Perceptions of the European Crises, Democracy and Political Participation: The Cases of Greece and Germany

For many years, further European integration was the default position of citizens in the core and periphery of the European Union (EU). Yet three crises appear to have polarized politics in the EU, namely a financial, a refugee and a political crisis. The paper examines citizens’ perceptions of these crises and their political strategies in Greece and Germany, and the extent to which the relationship between the two has been affected by these crises. The paper adopts a mix method approach presenting the findings of focus group discussions (N=18) and surveys (N=2000) conducted with citizens in Athens and Berlin in 2015 and 2017 respectively. The analysis indicates that although citizens in both countries have been exposed to the financial, refugee and political crises, their structural positioning as “debtor” and “creditor” in the EU appears to condition the predominance and severity of these crises. The economy and the “Troika” (ECB, EC, IMF) were the focal problems in Greece, whereas immigration and the convergence of mainstream political parties were the grievances in Germany. The EU’s technocratic crisis management and politicians’ irresponsiveness to citizens’ grievances has led to a generalized crisis of political representation, and a radicalization of political strategies in the party and movement arena in both countries. An increase in Eurosceptic sentiments is perceived with citizens disentangling the ideal of United Europe from the role of the EU as a distant, non-representative institution. Moreover, they introduce certain stereotypes to refer to their counterparts in other member states, portraying a divided Europe of citizens in “rich” member states like Germany subsidizing others in “poor” member states like Greece. Nonetheless, citizens in both countries engage in numerous European comparisons and present political knowledge of their counterparts in other member states, indicating a certain advancement of European integration processes. Anastasia Garyfallou is a PhD candidate in Sociology at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. Her project “Perceptions of the European Crises, Democracy and Political Participation: The Cases of Greece and Germany” is embedded in the ERC – POLPART, supervised by Prof. Bert Klandermans (investigating party and movement politics’ interactions in nine countries).