As long as the state is still seen as the centre of economic activity in Greece, and public sector reforms are seen as anti-patriotic, real and lasting reforms will remain elusive

Why has Greece been consistently unable to implement a coherent austerity plan? While many commentators attribute this to the corruption of Greece’s political elites, Elpida Prasopoulou looks closely at Greece’s political discourse of the past four decades, and finds that it has been dominated by a populist version of social democracy that has positioned its people as the centre of all state activity, with any resistance to this economic order being seen as unpatriotic. Whether or not the sovereign debt crisis may be a sufficient enough opportunity for these ways of thinking to be overturned remains to be seen.