Parliamentary elections were held in

Greece Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. Located on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, it shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, North Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to th ...

on Sunday, 18 October 1981.

Dieter Nohlen Dieter Nohlen (born 6 November 1939) is a German academic and political scientist. He currently holds the position of Emeritus Professor of Political Science in the Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences of the University of Heidelberg. An ex ...

& Philip Stöver (2010) ''Elections in Europe: A data handbook'', p830

PASOK The Panhellenic Socialist Movement (, ), known mostly by its acronym PASOK (; , ), is a social democracy, social-democratic List of political parties in Greece, political party in Greece. Until 2012 it was Two-party system, one of the two major ...

, led by

Andreas Papandreou Andreas Georgiou Papandreou (, ; 5 February 1919 – 23 June 1996) was a Greek academic and economist who founded the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) and served three terms as Prime minister of Greece, prime minister of Third Hellenic Repu ...

, faced

New Democracy New Democracy, or the New Democratic Revolution, is a type of democracy in Marxism, based on Mao Zedong's Bloc of Four Social Classes theory in post-revolutionary China which argued originally that democracy in China would take a path that w ...

, led by

Georgios Rallis Georgios Ioannou Rallis (; 26 December 1918 – 15 March 2006), anglicised to George Rallis, was a Greek conservative politician and Prime Minister of Greece from 1980 to 1981. Ancestors in politics Georgios was descended from the old, noble ...

. Papandreou achieved a landslide and PASOK formed the first socialist government in the history of

(in 1963 Centrists had formed a government under the leadership of George Papandreou, Andreas' father, but their party, Center Union, was not a socialist party but a centrist, social-liberal one). Observers had expected a PASOK victory but were surprised by the size of the victory. 185 of the 300 seats were won by PASOK or the Communist Party: both openly

eurosceptic Euroscepticism, also spelled as Euroskepticism or EU-scepticism, is a political position involving criticism of the European Union (EU) and European integration. It ranges from those who oppose some EU institutions and policies and seek refor ...

. This was the high point of Greek euroscepticism, coming just months after the country's accession to the

European Communities The European Communities (EC) were three international organizations that were governed by the same set of Institutions of the European Union, institutions. These were the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), the European Atomic Energy Co ...

Results

Aftermath

Papandreou's new government introduced several interesting reforms in the wake of its victory (legalization of civil wedding, new family law, nationalization of certain private companies, etc.). The main opposition party, New Democracy, faced serious internal conflicts.

was forced to resign after the defeat, and he was succeeded by Evangelos Averoff, former minister under Karamanlis' governments. In 1984, Averof resigned because of health problems, and

Konstantinos Mitsotakis Konstantinos Mitsotakis (, ; – 29 May 2017) was a Greek politician who was Prime Minister of Greece from 1990 to 1993. He graduated in law and economics from the University of Athens. His son, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, was elected as the Prime Mi ...

became the new leader of New Democracy. Noteworthy, Mitsotakis and Papandreou were both centrists before 1967 and they belonged to the same party, George Papandreou's Center Union. Nevertheless, they were strong opponents, and they never liked each other. Papandreou was calling Mitsotakis "a defector, an

apostate Apostasy (; ) is the formal disaffiliation from, abandonment of, or renunciation of a religion by a person. It can also be defined within the broader context of embracing an opinion that is contrary to one's previous religious beliefs. One who ...

", because in 1965 he defected from the ruling Center Union and participated in a new government pleasing to Constantine II, who had just accepted George Papandreou's resignation after a serious disagreement between the King and the prime minister.

References

{{Greek elections

Parliamentary In modern politics and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: Representation (politics), representing the Election#Suffrage, electorate, making laws, and overseeing ...

Parliamentary elections in Greece 1980s in Greek politics

Andreas Papandreou