Populism and De-Democratisation: Evidence from Elections and Referendums in Greece, 2015ꟷ2019

Recent research on electoral malpractices reveals that the de-democratization process comes alongside with populist policies. Sometimes populist rhetoric is used directly or indirectly in order to influence the choice of voters or engage policies that would restrict eligibility to take part in elections either as a voter or candidate (e.g. securitization discourse that is used to increase control over selected agents). Some researchers also indicate that populism per se is driven by authoritarian tendencies. Evidence from Turkey, countries of Eastern and Central Europe, and Latin America, seem to support this thesis. Therefore, the main research question in this paper will be: Is populism inherently leading to de-democratization of political regimes? In my paper I would like to consider another case, namely Greece under the rule of left-wing populist party Syriza. I will analyse reports and literature on elections and referendum in 2015, as well as the preparations for legislative elections in 2019. And institutional analysis of the de-democratization process will be complemented with the discursive approach to populist rhetoric, based on a model of populism proposed by Ernesto Laclau. In the end, a comparative perspective with Turkey and Hungary will be employed in order to answer the main research question of the paper. In the end I will propose a distinction between different types of populism as a possible explanation of differences occurring between those cases.