The latest global economic recession, which started officially in 2008 and is still ongoing, has also brought a lot of other, non financial issues to the surface. The cost of the economic recession is not only financial, but also political, social, even sanitarian. The actions taken to overcome this situation involve on many levels a cut on basic democratic rights. But this democratic recession is not just a side effect of the economic crisis. The global democratic crisis is not something new and is on any case prior to the financial crisis. On some levels it is even responsible for the actual economic situation.
In this paper I will be examining the close and interactive relationship between the economic and the democratic recession. For that purpose, I will focus on the example of Greece, which in my opinion is the perfect way to demonstrate how the economic recession leads to a democratic recession and vise versa.
During the last five years Greece has become a synonym of the financial crisis, with tremendous impacts on the country . But this financial crisis is strongly connected to the democratic crisis which partly brought the country to its current situation. The actual political situation in Greece is even being compared to that of the rise of the Weimar Republic. As the country continues to struggle its way through this crisis with the economic help of the IMF and the ECB, democracy is being more and more abused. Putting aside the country's legal obligations as a member of a supranational union (EU), Greece's most important political decisions currently are met in councils not elected by the Greek people. Additionally, through contracts, whose exact content still remains unknown to the public, the Greek people are bound to a credit, almost impossible to repay.
