When the Greeks voted “no,” they reaffirmed their democracy; but, more than that, they asserted the priority of their democracy over those in other eurozone countries. In other words, they asserted their national sovereignty – their right as a nation to determine their own economic, social, and political path. If the Greek referendum is a victory for anything, it is a victory for national sovereignty.
That is what makes it so ominous for Europe. The European Union, and even more so the eurozone, was constructed on the expectation that the exercise of national sovereignty would fade away over time. This was rarely made explicit; sovereignty, after all, is popular. But as economic unification narrowed each country’s room for maneuver, it was hoped, national action would be exercised less frequently. The Greek referendum has put perhaps the final nail in the coffin of that idea.
It need not have been this way. Europe’s political elite could have framed the Greek financial crisis as a tale of economic interdependence – you cannot have bad borrowers, after all, without careless lenders – instead of a morality tale pitting frugal, hard-working Germans against profligate, carefree Greeks. Doing so might have facilitated the sharing of the burden between debtors and creditors and prevented the emergence of the us-versus-them attitude that poisoned the relationship between Greece and the institutions of the eurozone.
