Political representation in Greece: overview of the studies and methodological challenges

Transcription

1 Political representation in Greece: overview of the studies and methodological challenges Ioannis Andreadis, Aristotle University, Thessaloniki, Greece ] Eftichia Teperoglou, Aristotle University, Thessaloniki, Greece & CIES-IUL, Portugal Theodore Chatzipantelis, Aristotle University, Thessaloniki, Greece [ chadji@polsci.auth.gr ] Paper to be presented at the IPSA 2016 Conference, Poznań, Poland Panel: Political Representation in Southern Europe and Latin America I: Southern Europe First Draft Version 1 July Work in progress- 1

2 Abstract Main aim of the paper is to provide in-depth-analysis of the intellectual history of the study of political representation in Greece. This field of research lacked systematic empirical research -up to 2005-when the study of the INTUNE Project started. In 2007 the first survey of the Comparative Candidate Surveys (CCS) was conducted. Under this project three more studies took place (for the national elections of 2009, 2012, 2015). Moreover, Greece also participated at the PARENEL project. The objective of this paper is to present the most important findings of these studies of political representation in Greece framing them in a wider theoretical context. Special attention is given to the methodological aspects and challenges related to these studies. Keywords: political representation; Greece; candidates; economic crisis; democracy, European identity Introduction The study of political representation is one of the most well studied fields in political science, both in theoretical and in empirical terms. In the seminal study by Dahl (1989) the two classic questions for representative democracy refer to whom members of parliament should represent and how this should be done (see also for an overview Schmitt & Thomassen). These two central questions became known in the relevant literature as the questions of focus and style of political representation (Eulau et al. 1978). At the beginning, most of the studies on the relationship between representatives and represented focused on the country level. In Southern Europe in particular, the study of the political elites is in connection with the wave of democratization (Hugely & Gunther 1992). Most of the studies focused on research questions such as the profile and social background of the political elites, their skills and professional origins (see for an overview Tavares de Almeida, Costa Pinto & Berme 2003). The first studies on political representation in Greece were focused exclusively on individuals. The intellectual history of the study of the political elites in Greece goes back to the late 1960s. A common research path was the analysis on political history with biographical data on politicians. One of the first studies was Keith Legg s monograph covering the period from 1843 to He studied the educational background, occupation, family tradition in politics, and regional origin of ministers. He also conducted a sample survey of 55 parliamentary deputies of the 1964 parliament (Legg 1969). Another study was about the Greek ministerial elites in with main research question whether the renewal of the elites has kept pace with the modernization of 2

3 the Greek economy and society after the Second World War (Koutsoukis 1982). Another case study was on nineteenth century Greek politicians of a southern region (Achaia) focusing on the decline of old-style notables and the presence of family trees of politicians in that region (Lyrintzis 1992). An important turning point on this steam of research was the participation of Greece in comparative projects focusing on the study of political elites. Only back in 2005 we can find the participation of the country in a comparative project, while two years later, Greece joined the Comparative Candidate Survey project. Since then, the study of political representation has been more systematized, focusing also in a cross-national perspective. The main aim of this paper is to provide insights on the intellectual history of the studies on political representation in Greece. We focus mainly on the period from 2005 onwards. The objectives of this study are two. First, we attempt to provide a short overview of the studies and to present the main findings. The second one is related to the methodological aspects of the surveys. Here, we aim to depict the main challenges and perspectives for the research of political elites in Greece. The next section is dedicating to presenting the context under which the study of political elites is developed. A section follows with the presentation of the studies and the main methodological issued related to them. We then present an overview of the main findings by given attention to some specific dimensions. In the last section of this paper, we attempt to discuss the future research paths on the study of political representation in Greece. Studying Political Elites in Greece: The Context Here we have to address the following points: The project of modernization', which has not only economic but also political and cultural aspects: differentiations between actors which are more open to change ( reformers ) and those which are more resistant ( traditionalists ). The party penetration of state and social institutions The majoritarian system and its end Various forms of clientelism From 2009: The economical and political crisis 3

4 The change of attitudes towards the EU after the onset of the crisis Issues of accountability and blame attribution Many candidates refer to this as a political crisis affecting the political representation as they seem to lose their trust in the political system and political institutions of their country. This general discomfort was captured in all the particular variables in examination and the electoral result itself. After all, incumbent punishment seems to have become the hallmark of crisis elections in Southern Europe (Bosco & Verney 2012). Presentation of the Studies 1. The Intune Project The first comparative study on political elites which Greece participated was the Integrated and United: A Quest for Citizenship in an Ever Closer Europe (IntUne project). It was organized by 29 European institutions and more than 100 scholars across Europe. It was coordinated by the University of Siena, Italy, and financed by the European Union within the 6 th Framework Programme. The project was launched in 2005 and its main research topic was European citizenship. The research team in each participating country analyzed surveys, interviews and textual analysis of the main actors involved (for further details see Conti, Cotta and Tavares de Almeda 2010). The Greek survey took place between February and June A sample survey of Greek parliamentarians was conducted using the common questionnaire of the project. In total 90 MPs out of the 300MPs have been interviewed. The sample was representative in terms of gender and age. Among the 90MPs, 32 have served at least once as minister or junior minister. They were selected through quota sampling. In the same period, the research team conducted 30 more interviews with economic elites (Nezi, Sotiropoulos and Toka 2010). 2. The Comparative Candidate Surveys in Greece The Greek Candidate Study is part of the Comparative Candidate Survey (CCS) which is a joint multi-national project with the goal of collecting data on candidates running for national parliamentary elections in different countries using a common core questionnaire in a postelection candidate survey conducted in each country. CCS is conducted after the elections in order to collect data at the same period that data on voters are collected as part of national election studies. 4

5 In Greece CCS is usually run as a mixed-mode survey and the first mode is always a websurvey (Andreadis 2010) with invitations and reminders sent to the address of the candidates. The data of these studies are available from the website of the Hellenic National Election Studies ( and have been used in many national and international publications (e.g. Andreadis & Chadjipadelis 2008; Andreadis 2012; Andreadis 2015; Freire et al 2014; Teperoglou, Chadjipadelis and Andreadis 2010; Teperoglou & Andreadis 2012; Teperoglou et al 2014; Tsatsanis, Freire and Tsirbas, 2014; Kartsounidou 2014; Konstantinidou 2014). The candidate surveys have been conducted in Greece since 2007 by the laboratory of Applied Political Research of the school of Political Science of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (A.U.TH), relying on the Comparative Candidate Survey (CCS). Different survey modes have been used and in most cases a mixed-mode design was preferred, but most of the questionnaires are completed as web-surveys (Andreadis 2010). What is worth mentioning is that the MPs surveys are not conducted independently but as part of the Candidate survey, asking the elected MPs of the sample additional questions if needed. For instance, in the candidate survey of 2012 the elected MPs were asked the additional questions of the PARENEL Network. More specifically in 2007 the candidate survey was designed as a mixed-mode combining web surveys (main mode) and telephone interviews for those who have not completed the online questionnaire (auxiliary). The contact information was collected from the official websites of the two parties New Democracy and PASOK. Until the parliamentary elections of 2012 ND and PASOK were traditionally the two major governmental parties in Greece in a strict bipartisan system. The third party was the communist party (KKE) which is not willing to participate in surveys, the candidate MPs of KKE rarely run personal political campaigns and usually they do not have personal contact information (all the candidates share the shame address). Therefore, the research team decided the target population of the survey to consist only of the candidates of ND and PASOK. A list of about 700 candidates had been created, including their addresses and 700 invitations were sent via to each of them in order to participate to the survey. About one out of ten of these addresses was associated with some form of error. After seven reminders (one reminder every 2 weeks) 160 completed questionnaires were collected. The 241 total cases have been created with the addition of 81 completed questionnaires through the telephone interviews. In the candidate survey of 2009 also a mixed-mode design was used with a combination of web survey as the main mode and face-to face interviews. As in the candidate survey of 2007 also in the candidate survey of 2009 only the candidate MPs of ND and PASOK were invited to participate. PASOK as new government was occupied with many problems, the conservative party 5

6 (ND) had to elect a new leader and the other three parties of the Parliament have not been responsive to the invitations by the research team. The addresses were collected using an harvester (e.g. a computer program used to collect addresses) and since only the two major Greek parties had the addresses of their candidates and MPs on their websites, the sample consists only from PASOK and ND candidates and MPs. The total sample consists of 195 cases: 167 completed questionnaires from the web survey and 28 completed questionnaires through the phase-to phase interviews. The sample used in the second wave of data collection (face to face interviews) was selected among those candidates who had not responded to the first wave of data collection (web survey). A combination of web survey and phase-to phase interviews was used also in the candidate survey of Candidates and deputies received an initial invitation at the beginning of October 2012 and two reminders before the end of November 2012, only to candidates who had not completed the questionnaire until the time of the reminder. Candidates and MPs of ND, SYRIZA, PASOK and DIMAR participated to the survey Only 3 candidates from ANEL and 2 of GD completed the survey questionnaire since there was not publicly available contact information for most of them. After contacting the political leadership of GD it became clear that as with KKE, GD are also reluctant to participate to political survey, arguing that all the GD members share the shame opinions. As for the ANEL candidates it was very difficult to find information since it was a new born party established just before the election. The only available information was about the leader of the party (P.Kammenos) and some former party members of ND who moved to ANEL. The web survey received 327 completed questionnaires. There was a second phase (December 2012 to May 2013) involving face-to-face interviews, but the outcome was poor and obtained only ten new cases. Finally, the candidate survey of 2015 was conducted as a web survey from mid-february to end of July 2015 (Andreadis 2016; Andreadis & Kartsounidou, 2016; Kartsounidou & Andreadis 2015). The population of interest is the group of all candidates running with the five following parties: SYRIZA, ND, RIVER, PASOK, ANEL. GD and KKE candidates were excluded for the same reasons we have mentioned above in the description of the previous surveys. Two approaches were used in order to gather the addresses of the candidates. The first was a search for publicly available addresses on the Internet. The second approach was to contact the party leaderships in order to provide us with lists with the addresses of their candidates. The combination of these two approaches was very effective since addresses were gathered (1361 for the candidates and 258 for the elected MPs) which is a relatively large number given that the target population (all the candidate MPs) in theory comprises 2060 candidates. The 6

7 number of completed questionnaires after 3-5 reminders is 520. The sample includes 42 (8.1% of the sample) elected MPs and 478 non-elected candidates Following the AAPOR standards we can estimate the response rate as 520/1384=37.6% if we exclude the unknown eligibility cases or as 520/1476=35.2% if all cases are included. The selection of the target population of the Greek CCS has been determined by three factors: funds, significance of parties and availability of contact details. Due to the limited resources of the Greek CCS research team, the target population cannot include all the candidates of the 22 parties and party coalitions that participated in the Greek parliamentary elections of January The target population has thus been limited to the candidates of the larger parties. In addition, the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) and Golden Dawn (GD) have always and consistently refused to provide a list of addresses for their candidates. As a result, the Greek Candidate datasets could not include these parties. 3. Studies for Political Personnel of Local Authorities Opinion and attitudes of local government officials have been examined over the last decade. Main aim of one of these studies was to examine the relation between local government and citizens in the framework of the local government reform in Greece ( ; Chadjipadelis). A sample survey both to political personnel and citizens has been conducted. Sample: Citizens (2001:6000 respondents, 2002:2000 respondents) Mayors (2003: 488/1031) Several opinion polls show that local government is considered as the closest public institution to the citizens, but also an institution bearing characteristics of corruption and discriminating practices. Many elected officials in local government seem to misunderstand their democratic election as a free pass for selfish, partisan, clientelistic or even illegal practices. There are even cases, where local leaders try to justify their unscrupulous behaviour as a kind of local resistance against state bureaucrats and the Athens-centric governments The most recent reform in Local Governance in Greece has been accomplished by the program "Kallikrates" (Law.3852/2010). Greece consists of thirteen regions and 325 7

8 municipalities. Regional governors and mayors are elected every five years. According to the Articles 76, 77 and 78 of "Kallikrates", Municipal Consultation Committee, Supporter of Citizen and Enterprise and Immigrant Integration Council create the institutional framework which enables and encourage direct participation and intervention of active citizens in local governance and aims the strengthening of local democracy. The Municipal Consultation Committee is a collective consultative institution involving representatives of local stakeholders and citizens who, in public meetings consult on matters relating to the development programs, budget, local issues and operational action plans of the municipality. The Supporter of Citizen and Company, is an individual ombudsman elected by the City Council, mediates to resolve disputes arising between directly affected citizens or enterprises and municipal services. The Immigrant Integration Council refers to the participation of immigrants in public affairs of local self-governance. The Council aim to develop local actions to resolve conflicts issues of social exclusion and promote integration and harmonious coexistence with the rest of the population. However, during the first period of "Kallikrates" in municipalities majority, the above institutions failed to gain the mayors support or the citizens response and trust and didn t manage to act as check and balance mechanisms versus the mayor-centered system of local governance. The object of this research was to investigate why the three new-born institutions seem not to function or even exist in the municipalities majority. The data collected from interviews of 173 (out of 325) mayors. The analysis aims also to approach the function of the three meditative institutions between 2011 and (Tolika & Chadjipadelis, 2016) Mayors majority doesn t trust or feel insecurity about the 3 new institutions. The existence & function of the new 3 deliberative institutions depend on mayors opinion & support. There are no check & balance mechanisms in Local Governance in Greece. The legal framework sustains a mayor-centered administration system. 4. Other studies Pathways to Power: The Political Representation of Citizens of Immigrant Origin in Eight European Democracies 8

9 This is an ongoing international project which aims to study the presence of representatives of immigrant origin in national and regional parliaments and the activities of MPs. The study is carried out in Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain both at the national and, where appropriate, regional levels. The research team in each country collects data on all MPs, not only those of immigrant origin. The timeframe is from 1990 until the end of the latest completed legislative period for the national level and the latest completed legislative period for the regional parliaments. The main goal of the project is to provide an overview of the social and political profile of MPs, with a particular focus on identifying MPs of immigrant origin ( see European National Elites and the Eurozone Crisis (ENEC-2014) The ENEC-2014 is a research project aiming to evaluate the effects of the economic and political crisis affecting European countries (particularly those in the Eurozone) since 2008 upon the attitudes of national political (and, eventually, economic) elites towards the EU. Ten EU member states (Croatia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Portugal, Slovenia and Spain) are participating. The project is coordinated by José Real-Dato (University of Almería, Spain). The data collection centre is the Centre for the Study of Political Change (CIRCaP) of the University of Siena (Italy). (see for further details The Greek research team (Department of Political Science and Public Administration, University if Athens) has interviewed 74 Greek MPs between February and October 2014 (see Tsirbas & Sotiropoulos 2015). Findings One of the main comparative attempts was to examine the linkage between candidates to national parliaments and voters in harsh economic times in Greece and Portugal (Teperoglou et al. 2015). In both countries, the same battery of indicators both among the voters and the political elites was used. Among the main questions was the evaluation of the bailout agreements with the Troika (MoU: Memorandum of Understanding) and the austerity measures, the analysis on the perceptions of both the voters and the candidates on the issue of the responsibility for the crisis. A central research question was how congruent are voters and their representatives in each country in those evaluations, and what can explain the differential levels of congruence. 9

10 Comparison of the attitudes of political elites and voters for the economic crisis in Greece Comparing the positions of the Greek voters and candidates on the statement The government was wrong to accept the bailout from the Troika Agreement we can figure out that the majority of Greek voters hold a negative evaluation of the agreement (70 per cent strong agreed and agreed with this statement). Moreover, the results show that the bailout agreement is almost rejected by the majority of the candidates who contested for the 2012 elections (78 per cent strongly agreed and agreed with the statement). Moreover, the 76 per cent of ND candidates strongly agreed and agreed that was wrong for PASOK government to accept the MoU. Furthermore, it is also relative high among the group of centre- left candidates, in which belong those of the party (PASOK) that signed the first MoU (41 per cent). Overall, we can observe exceptionally high levels of congruence in Greece, possible because the candidates for the national elections of 2012 expressed very negative opinions towards the decision to accept the bailout agreement, even higher compared to their voters. Moving to the results on the issue of the responsibility for the crisis, the first main conclusion is that the candidates assign the greatest responsibility for the economic crisis to their national government and bankers, while fewer responsibilities are assigned to the European Union. The Support to EU Integration among the Greek Political Elites before and after the Bailout Agreements Prior to the explosion of the financial and economic crisis, there was an overwhelming consensus in Greece (with the exception of the Communist party) that both the membership is a good thing and that the country had been benefiting from the EC/EU. The bailout, the austerity packages and the solutions for the debt crisis are clearly eroding EU support for elites (and also for the voters). Negative evaluations of the Troika agreement are associated with less EU support, both for so-called instrumental support (EU membership) and for political support (further EU unification, evaluation of the performance of EU democracy). Moreover, the more leftist positions (extreme position in the left-right scale or pro state intervention values) are related with less EU support (Freire, Moury and Teperoglou 2015). 10

11 References Andreadis I. (2010) Web-based Political Surveys (Greek). Proceedings of the 23rd Panhellenic Statistics Conference: Statistics and Internet. Veroia, 7-11 April Andreadis I. (2012) Measuring satisfaction with democracy among candidates: What is the effect of the electoral outcome?, paper presented at the 2nd Plenary Conference of the CCS, MZES, University of Mannheim, January Andreadis I. (2016) The Greek Candidate Study 2015, Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research Andreadis, I. & Kartsounidou, E. (2016) Conducting a Candidate Study as a Web-Survey. Advantages, Challenges and Best Practices, Impact of Personal Vote on Internal Party Democracy, 1-2 July 2016, University Donja Gorica, in Podgorica, Montenegro. Andreadis, I. (2015) Estimating the position of political parties: comparison between an expert survey and a candidate survey, Presented at the Workshop on using Expert Judgement, Malta: 7-9 October 2015 and at the NECE conference, Thessaloniki October 2015 Andreadis, I. and Chadjipadelis, Th. (2008). Characteristics of Greek Parliament candidates. 58th Political Studies Association Annual Conference "Democracy, Governance and Conflict: Dilemmas of Theory and Practice", Swansea, UK, 1-3 April 2008, available online at: Dahl, Robert A., Democracy and Its Critics, New Haven: Yale University. Freire A., Lisi M., Andreadis I. and Leite Viegas JM (2014) Political representation in bailed-out Southern Europe: Greece and Portugal compared. South European Society and Politics, 19(4), Freire, A., Moury, C. and Teperoglou, E. (2014) The puzzle of attitudes towards European integration in Greece and Portugal under harsh economic times: comparing elites and citizens attitudes before and after the bailout agreements, South European Society and Politics, 19 (4), Hugely, J. and R.Gunther (eds.) (1992): Elites and Democratic Consolidation in Latin America and Southern Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kartsounidou E. (2014) Views on political issues both in Greece and Portugal, before and after the crisis: A Comparative Study. Master thesis, School of Political Sciences, Thessaloniki Kartsounidou, E., & Andreadis, I. (2015) Increasing the response rate of the Comparative Candidate Survey. Presented at DSC22015, Thessaloniki September

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13 Tsirbas, Y. & Sotiropoulos, D. A. (2015) What do Greek political elites think about Europe and the crisis? An exploratory analysis, GreeSE Paper No.93 Hellenic Observatory Papers on Greece and Southeast Europe 13