History strikes back: the role of national identity and religion in the Greek 2007 elections
Abstract
The 2007 election gave a lesson of history to the Greek political elite demonstrating that national identity can still dictate voters’ choices. This article analyses the failure of the 2004-2007 Minister of Education Ms. Giannakou to get re-elected in the first electoral district of Athens focusing on the impact of the ‘history book’ issue. Ms. Giannakou decided to defend her policy choice of the introduction of the new book while the government chose to follow blame avoidance tactics. That led to the isolation of the blame solely on the Minister of Education. The issue gained importance because of the Church’s polemic approach and the strategic choice of the political parties to oppose the introduction of the sixth grade history book.
The article uses three different approaches to explain the phenomenon: an institutional approach for the role of the Church and the media as political institutions, a cultural approach for the role of national identity on public opinion and finally the model of strategic choice for the role of political parties.
Greece’s electoral system that allows four choices of members of parliament in the first electoral district of Athens was also an important factor towards the blame allocation only on one person instead of the party of New Democracy as a whole. The paper, compares the above with religiosity and national identity data of the Greek society, in order to determine whether the latter still structuies party competition in modern Greece.
Article Details
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Κατσανίδου Α. (2015). History strikes back: the role of national identity and religion in the Greek 2007 elections. Science and Society: Journal of Political and Moral Theory, 21, 157–182. https://doi.org/10.12681/sas.456
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