in dealing with the sovereign debt
crisis and the broader institutional deficiencies of the public and private
sectors. It is similarly quite outrageous to presume that the significant
portion of the electorate that will cast a vote of disapproval is anything more
that disenfranchised with the Greek political system in its totality. Assuming
that these voters have consciously and en masse adopted a reactionary or
recidivist attitude towards European integration or the modernisation of state
institutions is an essentialist assumption that does not stand to reason. Turning
the argument on its head, the point is simple: in this general election Greek
voters are unlikely to cast their votes on the illusion that democratic
representation is in itself a panacea.
Equally flawed, however, is the
symmetrically opposite conflation of a “pro-Troica” vote with a public
expression of confidence to the merits of technocratic governance at the
expense of democratic representation. More than any other in recent history
this election was fought in a political climate of polarisation and completely
entrenched positions. Rhetoric from all sides of the political spectrum has
converged towards invariably monothematic campaigns and a bipolar frame of
reference. Through conventional and unconventional communicative devices the central
message of this election was reduced to a simplistic referendum-type question
that overshadowed the concrete points of party manifestos. Portraying the issue
as one of “yes or no to the Memorandum” was a useful tactical choice,
particularly for PASOK and New Democracy, that allowed everyone to sweep
inconvenient truths under the carpet. The traditional electoral dilemma of the eighties
and the nineties, whereby a strong parliamentary majority was presented as the
only safeguard against political anarchy and the demise of the democratic
state, was partially resurrected, albeit without much apparent success. In any
case, it is nothing short of illogical to assume that PASOK and New Democracy have
somehow made a transition from pillars of the old political system to par
excellence advocates of an emerging technocratic governance paradigm,
notwithstanding their support for and participation in the Papademos government.
And it is even more extraordinary to suggest that those who vote for these two
parties have made their choice on such grounds.
This is, in fact, the oxymoron
of the Greek situation. Our parochial understanding of technocratic governance
is mitigated by a short-lived national experiment, which paid nothing more than
lip service to the concept of technocracy, and by an on-going supranational one
that has so far failed to either satisfy minmum legitimacy standards or, at the
very least, produce tangible positive results. With a 50-strong cabinet
composed almost exclusively by career politicians, many of whom were already
serving as ministers on the outgoing PASOK government, the “coalition of the
willing” that ruled the country since December 2011 was anything but the
triumph of the technocrats. Yet another conflation, yet another
misunderstanding: an unelected government of career politicians headed by an
unelected technocrat Prime Minister does not even come close to technocratic
governance. The potential lack of democratic legitimacy, then, of the Papademos
government was not offset by its technocratic nature, unlike what might be the
case with the Monti government in Italy. What is more, the foreign technocrats
who are credited with “running the show” do not come from Brussels alone. The
role of the IMF in determining the content and priorities of our regulatory
responses to the crisis falsifies European integration and makes a mockery of
the vision for a European polity founded on the solidarity of its peoples. This
is all the more true insofar as the role of the European Central Bank is effectively
reduced to that of a mere observer. The short-sighted German policy of
preventing the ECB from pulling its institutional weight behind the ailing
Eurozone partners is the epitome of viewing common problems through narrow
nationalist lenses. But this does not alter the fact that the current
governance paradigm emerging in Greece is democratically deficient and
technocratically inefficient.
By the same token, the majority
of Greeks have slowly but steadily begun to realise that ours is a failed
state. Sweeping institutional reforms are absolutely necessary, if we are to pull
ourselves from the brink and eliminate the “three C’s” that have plagued the
Greek political system for the best part of its historical existence:
corruption, cronyism and clientelism. Few would disagree that the way out of
the proverbial woods cannot possibly be led by those who are in the habit of
going in circles for the past three decades. The downward spiral of a
self-perpetuating system cannot be stopped by wishful thinking and vague
patriotic mantra. Greece is in crisis – there is no doubt about that. Despite appearances,
however, this is neither solely nor predominantly a financial crisis. Without
under-estimating the appalling state of the Greek economy and the urgency in
getting it back on track, it would be nonsensical to claim that Greece’s
problems can be reduced to its current fiscal or financial predicament. The
growing realisation that the sovereign debt crisis is in fact a symptom of a
much deeper and wider institutional failure is only the beginning. If we are to
become true citizens in the original, archaic sense of the term, it is
essential to realise that we share a burden of responsibility for this failure,
either through our tolerance or through our complicity. Clientelism, after all,
is by definition a two-way street. This by no means entails that we are all equally responsible for the current
state of affairs. Nor does it mean that the measures hitherto adopted reflect a
fair distribution of the burdens. It does, however, mean that we should be willing
to accept our responsibility as citizens and be ready to put the finger into
the print. This requires that we sever the bonds of clientelism and cronyism
ourselves, with our own bare hands, even with personal cost. If technocratic
governance is to have any democratic legitimation and if representative
democracy is to have any chance of transcending the travesty of a system that
we currently witness in our country and continent, it is ourselves as citizens
that need to take the first decisive step by reinventing our collective sense
of belonging to a truly democratic polity, where each is rewarded according to
merit and need.
The institutional crisis we are
faced with is, indeed, multifaceted, multi-layered and complex, as it is
intrinsically connected with endemic socio-political features of the Greek
state and society. Above all else, however, this is a crisis of trust. We have ceased to believe in the
fairness, competence, efficiency and ethical gravitas of our institutions and
we have no faith in their power or willingness to change direction. It would be
hubris to suggest that a brief comment such as this one can offer easy and
original specific solutions that have somehow hitherto escaped our attention.
No magical wand that will automatically resolve the Greek crisis exists, nor is
there a guarantee that the current situation is reversible by conventional
means. It is, however, reasonable to note that the bond of trust between the
Greek people and the political system that claims their allegiance has been
irrevocably broken. Once severed, the Gordian knot cannot be mended. The only way
forward can be none other than a collective leap of faith. We need to trust in
our ability to reinvent ourselves and rewrite our future. We need to trust in
our ability to convince our European partners to change direction and work
together towards fulfilling a vision that now seems long forgotten. Above all,
we need to trust in the transformative power of democratic participation that
can turn shame for the mistakes of the past into hope for the possibilities of
the future.
Dr Panos Kapotas, LSE
For the GPPF Nottingham Forum, March 2012
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