This post is a follow-up to a previous one on the theory of how to beat populism. Here’s the empirical validation of the theoretical points made with reference to the case of Greece. Like the previous post, this one is an extract from my recent essay “The Pushback Against Populism: The Rise and Fall of Greece’s New Illiberalism,” published in the Journal of Democracy 31:2, April 2020. Another post will follow with the lessons other countries may draw from Greece’s rich experience with populism.
We posited in the previous post that unraveling modern populism would require a chain of developments inverting those that brought populists to power in the first place. Following this logic, the line of developments leading to populism’s downfall should begin with a liberal leader who acts within a populist-ruled political system, but in opposition to it. Events in Greece during the period from January 2016 through July 2019 offer perhaps the best illustration that we have of how such a leader’s rise might play out in practice.
By late 2015, having suffered bitter electoral defeats at the hands of Greece’s new populist forces, the center-right ND had to make a hard choice: either compromise with illiberal politics, or break with it completely and commit to a fully liberal stance. This question was settled unequivocally in January 2016 when the party chose as its new leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis, a 47-year-old reformist technocrat and scion of one of Greece’s most significant political families, over Vangelis Meimarakis, a stalwart supporter of traditional (meaning reform-averse) politics.
Once he took over as party leader, Mitsotakis followed a political strategy exactly along the lines described in our theoretical outline above. He was quick to establish his personal authority over ND and staffed the party with a new generation of mostly young, well-educated technocrats, who were ready to assume government posts once in power. He also began forging an antipopulist alliance through overtures to smaller centrist parties and to independent liberal politicians, several of whom began to align themselves with ND.
Throughout his party’s years in opposition, Mitsotakis relied on a moderate political discourse that emphasized the need to reinvigorate Greece’s damaged liberal institutions but also stressed consensus-building and compromise. To those ends, Mitsotakis offered a vision of national unity that stood in sharp contrast to the populists’ polarizing motto of “either Them or Us.” As he declared in advance of the 2019 elections, “I’m not for the many or the few, I’m for all—I will be a prime minister of all Greeks.” Above all, he sought to build an electoral majority consisting largely of entrepreneurial middle-class people. His policy agenda centered on four issues of pressing concern to this constituency: economic growth, public security, building a better-functioning state, and halting the human drain of out-migration that had continued unabated for more than a decade.
Upon ascending to the leadership, Mitsotakis set out without delay to unite and reorganize his battered party. To this end, he meticulously updated the ND rulebook with the aim of increasing intraparty flexibility and speeding up decision making; introduced a detailed system for evaluating party officials; took steps to improve ND’s dire financial condition, including moving the party headquarters to a cheaper and more remote Athens neighborhood; rebuilt the party’s young wing; introduced term limits for the party leader; banned party officials from holding public office; established an annual party conference; and sought to open up the party to involvement by the broader society, especially by calling for volunteers to help draft the new ND manifesto.
Having strengthened his party and solidified his control over it, Mitsotakis’s next step was to propose a coherent and realistic liberal policy agenda focused on middle-class interests. This agenda reflected four interdependent principles: individual freedom; social and institutional order; crafting a citizen-friendly and inclusive state; and strengthening the nation.
The ND leader’s prioritization of individual freedom showed through in his pledges of tax cuts for businesses and the self-employed, including a 30 percent reduction in an onerous property tax. Mitsotakis submitted a detailed education plan that included such measures as the establishment of private universities and the return of minimum grade thresholds for entering university. In addition, the plan called for an overhaul of a law barring police from campuses, which had effectively turned universities into centers of illegal activity. This was part of a broader emphasis on public security and institutional order, the ND’s response to the widespread crime and social anomie that had intensified under populist rule. Mitsotakis promised more and better equipped neighborhood police patrols and strict enforcement of the law for all Greeks. To ease the interactions of individuals and businesses with the country’s unwieldy public administration, he pledged the simplification of laws and the digital transformation of the state. Finally, Mitsotakis repeatedly promised to allow the sizeable Greek diaspora to vote in general national elections. This gesture signaled an intent to keep the diaspora’s ties with the motherland strong—and even to begin reversing the population outflow by drawing emigrants home.
Mitsotakis castigated the populist government for alleged closeness with a “new generation of oligarchs” and for cronyist hiring practices. Drawing a contrast with his political rivals, he promised to fight nepotism (he specifically vowed to keep his own relatives out of government) and to introduce strictly merit-based criteria for state appointments. Time and again while in opposition, Mitsotakis pledged to stamp out populism and restore Greece’s damaged liberal-democratic institutions. He also gradually emerged as one of the most important liberal leaders in the EU. In September 2018, he called on the European Parliament to initiate disciplinary action against the government of Hungarian populist Viktor Orbán, whom he later likened explicitly to Tsipras. In early 2019, Mitsotakis requested the expulsion of Orbán’s Fidesz from the European People’s Party (the center-right bloc in the European Parliament, to which ND also belonged) until Fidesz dropped its right-populist rhetoric.
Mitsotakis’s adoption of a unifying discourse and moderate political course paid off. In the Greek national elections of July 2019, ND won a resounding victory over Syriza and claimed an outright majority of 158 seats in Parliament, compared to a mere 86 for Syriza.
