Takis S Pappas

Takis S. Pappas is a Visiting Professor at the Central European University, and has recently authored Populism and Crisis Politics in Greece (Palgrave 2014) and co-authored European Populism in the Shadow of the Great Recession (ECPR Press 2015).

Greece and the European elections: a preview

What is to happen in Greece in the forthcoming European elections, which, not without a certain irony of history, will take place while this country holds the EU presidency? Euro elections landscape, 2014.

By Takis S Pappas

/ 16 Jan 2014

Chávez and Thatcher, exemplars of charismatic leadership

Chávez’s style of populism and Thatcher’s enthusiasm for privatization have spawned imitators in many parts of the world. The originals remain charismatic – meaning what exactly?

By Takis S Pappas

/ 27 Jun 2013

Why Greece failed

How different is Greece? The beginning of wisdom about the current Greek crisis is to recognize that it is fundamentally political, and that it has been long in the making. Greece’s failure is the outcome of a long process during which populism prevailed over liberalism and became hegemonic in soc

By Takis S Pappas

/ 16 Apr 2013

Mapping Greece's forthcoming elections

As Greek electoral law awards the party that comes first 50 bonus seats in the country’s 300-seat parliament, whether that party is ND or Syriza will be crucial. In either case, with so many Montagues and Capulets arrayed on the Greek public square, forming a government will not be easy.

By Takis S Pappas

/ 12 Jun 2012

The extinction of the Greek dinosaurs?

The collapse of the two formerly dominant Greek parties, PASOK and New Democracy, has left a gaping void in the center of the political competition space waiting to be filled by liberal forces.

By Takis S Pappas

/ 11 May 2012

A Greek referendum was, in fact, a bad idea

A Greek referendum was not an excellent idea, whose implementation was prevented by its alleged opponents, as Anthony Barnett says; it was a bad idea and, moreover, very incompetently implemented.

By Takis S Pappas

/ 4 Nov 2011

Greece’s failed state and Europe’s response

Far more dangerous than the present financial crisis threatening the euro, Greece looks like a failed EU state, which puts at risk the stability of the entire European project.

By Takis S Pappas

/ 13 Oct 2011

Facing the Greek crisis: it’s the politics, stupid

As 200,000 people, led by a movement across Greece calling itself ‘The Outraged’, surround the parliament in Athens chanting, “Thieves, thieves, thieves”, here are ten proposals from a political scientist’s point of view for the Greek government, but also its European partners.

By Takis S Pappas

/ 11 Jun 2011

Greece’s other imminent crisis

Could politics in Greece prove even more dangerous than its economics?

By Takis S Pappas

/ 16 May 2011

Why democracy in the Arab world is no foregone conclusion

One way of assessing the prospects for democracy in the Middle East is to compare this region not only with eastern Europe in the late 1980s but also with southern Europe in the mid-1970s, where aged authoritarian regimes gave way to young democracies.

By Takis S Pappas

/ 29 Mar 2011

The causes of the Greek crisis are in Greek politics

The Greek crisis came out of marrying a European project with a specifically Greek political culture of populism and clientelism. These have roots in the post-1974 settlement and the left's positioning against the centre right's pragmatic, European statism

By Takis S Pappas

/ 29 Nov 2010