Greece’s course from two-party politics to party system collapse: An explanation by mechanisms

After several decades of life, in the recent 2012 parliamentary elections, Greece’s two-party system shattered. While the power of the two major parties, ND and Pasok, fell from well over 80 percent to below 40 percent of the total vote, new radical and/or extremist parties grew strong on both the right (Golden Dawn, a neo-Nazi party) and the left (Syriza). This paper will follow the course of Greek party system development over the last three decades, seeking to explain what happened, and how. Analysis will focus, in particular, on the specific mechanisms that both made twopartism durable and, when state related resources became scarce, also caused its breakup. Those mechanisms were: the capacity to form single party governments; the state’s full control by the power in office; and the regular alternation of the two major parties in power. The paper is based on extensive country-level research, is theoretically innovative, and promises strong comparative potential. Above all, it offers a compelling explanation of the political causes of Greece’s current crisis, as well as tries to foresee the real possibilities for this country’s party system developments in the future.