This is the second in a mini-series of posts about how to beat populism at the polls. In the first post we emphasized the availability of a liberal leader who, as we have already seen in a third post, must credibly propose a realistic policy agenda. Unfortunately, not that many such cases from the real world of modern and contemporary politics exist. Perhaps the most significant of them are the defeat of Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi by a coalition of liberal forces in 2013 and the electoral defeat of Argentina’s Cristina Fernández de Kirchner by Mauricio Macri in 2015. Yet, more recently, Greece’s left/right populist government was trounced in repeated elections during 2019 by the liberal right-of-center party of New Democracy (ND) led by Kyriakos Mitsotakis. This series of posts learns from, and is primarily based on, Greece’s recent experience. But such lessons are perfectly portable! So, if you’re interested in the forthcoming presidential elections in the US, please take note.
2/4 LEADER ESTABLISHES AUTHORITY OVER PARTY
By late 2015, having already suffered bitter defeats by the populist forces, opposition center-right ND had to make a hard choice: either compromise with illiberal politics or completely break with it and adopt a fully liberal stance. This 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 Meïmarakis, a stalwart supporter of traditional politics.
With no delay after his ascent to party leadership, Mitsotakis set out to unite and reorganize his battered party. To this purpose, he meticulously updated the ND rulebook for increasing intra-party flexibility and speedy decision-making; introduced a detailed evaluation system for party officials; grappled with the ND’s dire finances in order to drastically reduce party costs, to which purpose he also moved the party headquarters in a more remote and by far cheaper Athens neighborhood; rebuilt the party’s young wing; introduced party leader’s term limits; banned party officials from holding public office; established an annual party conference; and opened up the party to the broader society beyond ideological affiliation, especially by calling for volunteers to help draft the new party manifesto. It is noteworthy that the vast majority of members for the new teams Mitsotakis was now installing across the party consisted of young technocrats with high levels of expertise in the fields of their new political responsibilities.
