Tag: Mitsotakis

This is the fourth and last in a mini-series of posts about how to beat populism at the polls. The first post emphasized the availability of a liberal leader, the second post stressed the need of establishing the leader’s authority over a party, and the third post was about the requirement of a credible and realistic policy agenda that would benefit the broader middle classes. This post suggests that the liberal leader utilizes a moderate discourse, aims at achieving political compromise, and defends institutional legality. As with the previous posts, the empirical case analyzed is contemporary Greece, and especially the more recent defeat of left populist SYRIZA by the liberal right-of-center party of New Democracy (ND) led by Kyriakos Mitsotakis. It bears repetition, Greece’s lessons are perfectly portable! So, if you’re interested in the forthcoming presidential elections in the US, please take note.

4/4 RHETORIC, CONSENSUS-BUILDING, INSTITUTIONAL LEGALITY

Throughout the opposition years, Mitsotakis was consistent in using a moderate political discourse which, on the one hand, emphasized the need to reinvigorate Greece’s damaged liberal institutions while, on the other hand, worked toward consensus-building and political compromise. To those ends, and in sharp contrast to the populists’ polarizing motto of “either Them or Us,” Mitsotakis offered a vision of national unity in which the government should not work for “the many [hoi polloi] but for all Greeks [holloi].” Above all, he sought to create an electoral majority consisting largely of entrepreneurial middle-class ordinary people to whom he proposed a sensible policy agenda centered on four issues of general concern: economic growth, public security, state functionality, and halting Greece’s human drain that continued unabated for over a decade.

Continue reading “How to defeat populism – IV”