The Greek General Election of 2007: You Cannot Lose If Your Opponent Cannot Win

Abstract

In a question posed to the New Democracy leader, Costas Karamanlis, during the debate about how to become a Prime Minister, the leader of the extreme-right party, Popular Orthodox Rally (Laikos Orthodoxos Synagermos, LAOS), gave his own counter-response: ‘Among all other qualities’, he said, ‘the most important is to be a son or a relative of a Prime Minister.’ He then went on to illustrate his point: ‘1945: Papandreou (George); 1955: Karamanlis (Constantine); 1965: Papandreou (George); 1975: Karamanlis (Constantine); 1985 and 1995: Papandreou (Andreas); 2005: Karamanlis (Costas).’ There was no doubt that this carefully selected sequence, which is probably as much the result of a coincidence as of the intrinsic hereditary aspects of Greek politics, would be continued after the election of 16 September 2007, since the battle was once again between a Karamanlis and a Papandreou. To sketch the context within which this election took place, it is first necessary to give a brief overview of the electoral setting.