Politics and Citizenship in Greece: Cultural and Structural Facets

Greek political culture, i.e., the attitudes and behavior of Greek citizens, differs considerably from the mainstream West European participatory type of political culture. This difference, which may be understood as a paradox compared with the ideal typical interpretative model of modernity, results from certain formal and substantive particularities as far as the capitalist system, social coherence in general, and the composition of democracy are concerned. Since the labor market has been poorly developed in Greece, the grammar of social relationships is not structured by systemic rationality and normativity. As a consequence, legitimation is worked out in social spaces that lie outside of the typical institutional context. This peculiarity is grounded on a special articulation among (a) the historical-structural parameters (macro-analytical level), (b) the formation of the capitalist market in Greece and the organization of Greece's political system (meso-analytical level), and (c) policy implementation and everyday political behavior (microanalytical level). Apart from dealing with the Greek case, these proposed three levels of explanation may be applied to other cases as a more general comparative model.