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The post-crisis social protest can be explained on various grounds. First, the adoption of harsh austerity policies in 2010 by a government, i.e. the PASOK government, just half a year after it had come to power on the promise to adopt expansionist policies, naturally sparked protest. The adopted policies were class biased, distributing the burden of Greece’s economic adaptation in an unequal manner, which disproportionately affected the salaried strata.

Secondly, long-term cultural patterns of Greek politics are conducive to radical social protest. There is widespread belief that governments cannot be trusted and that the only possible logic of political interaction is a zero-sum logic, which renders a consensual outcome of policy making improbable. Moreover, the long-term political party polarisation between ND and PASOK in 1981-2011 had also diffused an understanding of politics which does not aim at negotiation and compromise, but only at the complete victory of one side over the other.

Thirdly, after the elections of 2012, when a new bipolar party system emerged, a new pattern of polarisation crystallised. The old, acute feud between ND – PASOK was replaced by a new fiercer rivalry between the government coalition of ND and PASOK, on the one hand, and Syriza, on the other. Depending on the policy issue, the communist KKE and extra-parliamentary left would side with Syriza or pursue their own opposition tactics. Therefore, one cannot characterize all protests as signs of revitalisation of civil society during the crisis in Greece. For instance, while part of the occupation movement emerged as a result of civic action against the austerity policies, another part was the result of short-term political calculations by Syriza, KKE or the extra-parliamentary Left.

To sum up this section, it is debatable to what extent social protests in 2010-2014, particularly the mobilisation of civil servants and students, are a manifestation of a rising civil society in the context of a severe economic crisis, or whether it is an outgrowth of political party competition. Left-wing party organisations were heavily involved in all the aforementioned social movements. However, the size of the extremely unpopular austerity measures implemented after Greece's first bailout (May 2010), and replicated with new measures of the second bailout (February 2012), was so large, that even pro-government voters protested against austerity. Still, the large-scale grassroots mobilisation of civil society gave its way to more strategic modes of party political mobilisation. Opposition parties, such as Anel, Syriza and smaller parties to the left of Syriza, eventually rode on the protest waves noted above.