Coalition-making under conditions of ideological mismatch: The populist solution

Introduction

Following the January 2015 Greek election, the radical right-wing Independent Greeks (ANEL) joined the radical left-wing SYRIZA in a coalition government, breaking the duopoly of Conservatives (New Democracy: ND) and Socialists (Panhellenic Socialist Movement: PASOK) that had dominated the nation’s politics since the mid-1970s. Having failed to fulfill its mandate of wresting the nation from the grip of international creditors, the government resigned in the summer of the same year. And yet, SYRIZA and ANEL emerged victorious from the September 2015 snap election, resuming their joint tenure for a total of four years.

Governments that incorporate radical-left and radical-right forces severely violate the principle of ideological adjacency that undergirds party system coalition theory and its empirical models, forcing us to seek alternative or complementary explanations to make sense of this extraordinary instance of coalition formation. Scholars of populism have attempted to solve the puzzle by stressing the common populist outlook of SYRIZA and ANEL. However, they have so far failed to illustrate how populist dynamics specifically induce cross-ideological partnerships, thus missing the opportunity to contribute toward refining existing coalition theory.

To fill the gap, this article problematizes the role of populist discourse and its interdependences within a broader constellation of non-spatial elements that facilitate ideologically mismatched coalitions by relaxing the strict requirements of ideological proximity. I begin by drawing on standard coalition theory to identify constraints that obstruct populist cohabitation in the executive arena. I then proceed to an empirical analysis of party strategy, policy platforms, campaign material, statements by elite actors, parliamentary speeches, and legislative voting behavior, to discuss how the deviant case of the SYRIZA–ANEL government calls into question the rigidity of our assumptions. The findings show that party elites can strategically utilize populist discourse to overcome spatial constraints that hinder coalition bargaining and executive action under normal conditions. However, it is also demonstrated that the political latitude of cross-ideological populist executives is ultimately finite and that breaching core ideological commitments can precipitate coalition breakdown.

Coalition theory and populist parties

European scholars have strongly emphasized ideological affinity as a condition for coalition formation and stability. As Sartori (1976: 122) holds, ‘feasible coalitions’ are ‘only the ones that are ideologically consonant and permissible’. Challenging the American school of minimal winning coalitions with its policy-blind game-theoretical assumptions of office-seeking behavior (Gamson, 1961; Riker, 1962), minimal range theorists posit that actors strive for policy preference maximization and thus promote ‘connected’ alliances with minimal dispersion on the left–right axis (De Swaan, 1973, 1975; Leiserson, 1966; also Axelrod, 1970). Ideologically adjacent parties readily signal agreement on fundamental programmatic visions, legitimizing their collaboration in the eyes of constituents while fostering policy coherence in office (Strom and Nyblade, 2007). A political actor is therefore expected to enter the bargaining fray ‘by looking for that partner with whom policy differences are minimal and require only marginal adjustment: his neighbor on the scale’ (De Swaan, 1973: 287), a process that benefits the median party (Laver and Schofield, 1990). Even when the condition of unidimensionality is relaxed in favor of multi-dimensional spatial analysis, policy-seeking behavior remains central in the literature (Laver and Shepsle, 1990), and ‘policy horizons’ – the boundaries parties are unwilling to breach – must exhibit considerable overlap for a coalition to materialize (Warwick, 2005). Moreover, it is claimed that the increasingly rigid institutional structure that regulates interaction between legislature and government in modern parliamentary democracies affords only weak agenda-setting powers to the executive, therefore accentuating the positional advantage of centrist formateurs (Tsebelis and Ha, 2014). Thus, coalitions that leapfrog over the median party and its immediate neighbors on a policy scale severely violate existing theory.

The voluminous literature on executive coalition formation largely abstains from discussing populist parties. Scarcity of empirical cases is an obvious culprit, aggravated by fundamental issues of theoretical incongruence. Populism is by nature office-seeking; as a discursive act, it carries a redemptive promise that can only materialize by winning power in the name of the people to unseat the ruling elite and restore popular sovereignty (Aslanidis, 2016a). However, the populist agenda evinces a highly erratic policy content (Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2008; Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser, 2013), thereby frustrating the methodological canon of minimal range analysis with its reliance on spatially demarcated party families. Lastly, their inherent anti-establishment credentials position populist parties away from the median, eliminating their chances to join minimal coalitions (cf. Doring and Hellstrom, 2013).

If classical minimal range theory struggles to account for populist parties that govern alongside mainstream parties, it altogether surrenders its explanatory potential when coalition governments are formed entirely of populist parties. As no populist party can capture the median position, minimal range conditionality entails that all-populist coalitions can only materialize if two (or more) ideologically congruent populist parties fully capture their side of the political spectrum, a highly unlikely outcome in at least relatively proportional electoral systems. Even if the mainstream party on the left or right becomes electorally subordinate to a populist party, it is still expected to command a non-negligible minority in the legislature that prohibits populist majority coalitions within its policy jurisdiction. Thus, a centrist quorum should guard against the scenario of two ideologically opposed populist parties burrowing their way toward policy adjacency. A cross-ideological populist coalition is considered extraordinary precisely because it involves leapfrogging over a number of kindred parties in an ordinal policy scale, be it economic or cultural in nature.

To summarize, all-populist coalitions are exceptional in multiparty parliamentary democracies because:

These theoretically insuperable constraints are empirically challenged by deviant cases of all-populist coalitions in European multiparty systems. The M5S–Lega government in Italy (2018–2019) and the SYRIZA–ANEL governments in Greece (2015, 2015–2019) are two such rare instances. The short-lived M5S–Lega coalition is somewhat justified by the peculiar ideological character of the Movimento 5 Stelle, whose internal factions can be seen as cancelling each other out to produce a counter-intuitive median position, thus allowing some programmatic convergence with the populist radical-right Lega (Pirro, 2018). The Greek case is far more puzzling, as the antipodal ideological origins of the two cohabitants were not only well known to voters, but openly acknowledged and emphasized by respective party elites. Despite the spatial distance separating them on major axes of political competition, SYRIZA and ANEL formed non-minimal winning coalitions twice (in January and September 2015), both times ‘open’ in the sense of having leaped over three and four (respectively) intermediary parties on the left–right axis. Their alliance thus violates core principles of coalition theory, comprising an anomaly that begs analysis due to the capacity of deviant cases to highlight overlooked causal mechanisms and foster theory development (George and Bennett, 2005).

The empirical analysis in the following sections is perforce theory-driven to problematize major factors that escape standard theory. The calculus of coalition-making has plausibly been influenced by the sociopolitical upheaval of the Greek crisis and the collapse of partisan commitments (Tsatsanis and Teperoglou, 2020); the well-established populist characteristics of the coalition members (Pappas, 2019; Stavrakakis and Katsambekis, 2014) may have contributed symbolic building blocks to bridge the structural gaps posed by minimal range theory; intra-party dynamics, factionalism, and personal agenda-setting can elucidate what spatial analysis leaves unexplained (Andreadis and Stavrakakis, 2017).

These factors are explored using data from official policy platforms, campaign material, parliamentary speeches, party elite statements, and legislative voting behavior to inform an intensive qualitative analysis of party strategy and elite motivations. While modest in its claims of transferability, this interpretive approach contextualizes the actions of power-seeking political agents, thus helping us overcome the limitations of statistical modeling in explaining specific coalitional outcomes (Andeweg et al., 2011). The aim is to produce triangulated explanations of political decisions to formulate a causal argument that remains sensitive to political agency without going as far as psychoanalyzing our subjects. By investigating the layered interactions of ideological commitments, strategic considerations, electoral positioning, institutional constraints, and symbolic-discursive activity, I hope to contribute toward a cross-fertilization of populism studies and coalition theory.

Accordingly, the case study is split into four sections that analyze successively: (a) the political setting fostering the emergence of populist contenders; (b) the coalitional logic of the two parties in January 2015; (c) the reasons for the partnership’s endurance; and (d) the causes of the coalition’s collapse in January 2019.

The lead-up to the coalition

Just as the Greek sovereign debt crisis was picking up steam, PASOK won the October 2009 election by a landslide (Pappas, 2010). The Greek government soon reneged on its anti-austerity electoral pledges and in May 2010 Prime Minister Papandreou signed a painful bailout agreement with international creditors. Despite a better-than-expected performance in the November 2010 regional election, the Socialists’ unprecedented austerity measures ultimately eroded their electoral base (Karyotis and Rudig, 2015). Beset with a worsening fiscal and economic outlook and suffering increasing desertions among his lawmakers, Papandreou resigned in November 2011 to a coalition government under a non-elected technocrat, former European Central Bank (ECB) Vice-President Papademos, to facilitate a second bailout agreement. The Conservatives of ND, under their new leader Antonis Samaras, had until that point held an obstinate anti-bailout position. However, facing immense international pressure to support the technocratic solution, Samaras switched camps to ally with PASOK and the radical-right Popular Orthodox Rally (LAOS) (Tsakatika, 2016). This U-turn effected a major dislocation in the political system as the two former arch-rivals became joined at the hip and the left–right cleavage in Greek society, traditionally represented by PASOK and ND, surrendered its capacity to structure electoral behavior. Trust in political parties sank to a 5% all-time low (Bosco and Verney, 2012) and the violent disruption of partisan allegiances pushed pollsters to predict the imminent demise of Greek two-partyism (MARC, 2011). Activists, including those of the Greek indignados movement, who in previous months had propounded a populist narrative that pitted ‘the people’ against creditors and their domestic disciples, felt greatly vindicated, and voters began to adjust to the anti-/pro-bailout divide (Aslanidis, 2016b; Dinas and Rori, 2013; Hutter et al., 2018).

Panos Kammenos, the most vociferous anti-bailout politician in the ND caucus, seized the opportunity to spin off a new political vehicle and attract defecting Conservatives (Fielitz, 2019). Following his denunciation of the second bailout agreement in February 2012, Kammenos was ousted from ND and promptly established ANEL. With ND and LAOS now firmly anchored to the pro-bailout club, ANEL provided ballast from the right to a fledgling populist camp that aspired to represent the four out of five Greeks opposing successive bailouts (Public Issue, 2012). The other flank was dominated by SYRIZA, a formerly marginal anti-establishment party of the radical left (Moschonas, 2013) whose increasingly populist transformation had boosted its electoral potential (Font et al., 2019), albeit at the cost of losing its moderate faction that spun off to form the Democratic Left (DIMAR) in mid-2010.

Blame articulation is crucial to explaining populism’s ascendancy in the Greek political imaginary (Capelos and Exadaktylos, 2017; Karyotis and Rudig, 2015; Ladi and Tsagkroni, 2019; Vasilopoulou et al., 2014). Bailout agreements – the so-called Memoranda – with the Troika of creditors (the ECB, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the European Commission) were criticized in three ways. First, they were seen as the product of an incompetent political establishment that lacked the rudimentary skills to serve Greek interests. Second, since no party had received a mandate to relinquish control of state finances and social policy to the Troika, bailouts were seen as betraying the democratic principle of popular sovereignty. Third, these bailouts suggested an affront to national sovereignty: state assets were auctioned off, the defensive capacity of the armed forces was undercut by austerity, and foreign officials dictated governmental decision-making. It was the interweaving of these latter two types of rhetoric that characterized SYRIZA and ANEL, the former placing more weight on the populist diagnosis and the latter on the nationalist perspective.

As a result, at the start of 2012, with new elections looming in May, the fragmented party system acquired a new bimodal profile that severely challenged established wisdom on coalition-making scenarios. Anti-bailout forces spurned pro-bailout parties and the latter adopted an equally polarizing anti-populist discourse (Stavrakakis and Katsambekis, 2018). Combined with the absence of a sizeable centrist kingmaker, these irreconcilable dynamics nurtured cross-ideological tactical alliances. Conservatives and Socialists abstained from mutual attacks to jointly portray populist forces as an existential threat to the nation. Similarly, SYRIZA and ANEL mobilized an uncompromising attack against the ‘old system’.

In contrast to their ideologically converging mainstream foes, the shared populist veneer of SYRIZA and ANEL was inadequate to disguise stark differences on almost every policy dimension in their electoral manifestos. These differences were accentuated by the specific structuration of Greek ideological space: due to historical and sociopolitical factors, the left–right dimension in Greek politics is governed primarily by cultural dispositions at the voter level, with positioning on welfare distribution and other materialistic grievances taking a back seat (Tsatsanis et al., 2014). The populist discourse of the two parties did converge on the anti-bailout theme, yet their positioning on cultural aspects (e.g. religion, family, law and order, national identity) remained antipodal.

SYRIZA’s 2012 campaign slogan was the textbook populist ‘It’s either Us or Them.’ Its youthful leader, Alexis Tsipras, railed against ‘the circumscribed system of power that provided for the rotten, beholden, corrupt, and disreputable, political establishment’ represented by the ND–PASOK duopoly (Tsipras, 2012). SYRIZA pledged to annul the bailout agreements, set a moratorium on sovereign debt payments, restore minimum wages to pre-crisis level, reinstate collective wage-bargaining, socialize the banking system, and forgive household debt. Moreover, the leftists pledged to expand the safety net to protect vulnerable groups such as the homeless, the unemployed, the disabled, and single-parent families. The tax code would be recalibrated to target the wealthy, eliminate decades-old tax breaks for shipping magnates, and tax the Greek Orthodox Church. The cosmopolitan, pacifist, and anti-nationalist values that SYRIZA had traditionally stood for (Katsourides, 2016) were reflected in policy planks promising health coverage and a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, diplomatic rapprochement with Turkey and other neighboring states, and the elimination of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) military bases on Greek soil (SYRIZA, 2012).

ANEL adopted the slogan ‘We are Many, We are Independent, We are Greeks.’ Their founding declaration fused together nationalist, jingoist, nativist, and populist themes, and prioritized national independence, popular sovereignty, and the upholding of the Constitution (ANEL, 2012). The party would defend the sovereignty of the nation-state at the European Union (EU) level, unilaterally declare an Exclusive Economic Zone in the surrounding seas (a pet theme amongst Greek nationalists), and demand German reparations for the Nazi occupation of 1941–1945. Other core aims included preserving privileges associated with the Greek Orthodox Church and institutionalizing direct democratic methods. ANEL held an ambivalent economic position, nominally in support of free market capitalism while allowing heavy doses of protectionism: ‘We believe in rational growth governed by the principles of the free market, with a fair distribution of its products’, its declaration stated, but ‘a free market that is not undermined and defamed by the current economic terrorism of loan sharks and speculators’. Its stance vis-à-vis the EU is better described as soft-Euroskepticism: in favor of a united Europe but with a watered-down federal framework. The party advocated strict immigration policies predicated on an immigrant quota of 2.5% of the general population that prioritized nationals from the EU, North America, and Oceania, while forcibly deporting all illegal immigrants within four years (ANEL, 2013). Education policy would be geared toward strengthening national identity, while modernist ‘historical inaccuracies’ would be purged from schoolbooks, and the curriculum of the Muslim minority in Greece was to be ‘Hellenized’. The armed forces would remain vigilant against the Turkish threat, and future United Nations (UN) reunification plans for Cyprus would be rejected. ¹

Despite these glaring ideological differences, Tsipras openly entertained a post-electoral alliance with ANEL, raising concern among SYRIZA cadres with less flexible political instincts. However, it was too early to put that scenario to the test. The twin elections of May–June 2012 produced first a hung parliament and then a coalition government comprised of ND, PASOK, and DIMAR, headed by Conservative leader Samaras, with SYRIZA and ANEL in the opposition (Mavris, 2012). ²

As Greeks aligned themselves further with the pro-/anti-bailout cleavage during the next two-and-a-half years, the two sides kept denouncing each other as either irresponsible populists or cynical traitors. Nevertheless, the anti-bailout camp gathered enough steam to win the next electoral round. The following section analyzes the policy positioning of SYRIZA and ANEL prior to the January 2015 election, the strategic imperatives that informed their decision to band together, and how this cooperation was made palatable to both party elites and voters.

SYRIZA–ANEL government formation

As the Samaras (ND) government lacked the constitutionally mandated parliamentary supermajority to elect a new President of the Republic (a largely ceremonial post), a snap election – the fourth in as many years – was set for 25 January 2015. With SYRIZA having easily won the May 2014 European election, the victory of the anti-bailout camp had become a foregone conclusion. The remaining question was whether SYRIZA would pull off a majority or require a coalition partner.

For this campaign, SYRIZA and ANEL’s populist themes were qualified by fresh strategic imperatives. Having learned from the lesson of 2012, SYRIZA was struggling to convince Greeks of its electability on the basis of an alternative plan of action that preserved anti-bailout radicalism while dispelling the specter of Grexit which both ND and PASOK were raising (Katsambekis, 2016). To this end, Tsipras had been systematically dialing down his anti-Troika discourse, especially when interacting with international stakeholders. Removing the stigma of extremism from his party also served to woo center-left voters who were warming to SYRIZA but sought assurances against unilateral debt-related actions (Katsourides, 2016). Thus, the pledge to ‘oust the Troika’ was nominally retained, but the position on existing bailout arrangements switched from annulment to renegotiation. Recalcitrant mottos were replaced by a message of optimism: ‘Hope is on the way: Greece is moving ahead, Europe is changing’ (SYRIZA, 2015). The dire socioeconomic situation was framed as a ‘humanitarian crisis’, necessitating growth-inducing policies instead of austerity, accompanied by a grace period on debt repayment and a ‘European New Deal’. Still, Tsipras mobilized a populist imagery of a ‘triangle of collusion’ against his political enemies, its corners occupied by pro-bailout political parties, economic oligarchs, and bankers. Against these elites SYRIZA championed honesty and integrity: ‘We count on you, the sovereign people’, its manifesto assured readers, ‘not on businessmen, bankers, or media moguls . . . nor on the oligarchy or the entrenched interests’ (SYRIZA, 2015).

Contrary to SYRIZA’s upward trajectory, ANEL’s support was eroding. Following an underwhelming performance in the recent European election, most pollsters ranged ANEL under the 3% threshold of parliamentary representation. Having burnt his bridges with ND, Kammenos’ chances of political survival appeared slim in a polarized political environment where the specter of a ‘wasted vote’ could seal his party’s fate. He thus urged his support base to amend its voting calculus in anticipation of a specific coalition outcome: ANEL would share office with SYRIZA in a cross-ideological anti-bailout government, with the junior partner functioning as a steward of traditional conservative values and a backstop against leftist domination.

The strategy had a credible basis as high-ranking SYRIZA elites consistently refrained from ruling out post-electoral cooperation with ANEL. According to some accounts, an informal power-sharing agreement had been struck with Tsipras as early as March 2013 (Papadopoulos, 2019). Kammenos later disclosed that while in opposition the two men had cultivated a mutual appreciation which frequently translated into coordinated political activity (Kammenos, 2015a). In the same interview, he further revealed that prior to the election Tsipras pledged to partner with ANEL irrespective of whether SYRIZA would win an outright majority.

Working with that baseline scenario, ANEL tailored their narrative to fit middle-class right-wing voters who craved a populist anti-bailout government yet were ideologically skittish of leftist hardliners taking control of the state. Helping ANEL to achieve parliamentary representation and become a junior coalition partner, these voters were not wasting their ballots; on the contrary, they were gaining disproportionate veto powers. ANEL would ‘guarantee the creation of a government that respects our stated “lines in the sand” and prohibit the formation of an arrogant SYRIZA single-party government’ (Kammenos, 2015b). The famous ‘lines in the sand’ – issues for which ANEL would not hesitate to topple the government – involved a hardline foreign policy against Turkey and North Macedonia, retaining the status quo on church–state relations, curbing immigration, and protecting private property and entrepreneurs from excessively redistributive taxes (Kammenos, 2015c), thereby signaling the resolve to neutralize the internationalist, secular, and cosmopolitan ‘danger’ that SYRIZA represented for the Greek right. Thus, prospective ANEL voters were given assurances that policy payoffs would not escape the overlapping area between the two parties.

Adding to ANEL’s image as the ultimate right-wing veto-player, Kammenos assumed the posture of the mature and experienced politician (he had been a parliamentarian since 1993) who would reign in the puerile enthusiasm of the 40-year-old Tsipras. ANEL’s most successful campaign spot was filmed at a toy store and featured a toddler named Alexis struggling to keep his toy train from falling off a track. Kammenos intervened to take little Alexis onto his lap, placing his own right hand onto the remote and proceeding to advise the boy in a warm, fatherly tone to ‘always control for speed . . . so that the train does not derail’. The ad concluded with the party’s new campaign motto: ‘The Independent Greeks: a necessary good’ (a play on words with the expression ‘necessary evil’).

SYRIZA won the January 2015 election, falling just two seats short of an absolute majority. Against all odds, ANEL won parliamentary representation with 13 lawmakers. ND and PASOK controlled a combined 89 seats, a historic low. The SYRIZA–ANEL government was announced the morning after the election but, contrary to international common practice in coalition formation, no formal negotiations over a binding programmatic contract took place (Tsatsanis and Teperoglou, 2020). ANEL’s ‘lines in the sand’ remained deliberately uninstitutionalized.

To counter critics of their ideologically mismatched coalition the two leaders mobilized populist themes and a rhetorical commitment to national conciliation. While the SYRIZA apparatus celebrated the nation’s first true ‘government of the Left’, PM Tsipras cautiously framed it as a government of ‘social salvation’. The executive represented ‘the people’s voice’ in office: ‘We are flesh from the flesh of the people. We emerged from the pages of the history of this people and we will thus serve it to the end’, he declared in his inaugural parliamentary speech (Tsipras, 2015). Kammenos opted for the label ‘government of national unity’, stressing that ‘a government of a nation under attack is obliged to unite all Greeks, irrespective of left-wing or right-wing allegiances’ and that contrary to the outgoing government which had ‘relinquished its powers to the employees of the Troika’, the SYRIZA–ANEL coalition would ‘restore power to the people’ and reinstate ‘national sovereignty, democracy, the Constitution, and dignity among citizens’ (Kammenos, 2015d).

The 40-seat-strong cabinet included 5 ANEL members, their portfolios carefully allocated to both fit the ‘spheres of influence’ narrative and to help the party make inroads with the traditional ND voter base (e.g. by taking command of tourism and agricultural policy). Most importantly, the portfolio of National Defense went to Kammenos, whose pro-American credentials assured international stakeholders that NATO bases in Greece would not be threatened. Kammenos could boast of personally monitoring the anti-militaristic radicalism of his leftist partners while using his position to tighten ANEL’s grasp on the large electoral clientele of the military forces. Tsipras installed watchdog junior ministers to contain the political embarrassment of handing over the army to a nationalist hawk.

The loudly dissonant policy signaling of the two parties renders their eventual partnership absurd from the standpoint of traditional coalition theory. However, the coalition becomes intelligible if we relax our commitment to the principle of policy coherence maximization (operationalized via elite-declared ideological positions) and adopt a more nuanced perspective that accounts for intra-party dynamics, voter–elite congruence, and symbolic articulations. Kammenos was desperately grooming himself for office, yet Tsipras did not irrationally or grudgingly resign to a suboptimal outcome. ³ On the contrary, ANEL was consciously leveraged by Tsipras to offset a radical faction within SYRIZA that stubbornly inhibited the young leader’s efforts to rebrand his party as a center-left political force, thereby moderating his own image as a firebrand while – in the long run – eliminating other contenders (PASOK and DIMAR) on this side of the political spectrum (Kioupkiolis and Katsambekis, 2018).

Rapidly transitioning from the margins to political center stage, SYRIZA was facing a damaging asymmetry between ideologically obstinate party elites and swelling ranks of moderate constituents that threatened the party’s electoral growth and sustainability (Karyotis et al., 2014). Closing this lag had been Tsipras’ preoccupation since his defeat in 2012 (Kouvelakis, 2016), a daunting task given that radical vanguardists held important posts within the party apparatus and dominated its organic links with civil society (social movements, student organizations, trade unions, etc.). Based on candidate surveys and public opinion data, Andreadis and Stavrakakis (2017) have shown that the middle-class constituency that Tsipras was inheriting from PASOK was more proximate to the median position of ANEL candidates than those of SYRIZA (see also Karyotis et al., 2014). Caught between a rock and a hard place, it made good tactical sense for Tsipras to find an external counterweight for his party’s ideological baggage. This role befitted ANEL better than any other party, given the constraints of the pro-/anti-bailout divide.

As the constituents of the two populist parties were generally much closer in their views than their leaders would care to acknowledge, an alliance could be made palatable if ideocrats within SYRIZA could be held in check (Andreadis and Stavrakakis, 2017). Populist discourse thus perfectly served Tsipras’ office-seeking agenda during the campaign. First, it delivered electorally: the ‘people versus elites’ trope matched the anti-establishment instincts of voters disillusioned by the two-party system. At the same time, populism’s common-denominating nature consoled ideocrats by retaining some leftist elements despite eschewing workerist and anti-capitalist terminology that alienated the bulk of prospective voters. Hard-core SYRIZA militants were not jubilant with Tsipras’ policy-evasive language and the right-wing drift it could be concealing, but populist agitprop palliated their rebelliousness, postponing the inevitable showdown into the future.

However, once in office, Tsipras would surely face immense pressure from his numerous policy-seeking radical lawmakers to finally show his hand, risking the viability of his government and his party’s integrity. Choosing ANEL as partner, Tsipras could neutralize the maximalists in his caucus by constantly invoking the danger of his right-wing junior partner pulling the trigger on the whole government. Externally, sharing office with a party whose political personnel mostly originated in ND, and whose leader was a pro-American conservative bourgeois, also served to assuage fears, both in Greece and abroad, that Tsipras was hostage to the party’s vanguardists who planned to derail the upcoming debt negotiation and push Greece out of the Eurozone and the EU. ⁴

To further signal normalization and continuity with ‘healthy’ elements of the old establishment, Tsipras did not only systematically recruit former PASOK lawmakers prior to the election (Kouvelakis, 2016), but also set up a backchannel of communication with ND’s former President and PM (2004–2009), Kostas Karamanlis, nephew of the party’s historic founder and ringleader of the populous centrist faction within ND (To Vima, 2015). ⁵ To seal the alliance, Tsipras installed Prokopis Pavlopoulos, a conservative legal scholar and ND lawmaker since 1996, as President of the Republic immediately after winning power. The choice of Pavlopoulos, whose unwavering loyalty to the Karamanlis faction was well known throughout the country, was an unequivocally conciliatory gesture toward establishment forces both domestically and abroad. It also served ANEL’s strategy of casting itself as the new vessel of Greek Conservatism as, according to Kammenos, ND had since 2010 fallen under the influence of a far-right faction headed by Samaras that was navigating the party away from its core values. ⁶

So far, it has been shown how two radical anti-bailout parties, one on the left and one on the right, relied on a shared populist imaginary to prepare the ground for an unusual political alliance. The Greek case is thus a powerful example of how populist discourse can energize new political configurations and override the principle of policy adjacency put forth by minimal range theory. The next section discusses how the two parties managed to remain in power despite failing in their mission to abolish bailout-induced austerity.

Sustaining the populist coalition

The renegotiation of the second bailout agreement, headed by Finance Minister Varoufakis, overshadowed other policy initiatives during the first half of 2015. Leading up to the summer of the same year, the government’s popularity climbed to well over 80% (Public Issue, 2015). Yet the fateful July referendum posed an existential threat to the coalition.

Prior to winning power, SYRIZA and ANEL had mobilized a similar populist frame: the elites of the old system betrayed the people by signing bailouts that benefitted creditors and destroyed the nation’s prospects for economic recovery. The natural policy initiatives emanating from this framing should have been the legal denunciation of the memoranda, the reversal of their detrimental effects on the population, and the pursuit of a revised and improved agreement. Nevertheless, these vague goals were not easily translatable into a coherent action plan. A unilateral break with the Troika could escalate into exiting the Eurozone, or, even worse, the EU itself. Unfavorable public opinion towards the EU and the Eurozone had risen tremendously, though only a minority advocated for outright Grexit, thus constraining the government’s actions and eliminating its blackmail potential in dealing with the Troika (Clements et al., 2014; Walter et al., 2018). ⁷ Conversely, failure to negotiate a substantial haircut of sovereign debt or at least a generous reduction of the budget surpluses demanded by the Troika would enrage anti-bailout voters who would see this as yet another betrayal of their democratically expressed opinion. This posed an unsolvable riddle for the representatives of the anti-bailout camp, as any decision involved significant political cost.

When negotiations stalled in July 2015, PM Tsipras – with the full backing of Kammenos – resorted to calling a referendum. Despite a 61.3% anti-bailout vote, Tsipras shocked the nation by deciding to accept a third bailout under the Troika’s conditions. With the ECB’s unlimited leverage on the weak domestic banking system and the imposition of capital controls just a few days prior to the referendum, the government’s negotiation strategy was overpowered.

The two coalition leaders decided to change tack to a watered-down anti-establishment stance for domestic audience consumption, while working within the stringent institutional confines of the Troika. ⁸ ANEL lawmakers supported the decision but SYRIZA’s ultra-left faction broke ranks, costing the government its parliamentary majority. Ultimately, the bailout was ratified with support from opposition lawmakers. An immediate government reshuffle rewarded ANEL’s loyalty with an extra cabinet seat, followed by a call for another snap election to refresh the popular mandate. In the brief election campaign that followed, SYRIZA and ANEL switched from moderate populist radicalism to outright damage control. The government, went the narrative, did its best to secure an ‘honorable compromise’ but had to yield under the pressure of superior forces; it was now seeking a new mandate to ensure that the implementation of the third bailout agreement would be as painless as possible for the poor and underprivileged classes.

To this end, SYRIZA employed a slogan loosely translated as ‘We get rid of the past, we win the future.’ Having drunk from the same poisoned chalice, SYRIZA could no longer criticize PASOK and ND for their pro-bailout stance. The populist divide of people versus elites was substituted for a toned-down contrast between ‘old’ parties and ‘new’ political forces (Hutter et al., 2018). Returning to class politics, Tsipras promised a ‘parallel program’ of social transfers to arrest the deterioration of the lower strata of society and to distribute the burden of austerity more fairly than previous bailout administrations.

ANEL relied once more on the little Alexis theme. This time, the spot featured Kammenos sitting anxiously in a hospital waiting-room while a doctor treated Alexis’ fractured left forearm (a reference to the traumatic failure of the negotiation with the Troika). When the boy came out and asked how he could go on writing with a broken limb, Kammenos responded: ‘I will show you how to write equally well with your right hand’, thus drawing attention to the need for an experienced right-wing politician in office to steer a rookie leftist PM away from trouble. The party squarely put the blame on SYRIZA for the strategic blunders of the negotiation, yet Kammenos publicly supported the final agreement and declared his wish to continue working with SYRIZA, whose leader had ‘proven an honest partner, a man with whom we may disagree on several issues . . . but he kept his part of the deal and showed respect for our “lines in the sand” ’ (2015e). ANEL’s unusually concise manifesto emphasized the need for social and political stability to navigate the successful implementation of the third bailout and called for a government that ‘protects our national identity, our cultural traditions, and our religion’ (ANEL, 2015). The party, as a ‘necessary good’, was now ‘more necessary than ever’.

The incumbents’ electoral strategy arguably worked. Suffering minimal losses, SYRIZA and ANEL formed a new coalition in September 2015. Their supporters’ frustrated hopes of exiting austerity were relatively counterbalanced by a lingering animosity against establishment parties and the resolution that, despite his policy failures, Tsipras ‘fought the good fight’; his heroic downfall was mainly due to the sheer magnitude of the powers arrayed against him (Katsanidou and Reinl, 2020; Tsatsanis and Teperoglou, 2016). Thus, ANEL retained its five cabinet posts and Tsipras finally managed to rid SYRIZA of the militants who constantly sabotaged his plan to dominate the center-left.

During their second tenure, Tsipras and Kammenos continued to use each other as an excuse for a watered-down implementation of core programmatic commitments. Critics were cautioned against jeopardizing the delicate balance of the coalition as that would play into the hands of a pro-bailout establishment lying in wait to destabilize the government. Kammenos was allowed to defend his lines in the sand whenever SYRIZA MPs challenged them, thereby scoring points with his electoral base. Tsipras had to fire his Minister of Education in November 2016 when ANEL and the head of the Greek Orthodox Church denounced his anti-nationalist statements and his progressive views on church–state relations. Following the cabinet reshuffle, an ANEL deputy was added as a watchdog junior minister.

The parliament functioned as the main arena for the public display of ideological purity by the two parties’ backbenchers. SYRIZA had the monopoly of legislative initiative and ANEL lawmakers never dissented on ratifying the fiscal bills that still dominated the agenda. However, they systematically broke ranks when conservative social values were at stake. SYRIZA was able to overcome this problem by passing socially progressive legislation with the support of opposition MPs on an ad hoc basis. For instance, ANEL voted against the construction of a mosque for Muslim citizens and immigrants in Athens (in May 2015 and again in August 2016), claiming that Muslim immigrants had proven ‘unassimilable’ and ‘maladaptive’ to the western way of life and prone to commit acts of terrorism. ‘We are the “necessary good” in this government’, an ANEL lawmaker claimed, ‘and we thus feel bound to admonish its mistakes’ (Hellenic Parliament, 2015a: 2820). A few months later, several ANEL MPs disagreed with giving members of the LGBTQ community the right to sign cohabitation agreements. According to MP Kokkalis, the measure was unconstitutional since it would inevitably allow LGBTQ individuals to adopt children, thus undermining ‘the role of the family as the foundation of the nation’s survival and proliferation’, as enshrined in the Greek Constitution (Hellenic Parliament, 2015b: 4197).

In February 2016, three ANEL hardliners voted down the full incorporation into Greek law of landmark European Directive 2000/43, which combats discrimination in education, the workplace, social security, and healthcare. Invoking his identity as a Greek patriot and Christian, MP Kitsikis argued that states should regulate the free expression of sexual orientation to adhere to established moral norms and proceeded to dispute whether ‘a transsexual person can be an educator’ or ‘a gay person a baby-sitter’ (Hellenic Parliament, 2016: 2435). As with the previous cases of ideological dissent within the coalition, SYRIZA was obliged to defend the fundamental assumptions behind its partnership with ANEL. The Minister of Justice claimed that the two parties had ‘never concealed their disagreements, the fact that we are a party of the radical left while ANEL is a party of conservative principles’ and that partnerships always contain the element of partial disagreements which, in the spirit of freedom of expression, should be allowed not only to exist, but also to be freely put forth (Hellenic Parliament, 2016: 2662).

Resorting to such stratagems, SYRIZA and ANEL publicly defended their policy commitments at the small cost of a carefully orchestrated display of harmless disunity. The personal connection between the two leaders was kept from the fray. Kammenos would strategically absent himself whenever such controversial, human-rights-related, bills were on the agenda by scheduling various official trips abroad. Leaving the dirty work to backbenchers, ANEL could still pose as a stronghold of conservatism, while their leader’s abstention dampened any pressure on the government’s higher echelons.

Endgame: the Macedonian issue

The strategy of tactical dealignment on sociocultural matters of policy worked well for SYRIZA and ANEL. The former was able to adhere to core aspects of its humanitarian agenda with the help of progressive members of the opposition while the latter could generally deflect the blame for facilitating the erosion of conservative values. The government remained otherwise consistent in its populist denunciation of ‘old’ parties. However, the strategy reached its limits when Tsipras decided to realize his plan of resolving the long-standing naming dispute with the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM). In so doing he was deliberately violating a core ideological commitment of his coalition partner.

Since the dissolution of Yugoslavia, successive Greek governments refused to recognize FYROM by its constitutional name, using their institutional weight to block the small nation’s accession to EU and NATO (Kofos, 1999). Liberal and left-wing voices that sought a compromise with the neighboring country were vastly outnumbered by nationalists who championed an obstinate stance (Armakolas and Siakas, 2021). From an office-seeking perspective, Tsipras prioritized the signing of the so-called Prespa Agreement in order to tactically bolster the coalition’s electoral prospects. Solving the name dispute under the auspices of the UN to open a path of EU/NATO accession for the Republic of North Macedonia (as the small nation would be called henceforth), Tsipras hoped to dispel the last remnants of his stigma as a radical, solidifying his image as a responsible center-left European leader. Following the familiar script, Kammenos would openly declare his fierce opposition while the government would once again rely on progressive members of parliament (MPs) of the opposition to ratify the agreement.

The win-win scenario would be further enhanced by the political damage expected to be inflicted on ND. The Conservatives were since January 2016 under the reign of Kyriakos Mitsotakis, leader of the party’s liberal faction and son of former PM Konstantinos Mitsotakis, whose early attempt to solve the Macedonian issue had been sabotaged in 1992 by his then Minister of Foreign Affairs, Antonis Samaras, a spat that precipitated the overthrow of his administration (Featherstone, 1994). Failure to support the agreement would encourage detractors to paint the younger Mitsotakis as a coward and a traitor to his late father’s progressive foreign policy legacy. In the international arena, his image as a liberal politician would be tarnished by his irresponsible fanning of ultra-nationalist fervor. Backing the agreement would also cost Mitsotakis dearly. With ND’s nationalist-minded electoral base severely disillusioned, Conservative hardliners, such as former PM Samaras (whose political career was still hallmarked by the 1992 affair) would rise to challenge the liberal faction. As ND would go into a political tailspin, a critical mass of Conservative voters should flock to ANEL, thereby helping the latter to comfortably cross the 3% electoral threshold.

The Prespa Agreement, originally signed on 17 June 2018, was indeed ratified with the help of opposition lawmakers, but prior to its ratification the nationalist backlash had reached unexpected proportions in the streets. Mitsotakis wavered only briefly before deciding to place electoral expediency over liberal pretensions and adopt an ethnocentric position (Skoulariki, 2021). ND contributed considerable resources and several of its MPs personally attended numerous nationalist rallies throughout Greece during 2018, putting immense pressure on ANEL, whose rank and file was demanding the immediate overthrow of the government.

When it became fully obvious that the plan had backfired it was already too late for Tsipras and Kammenos. At the behest of the latter, the Minister of Foreign Affairs was fired in October, with Tsipras himself assuming the portfolio. However, this failed to stem the tide of disaffection and the ANEL caucus began to disintegrate. Kammenos announced his party’s final withdrawal from the coalition in mid-January 2019, stating:

We cooperated for four whole years in a government of national unity, a government of national entente. Two parties from different political origins came together and managed to wrest our fatherland from the clasp of the Memoranda. The primary objective was met. The Macedonian name issue, for which thousands have died, forces me to sacrifice my office . . . I thanked the PM for our cooperation, explaining that the national issue does not allow the continuation of this partnership. (2019)

In the end, nationalism trumped populism. Vindicating theorists who caution against the conflation of populist and nationalist content in the political signification of ‘the people’ (De Cleen and Stavrakakis, 2017), the populist argument for retaining the SYRIZA–ANEL alliance proved unable to justify the opportunistic betrayal of nationalist values by the junior partner. Political structuration reverted to being governed by the cultural left–right axis that had only briefly been superseded by the populist divide (Skoulariki, 2021). The complex symbolic barrier erected during the crisis between ‘us, the people’ and ‘them, the elites’ was breached and replaced by one that pitted patriotic defenders of Greek national identity against traitors to the Macedonian cause. SYRIZA was able to govern for a few extra months by poaching independent MPs from left and right to retain a parliamentary majority, but Tsipras finally decided to resign after losing the May 2019 European election by 10%. The Conservatives comfortably won the July 2019 election, which ANEL did not even dare contest.

Conclusion

According to minimal range theory, coalition governments between radical-left and radical-right parties are not supposed to happen. Based on an analysis of the SYRIZA–ANEL coalition governments in Greece, this case study shows how a holistic exploration can enrich coalition theory by unveiling crucial mechanisms that facilitate ideologically mismatched partnerships. First, extraordinary socioeconomic crises can unmoor ossified partisan allegiances, upsetting the usual order of party competition along spatial dimensions. The relaxed correspondence between policy preferences and patterns of electoral behavior can allow previously inconceivable coalitional permutations. Enjoying the advantage of representing salient grievances that do not necessarily cohere around familiar policy domains, office-seeking actors can emerge to absorb newly available constituencies. Moreover, systemic dislocation can counter-intuitively foster ideological congruence between supporters of coalition players that overshadows the policy preferences of respective party elites. In Greece, bailouts and accompanying austerity measures unsettled the party system, dividing it into pro- and anti-bailout forces and allowing SYRIZA and ANEL to outflank PASOK and ND from the left and right. Gradually, the two parties collected enough support to form a government coalition that circumvented their expressed ideological differences.

Second, under conditions of heightened political volatility, populism can play a catalytic role in coalition formation. Policy signaling plays an important role, but coalition decisions constitute a complex process that necessitate including a wider array of political components in our analyses. Populist narratives allow politicians to prime their audience with a cross-sectional binary diagnosis of political representation, portraying it as a policy-indeterminate battle between people and elites that overshadows old cleavages while giving a voice to new ones, thus facilitating cross-ideological cooperation. Moreover, populism can temporarily suppress intramural dissent over the ideological mutation of the party under an office-seeking leader. However, policy-oriented elements (voting blocs, organized interests, internal party factions, etc.) will inevitably seek ideological concessions, testing the limits of populist cooperation. This takes us to the third and final point.

Shared populist sensibilities are not a be-all, end-all answer to the challenge of ideologically deviant coalitions. Coalition pacts are accompanied by the complexities of portfolio allocation, legislative activity, and day-to-day governing. Since no adequate populist prescription can cater for these elements, cross-ideological populist partners must be creative in the tactical aspect of their cost-benefit calculations. Depending on the context, they must devise ways to achieve a semblance of governmental stability and policy coherence while also satisfying ideological voters who do not wish to unduly compromise their values to remain in office. Through a public – but also conveniently informal – agreement on the junior partner’s veto sphere, SYRIZA and ANEL managed to strike a modus vivendi of ostensible mutual constraint, which allowed ANEL to strike down ideologically embarrassing bills in the legislature without putting the executive at risk of a no-confidence motion. At the same time, SYRIZA succeeded in sporadically passing progressive social reforms with the ad hoc support of opposition lawmakers, thus partly justifying the label ‘government of the Left’. However, the coalition overestimated the strength of its tactical leeway while underestimating the capacity of ethnic nationalism to ultimately undermine a populist détente. The price for this mistake was its downfall.