For years we have been saying almost self-evidently that the Metapolitefsi, the period after the restoration of democracy in Greece in 1974, was almost synonymous with the center-left PASOK party. And indeed, the party provided language, gestures and idealism to the society of the time.
Although PASOK was the catalyst for the cursed – for some – “culture” that prevailed in the period, New Democracy proved to be its most resilient institutional vehicle. It survived the country’s public debt crisis that dissolved the old two-party system and defeated its opponents, triumphantly returning to power in 2019 and, if current indications are confirmed, may find itself in government for the third consecutive time despite its decline. An entire generation may grow up knowing only Kyriakos Mitsotakis as prime minister.
New Democracy was born in 1974 as a party of democratic restoration. The destructive presence of the junta had completely delegitimized the language of the old nationalism and rabid anti-communism. Its leader, Konstantinos Karamanlis, attempted to transform the right from a party on the winning side of the Greek Civil War into a guarantor of parliamentary normality and its European course. The legalization of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), the 1974 referendum on the abolition of the monarchy, the 1975 Constitution and accession to the European Economic Community constituted its new legitimizing narrative.
