The Greek Crisis and Its Cultural Origins

This original analysis of modern Greeces political culture attempts to present a total social facta coherent and complex representation of Greek socio-political cultureto identify the cultural causes of Greeces recent disastrous economic crisis. Using a culturalist frame inspired by the Yale Strong Program, Marangudakis argues that the core cultural orientations of Greece have determined its politicsGreek secular culture flows out of the religion of Eastern Orthodoxy with its mysticism, icons, and general ortherworldly-nesses. This theoretical discussion, bringing together Eisenstadt, Michael Mann, Banfield, and Taylor, is complemented by an innovative use of survey data, processed by political scientist and statistician Theodore Chadjipadelis. The carefully deployed quantitative data demonstrate that the culture previously described is actually shared by people living in Greece today. In his sweeping conclusion to this thorough cultural analysis, Marangudakis reflectson the prospects of Greek cultural recovery through the construction of a non-populist civil religion.