Ideological Forerunners of Metaxas's Regime

Abstract

Constitutional change in interwar Greece was prepared for by political figures who, overwhelmed by ongoing political and social crisis and strongly involved in intense political debates on the crisis of parliamentarianism, endorsed the disestablishment of the Second Hellenic Republic. This article focuses on conservative intellectuals influenced by German sociologists, such as Max and Alfred Weber, Italian and Spanish scholars such as Vilfredo Pareto and José Ortega Y Gasset, and neo-Kantian and neo-Hegelian philosophers and constitutional lawyers. Claiming to stand above politics, they argued restored nationalism was the only doctrine that could promote the fulfilment of the nation’s ‘mission’. These intellectuals argued democracy and class-based parties, especially the left, undermined the concept of parliamentarianism, weakened the ideal of democracy, and would lead the country to chaos. As a counterbalance, they promoted political ideas that supposedly benefited the state and Hellenism in general. They advocated for charismatic leadership, discussed implementation of ‘controlled democracy’, and proclaimed an idealistic millennialism, a modern Platonic republic of the ‘prime’, led by the ‘philosopher-king’.