EU Priorities For Greeks, it is either the devil or the deep blue sea, argues Uri Dadush. How not to hold a referendum Referendums need clarity, which means outlining the consequences of each voting option. In the Greek referendum, none of these best practices are met, writes Dr Melanie Sully. Improving Greek democracy: The Swiss example Switzerland guarantees stable public finances by seeking public approval for every significant piece of finance legislation.
It is not clear which view will prevail. The EU mainstream hoped for a yes vote, not only because it would have represented democratic assent to the euro and acceptance of austerity, but also because the Tsipras government would have come under strong pressure to stand down. Eurozone confidence in Tsipras is at rock bottom and there is virtually zero faith that he will implement the reforms needed to secure cash even if he agrees to them. For his part, the fiery Greek leader as recently as Friday accused his eurozone creditors of blackmail, extortion, and seeking to humiliate his country.
Predicting what happens next in the five-year saga that has shaken the eurozone to its foundations is sheer guesswork. But the Greek vote is a huge blow to EU leaders, particularly the German chancellor, Angela Merkel , who has dominated the crisis management through her insistence on fiscal rigour and cuts despite a huge economic slump, soaring unemployment and the immiseration of most of Greek society. It depicted her sitting atop a Europe in ruins.
As the austerity rejectionists partied into the night, key Greek officials said they believed the Syriza victory strengthened their hand for further negotiations with the creditors since opinion polls also consistently show that Greeks want to stay in the euro and because there is no legal avenue for kicking a country out.
The chancellor and president also agreed that the referendum result should be respected, said the spokesman. Late Sunday night, European Council president Donald Tusk said he has called a eurozone summit for Tuesday to discuss the situation in Greece. Since Tsipras sprung his referendum on eurozone leaders just over a week ago, following an EU summit in Brussels, Merkel and Hollande have struck completely opposed positions.
The chancellor has closed down any prospect of negotiations until after the vote took place while the president had insisted on a quick agreement with Greece. The referendum was highly contested. Surprisingly, occupation and education mattered little for vote intention.
What we found particularly striking was that public sector employees had similar vote intentions to private sector employees, despite the fact that their salaries very much depend on overall public finances.
This is rather puzzling since the economy of non-urban and rural areas has been much less hit by the crisis, owing mostly to tourism and agriculture revenues as well as targeted transfers and subsidised prices. It should be noted, of course, that SYRIZA enjoys a strong organisational advantage in non-urban areas that arguably translated into higher campaign effectiveness.
Some may argue of course that islanders were also voting against the proposed elimination of their VAT exemptions. Despite this slew of evidence in favour of the narrative-based explanation, we also found some evidence supporting the material interest-based pocketbook voting approach.
First, in terms of social demographics, the strongest divisive lines were between age groups. In other words, the referendum gave expression to a seething intergenerational divide. What then explains this stark difference in vote intentions between younger and older people? Figure 3 shows that the age divide is, if anything, a preference-based divide. Another interesting piece of evidence that corroborates the importance of material interests is the average vote intention shown in Figure 2 of the age group, which mostly consists of employed people close to retirement.
A straightforward interpretation of this result is that the age group is very much against pension reform as this would lead to the extension of the minimum retirement age and the elimination of the possibility for early retirement. Those already in retirement 65 or older , however, are more worried about the possibility of a bankrupt state that cannot pay their pensions rather than any pension cuts stipulated by a new bailout agreement.
Second, we asked respondents whether the imposed bank holiday had affected their vote intention and about one fifth said that it had as shown in Figure 4. Overall, these results suggest that material concerns did in fact play into vote intentions over and above just partisan narratives. A first control group was asked whether it would be better for Greece to keep the euro or to introduce a national currency. Another group was told that, according to expert opinion, staying in the euro would require a few more months of pension cuts and tax increases, and a third group was informed that staying in the euro would require more years of austerity.
Interestingly, support for EMU membership is very high: a clear majority of respondents were willing to endure more years of austerity in order to keep the euro.
Again, this should be interpreted as evidence in favour of the material interests-based approach. The obtuse nature of this referendum very much reflects the distorted realities of globalisation in terms of political representation, democratic accountability, and freedom to choose one clear-cut policy programme or another.
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