Permanent Campaigning in Greece in Times of Crisis

Book excerpt: This book investigates the phenomenon of permanent campaigning in Greece over the last decade. It explores the political communication strategies of three recent successive Greek prime ministers from 2012 until the early months of 2022 to deal with economic, migration and pandemic crises, from a permanent campaigning perspective. Moreover, it evaluates and measures, for the first time, their permanent campaign strategies using the proposed framework of Lilleker and Joathan (2020) and the three following indicators: capacity building and strategy, paid and owned media and earned media. The need for presidents to communicate with public opinion and their dependence on public support is anything but new. Τhe difference in the case of the permanent campaign is that the campaign tools, methods, techniques and personnel follow the elected leader in office in order to back his constant efforts to retain or even increase public approval as well as advance their re-election prospects. This book aims to extend the research on the permanent campaigning in European parliamentary systems and will be of interest to political communication and campaigning students and researchers.