How Political Orientation and Vulnerability Shape Representations of the Economic Crisis in Greece and Italy

Abstract

In the current research, we investigated the lay representations of the recent economic downturn, that had severe consequences on the lives of the involved people. We compared data of respondents from two countries that were affected to a different degree by the crisis: Greece (N = 529) and Italy (N = 327). We examined laypeople's representations of the perceived causes of the crunch (e.g., overconsumption, obscure power conspiracy), the strategies that are believed to be useful to overcome it (e.g., conforming to EU request, EU exit), and the political participatory activities (e.g., legal and illegal activism) that people intend to adopt. These variables were analyzed in light of two main predictors: political orientation and subjective economic vulnerability. The main hypothesis was that self-positioning on the left/ right axis may be a strong driver of lay representations and political participation. However, we expected that in conjunction with the linear effect of this variable, its quadratic effect should be considered as well. The latter specifies that in some circumstances the opinions of people self-positioned at the poles of the political spectrum may be closer to each other than to the opinions of the people that position themselves in the center which sometimes do not behave as moderate but appear more conformist. Additionally, we hypothesized that vulnerability may be a motive to seek for explanations of the crisis, to find strategies and to engage in activities to overcome it. Findings were generally in line with predictions and were discussed in the light of recent research and the context of analysis.

Accepting Austerity or Grexit? Predicting Acceptance of Crisis Solution Strategies from People’s image of the Greece-Eu Relationship, their own Position and Norms of Justice

“…We observe slight but significant positive correlation between the "conforming to EU requests" response and the "rationalization of the public sector" (r = .15). This linkage is an indication of the common ideological ground between the two lines of argumentation concerning the management of the crisis (see also Mari et al, 2017). We could claim that those two lines convey the "hard" and the "soft" facet respectively of the ideologically dominant response to the crisis opposed to the Grexit solution, which is negatively correlated to them (r = -.23 and r = -.19).…”

“…The third factor (eigenvalue 1.49 and variance 13.55%) included the items "Leaving the Eurozone voluntarily" (.830) and "Refuse to pay the debt" (.798) which represent the Grexit rationale (r = . 42) as a conflictual and extreme response to the economic crisis and its management imposed by the dominant international forces (see also Papastamou et al, 2018;and Mari et al, 2017). Table 1 presents descriptive statistics and correlations among variables used in the analysis.…”

“…Two types of images have been taken into consideration: a positive image (a relationship of cooperation, consensus, respect, equality, solidarity and trust) corresponding to procedural considerations and an image of submission versus domination corresponding to a powerful EU position. Like in Papastamou et al 2018 andMari et al 2017, three management strategies emerged: a strategy that proposed the measures of austerity named "conforming to EU request", a strategy that focused on the public sector named "rationalization of the public sector" and a strategy of exiting the EU, here, Grexit. Our findings indicate that the two first strategies were positively correlated together, and therefore of a similar ideological underpinning, and were negatively correlated with the strategy of Grexit.…”

Attributing and Managing the Crisis: Lay Representations in Three European Countries

“…It is related to apathy and lack of interest in politics and could also lead to political cynicism (Bynner & Ashford, 1994). Related, Mari et al (2017) did not find any effect of this perceived cause on intention to participate in legal or illegal forms of political activism realised in order to overcome the crisis. It might, however, also be at the centre of a contestation of the power status quo, as shown recently by Marchlewska, Cichocka, Panayiotou, Castellanos, and Batayneh (2017): when the in-group is perceived in a disadvantaged position, people tend to increase their level of populism, along with collective narcissism.…”

“…Therefore, inspection of any further tests of equivalence (i.e., metric and scalar invariance) was not necessary, although the respective indices were estimated. This finding suggests that the structure of the conceptual meaning of the proposed measures for the economic crisis differs significantly across countries, and therefore it should be examined within the specific socioeconomic and cultural context (see also Mari et al, 2017;.…”