Greek referendum why

Events rather than legal and political niceties may now determine that outcome, with Greek banks believed unable to reopen without a fresh infusion of cash via the ECB. Its governing council is also to confer today. If it decides not to supply more liquidity to the Greek banking system on the grounds it may be throwing good money after bad as a default looms, the Greek banks will not be able to stay afloat for long, despite claims from the Tsipras government that they will be open this week.

In anticipation of a possible Greek collapse, there is expected to be turmoil when the financial markets open on Monday. Around the world, bankers and investors prepared to meet to discuss the implications of the outcome. But that comment was viewed as an encouragement for a yes vote. The no vote was supported by the hard left and the neo-fascist right in Greece, while the mainstream centre-left and centre-right campaigned for a yes vote. Tsipras appeared cool and relaxed casting his ballot.

Greek referendum no vote signals huge challenge to eurozone leaders. IMF: austerity measures would still leave Greece with unsustainable debt. Austerity in other eurozone countries. The proposal document. Image source, Getty Images. A week ago Alexis Tsipras voted "No" to austerity and now appears to say "Yes". Image source, EPA. Almost a week after the referendum, banks remain closed. Will the real Alexis Tsipras please stand up? Tsipras 'a hero'. And that was one promise he could never have broken.

But shortly after the deal agreed on between Athens and its international creditors this summer, Konstantopoulou resigned from Syriza, and joined the newly established leftist Popular Unity party led by former energy minister Panagiotis Lafazanis.

He had a huge majority for the no, and then he decided, I believe very wisely for the interest of the Greek people, but very undemocratically, to throw away the result of the referendum and to accept for Greeks heavier conditions. To get a more in-depth understanding of this result, we investigated the determinants of voting behavior in more detail. First, the vote was clearly divided along partisan lines. This underscores our finding that partisan narratives mattered to a large extent, with voters seeming to have toed party lines.

Second, some further interesting results arise in regard to the socio-demographic make-up of the vote. Surprisingly, occupation and education mattered little for vote intention.

What we found particularly striking was that public sector employees had similar vote intentions to private sector employees, despite the fact that their salaries very much depend on overall public finances. This is rather puzzling since the economy of non-urban and rural areas has been much less hit by the crisis, owing mostly to tourism and agriculture revenues as well as targeted transfers and subsidised prices.

It should be noted, of course, that SYRIZA enjoys a strong organisational advantage in non-urban areas that arguably translated into higher campaign effectiveness. Some may argue of course that islanders were also voting against the proposed elimination of their VAT exemptions. Despite this slew of evidence in favour of the narrative-based explanation, we also found some evidence supporting the material interest-based pocketbook voting approach. First, in terms of social demographics, the strongest divisive lines were between age groups.

In other words, the referendum gave expression to a seething intergenerational divide. What then explains this stark difference in vote intentions between younger and older people?

Figure 3 shows that the age divide is, if anything, a preference-based divide. Another interesting piece of evidence that corroborates the importance of material interests is the average vote intention shown in Figure 2 of the age group, which mostly consists of employed people close to retirement. A straightforward interpretation of this result is that the age group is very much against pension reform as this would lead to the extension of the minimum retirement age and the elimination of the possibility for early retirement.