Opportunities and challenges
The elections will be partly decided by the clash of two conflicting forces: The first is a centrifugal force – it originates from the crisis of Greece’s two-party system and pushes disaffected voters toward the minor parties which will attract a great deal of the protest vote. The other is centripetal: It is rooted in concerns over a weak government and is pushing voters toward the big parties. The latter trend is fanned by the absence of a convincing alternative, i.e. the fact that a transition to a workable coalition government is highly unlikely. ND and PASOK have both presented voters with a dilemma. Riding on the more favorable opinion polls, the conservative leader has warned that unless a strong, single-party government is formed, he will call for fresh elections. For his part, the Socialist leader has called on left-wing and generally disenchanted voters to sweep right-wing ND, as it were, out of power. Their shared ambition is to squeeze out the parties on the borders of the political spectrum and to sway middle-ground voters. That said, the share of the two mainstream parties is expected to be greater than in 2004. The cracks in the two-party system are too deep for the old recipes. A huge portion of the electorate feels deeply dissatisfied by the recurrent defeat of expectations. The crisis in the two-party system will not by itself bring about the overthrow of an unbearable conformist and decadent body politic. This crisis presents smaller parties both an opportunity and challenge. Unless they meet that challenge, they will only do service to the system they so passionately condemn. The prolonged absence of any convincing alternative has the effect of destabilizing the single-party system.
