Most attention and research about the crisis that erupted in Greece in 2009-2010 and came to dominate headlines worldwide has focused, with good reason, on its economic dimension. In contrast, the politics of this crisis were approached as more of an afterthought, a natural or automatic correlate of its economic dimension; accordingly, it was covered primarily by the media. I focus on the politics of the Greek crisis as a dynamic field which, albeit obviously impacted by the economic shocks, shaped them on top of being shaped by it. I identify and discuss key critical junctures, explore plausible counterfactuals, and point to puzzles and blind spots. I also discuss some broader insights that the Greek crisis holds for how we approach and understand electoral politics, contentious politics, populism, and democratic theory.

About the speaker:
Stathis N. Kalyvas is Gladstone Professor of Government and fellow of All Souls College at Oxford. Until 2018 he was Arnold Wolfers Professor of Political Science at Yale University, where he also directed the Program on Order, Conflict, and Violence and codirected the Hellenic Studies Program. Kalyvas obtained his BA from the University of Athens (1986) and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago (1993), all in political science. He taught at Ohio State University (1993-94), New York University (1994-2000), the University of Chicago (2000-03), Yale University (2003-2017) before joining Oxford in 2018. He has held visiting professorships and fellowships at Sciences Po-Paris, Oxford, the University of São Paulo, Lingnan University of Hong Kong, Northwestern University, Columbia University, the University of Witten/Herdecke, the Juan March Institute, the Max Planck Institute, and the European University Institute. He is the author of The Rise of Christian Democracy in Europe (Cornell University Press, 1996), The Logic of Violence in Civil War (Cambridge University Press, 2006), Modern Greece: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 2015), the co-editor of Order, Conflict, and Violence (Cambridge University Press, 2008) and the Oxford Handbook on Terrorism (Oxford University Press, 2019), and the author of over fifty scholarly articles in five languages, as well as several books and edited volumes in Greek. His current research focuses on global trends in civil conflict and political violence with an additional interest in the history and politics of Greece. His work has received several awards, including the Woodrow Wilson Award for best book on government, politics, or international affairs, the Luebbert Award for best book in comparative politics, the European Academy of Sociology Book Award, the Luebbert Award for the best article in comparative politics (three times), and the Greenstone Award for best book in politics and history. His research has been supported by the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the United States Peace Institute, the Folke Bernadotte Academy, the UK’s Department for International Development, the Alexander S. Onassis Foundation, and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation. He was a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow in 2007. In 2008 he was elected in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.