Syriza came on the scene — won the election/formed the coalition — with a tactical plan and a strategic plan.
The tactical: to negotiate a new package with the troika (as the previous one was shortly to run its), which gave much better protection to the vulnerable and did not impact so ruinously on growth etc. The strategic: to begin to enable a Europe-wide pushback agains the ideology of austerity
Grexit was/is strongly contra-indicated at both levels: (first) with Grexit you'll get (probably much) worse austerity. The balancing argument that at least you now have control of your economic destiny is, unfortunately, weak — Greece is a net importer of food and fuel. Second: the general pushback could/can never be effective if it only manifests in one quite small country (population-wise, it’s quite big geographically), with not much economic leverage (see point above, abt being a net importer). For pushback to become a thing at all, Europe-wide, and for it to benefit Greece, Greece has to be in Europe still, working closely with the other pushers-back (for starters: Italy, Spain, Portugal; beyond this: with emergent opposition anti-austerity parties in the Northern countries). (In the UK, the SNP is strongly anti-austerity, but badly needs fellow cohorts to buttress it; on its own it is easily strong-armed economically by its neighbour to the south.)
The upshot of this — anti-Grexit, anti-austerity, pro its own elderly, poor and unemployed — at these two levels was a very tangled political ask. Essentially they had to send conflicting signals in at least four directions. 1: to the troika, saying we are serious about negotiation but have very strong red lines. 2: to the emergent Europe-wide anti-austerity movement (qua movement, which it wasn’t quite yet, last year): we will not back down, we will win, we will smash the system. 3: to the pensioners etc back home — we will protect your well-being 4: to businesspeople looking to invest in Greece and oligarchs already there — your money is not only safe here, but all will benefit!
As a coalition — of quite uneasy bedfellows — they also had to keep their own group sweet, though this would be easy to do by backchannels. (i.e. by calling a meeting to say, “we’re about to say this abvout such-and-such, don’t worry about it, it’s a necessary tactic, we’re still on-track” <— you can communicate with your own political compadres like this, on the QT; less so with the various engaged publics)
My basic judgment is that they badly screwed up the tactical levels from the get-go. They were ill-prepared, had a poor understanding of what were the red lines for their opponents, and an equally poor understand of where the fracture lines were between their opponents (esp.between the EU bit of it and the IMF, in my opinion). They didn’t go into negotiations detail-rich, with firm offers and firms nos, they went in mainly with a bunch of just daft toontime stuff, which looked unserious because it very possibly was (this is back in February).
My perspective (responding mainly to the original Renzi query):
Syriza came on the scene — won the election/formed the coalition — with a tactical plan and a strategic plan.
The tactical: to negotiate a new package with the troika (as the previous one was shortly to run its), which gave much better protection to the vulnerable and did not impact so ruinously on growth etc.
The strategic: to begin to enable a Europe-wide pushback agains the ideology of austerity
Grexit was/is strongly contra-indicated at both levels: (first) with Grexit you'll get (probably much) worse austerity. The balancing argument that at least you now have control of your economic destiny is, unfortunately, weak — Greece is a net importer of food and fuel. Second: the general pushback could/can never be effective if it only manifests in one quite small country (population-wise, it’s quite big geographically), with not much economic leverage (see point above, abt being a net importer). For pushback to become a thing at all, Europe-wide, and for it to benefit Greece, Greece has to be in Europe still, working closely with the other pushers-back (for starters: Italy, Spain, Portugal; beyond this: with emergent opposition anti-austerity parties in the Northern countries). (In the UK, the SNP is strongly anti-austerity, but badly needs fellow cohorts to buttress it; on its own it is easily strong-armed economically by its neighbour to the south.)
The upshot of this — anti-Grexit, anti-austerity, pro its own elderly, poor and unemployed — at these two levels was a very tangled political ask. Essentially they had to send conflicting signals in at least four directions.
1: to the troika, saying we are serious about negotiation but have very strong red lines.
2: to the emergent Europe-wide anti-austerity movement (qua movement, which it wasn’t quite yet, last year): we will not back down, we will win, we will smash the system.
3: to the pensioners etc back home — we will protect your well-being
4: to businesspeople looking to invest in Greece and oligarchs already there — your money is not only safe here, but all will benefit!
As a coalition — of quite uneasy bedfellows — they also had to keep their own group sweet, though this would be easy to do by backchannels. (i.e. by calling a meeting to say, “we’re about to say this abvout such-and-such, don’t worry about it, it’s a necessary tactic, we’re still on-track” <— you can communicate with your own political compadres like this, on the QT; less so with the various engaged publics)
My basic judgment is that they badly screwed up the tactical levels from the get-go. They were ill-prepared, had a poor understanding of what were the red lines for their opponents, and an equally poor understand of where the fracture lines were between their opponents (esp.between the EU bit of it and the IMF, in my opinion). They didn’t go into negotiations detail-rich, with firm offers and firms nos, they went in mainly with a bunch of just daft toontime stuff, which looked unserious because it very possibly was (this is back in February).