Opportunists and Ideologists in the Greek Anti-Austerity Protest Movement

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the impact of the euro-crisis on the political regime in Greece through a strategic-interaction approach. Since the beginning of the Greek debt crisis an impressive series of large protests and numerous strikes occurred against austerity policies and structural adjustment reforms. It could be plausibly argued that this massive anti-austerity protest wave contributed heavily to the alteration of the political system in Greece and to the rise to power of SYRIZA party, which was one of the main champions of the anti-austerity movement. But the structure of political and economic opportunities and threats only partially explain the rise of SYRIZA and even more so, its eventual compliance with austerity when it became a governmental party. In this paper we focus on the views and the strategies of the main actors at the centre of these political processes. On the one hand we examine the different views and tactics of the major organizations/groups (including political parties) that called and coordinated the most prominent and visible protest events (general strikes, demonstrations, square occupations) and on the other hand we also take into consideration the tactics of the power-holders towards the challengers. This work will draw on primary data produced via protest event analysis under the “Mediterranean Voices” project held at the University of Crete, via social network analysis of the major protest actors under an independent project, and via attribution of responsibility analysis under a bilateral Greek-German project (www.ggcrisi.org). Our findings suggest that the current political outcome of the Greek anti-austerity movement is largely due to the interaction between those actors that exploited circumstances to gain immediate advantage, namely to rise to power, and those actors whose actions are being guided by more consistent principles.