Who really cares about the common good?
At 0.165% of gross domestic product, Greece’s official contribution to developing countries puts it third from last among the members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. And this is not a result of the economic crisis; we were in more or less the same spot before 2009 too. At the individual level, in the meantime, Greece ranks fifth from last among 142 on the World Giving Index 2023.
The Charities Aid Foundation and polling firm Gallup publish an annual index on the issue, which is determined by the answers to three questions: whether respondents helped a stranger, offered money to a charitable organization, or offered their time to such an organization. With regard to the first question, Greece did pretty well, with 43% saying that they have helped a stranger. On the other two, just 6% gave money or time to a charity organization.
The survey, unfortunately, focused only on civil society organizations and not on political parties, 46 of which have thrown their hats into the race for the European Parliament and are now waiting for the green light from the Supreme Court to make it official. Of course, the 2,000 or so candidates these parties are putting forward falls very short of the 151,000 who ran for the local and regional elections last fall (representing around 2% of the population), but such mass participation in public life ought to give us pause.
What compels so many Greeks to form parties for the European elections, to find candidates, to do all the paperwork for the Supreme Court, to go on the campaign trail?
Sure, a lot of people who have no intention of becoming actively involved are tacked onto political formations running for local elections just for the sake of fleshing out the ballots. But what compels so many Greeks to form parties for the European elections, to find candidates, to do all the paperwork for the Supreme Court, to go on the campaign trail?
The generous salaries enjoyed by Euro MPs is one key motivation. Some hopefuls left off the ballots of the parties that have a good chance of making it to the European Parliament simply take a long shot by running and hoping for the best.
It’s hard to see what so many groupings that have never gotten more than 1% are hoping to accomplish. Perhaps they are part of some kind of power game aimed at nibbling away at support for some other party. Maybe they just can’t give up dreaming the dream of being a mover and shaker some day.
Either way, we should be troubled by the enormous gulf between the number of people who want to contribute to the common good by running for office – and especially for the cushier, well-paid jobs – and those who do so by offering whatever they can to the organizations that actually make a difference for the better.
