A pathway model was hypothesised according to which, in circumstances of significant socio-economic turbulence, the expression of authoritarian attitudes would be linked to insecure individual-to-state and person-to-person attachment through the experience of relatively low social cohesion and significant post-traumatic stress related to the crisis. Although specific hypothesised pathways were not significant, the overall model was confirmed, suggesting that authoritarianism was predicted by insecure person-to-person attachment both directly and via the experience of high post-traumatic stress and by insecure person-to-state attachment indirectly, via the experience of high post-traumatic stress and the perception of high social cohesion. The hypothesised pathways linking state attachment and authoritarianism, interpersonal attachment and social cohesion, and social cohesion and post-traumatic stress were not confirmed.

The present findings are in agreement with both historical (McCann and Stewin 1987) and socio-psychological (Marlin 2015) research suggesting that authoritarianism is more likely to develop in social environments permeated by disruptions in human relatedness. They are also consistent with previous studies reporting a link between authoritarian attitudes and the quality of interpersonal attachment more specifically (Weber and Federico 2007) and lend further support to the idea that the concept of authoritarian disposition and its hypothesised developmental antecedents may be linked with that of attachment insecurity. Moreover, the current study confirms the distinction between interpersonal and person-to-institution/group attachment made in previous research (Mayseless and Popper 2007; Smith et al. 1999) and identifies different routes via which insecurity in the two attachment domains may lead to authoritarianism. Post-traumatic stress was the only mediating variable to link both attachment domains with authoritarianism, suggesting that an individual’s inability to feel protected against perceived threats to life by an essential social institution is almost as important as the inability to feel supported and understood by intimate others.

Considering that in this study, post-traumatic stress was measured only in relation to the socio-economic crisis and that the Greek state was a primary contributor to that crisis, the source of threat and the expected source of protection were one and the same. According to relevant research, the perception of another meant to be protective as threatening typically underpins attachment disorganisation and trauma (Yellin and White 2012). Perhaps a similar process is set off also when a collective, as opposed to interpersonal, source of expected security becomes hostile, as the Greek state has been towards its citizens during the crisis. The high levels of post-traumatic stress observed in the present sample (Sochos 2018) and the link between state aggression and social disorganisation frequently evidenced in previous studies (Malley-Morrison 2009) are consistent with such a hypothesis. Future research needs to clarify further the psycho-social process involved in institutional traumatisation from an attachment theory perspective.

According to the current findings, interpersonal but not individual-to-state insecurity had a direct link to authoritarianism, an observation consistent with both classic and contemporary conceptualisations of the authoritarian disposition as being rooted in formative interpersonal relationships (Adorno et al. 1950; Oesterreich 2005). As the hypothesised direct link between authoritarianism and attachment to the state was not confirmed, the findings seem to suggest that collective attachment requires a particular collective experience (that is, particular perceptions of social cohesion or institutional traumatisation) to feed into the development of authoritarian attitudes.

When reflecting on the current findings, the limitations of the study need to be considered, particularly the lack of previous validation of the scales with a Greek sample. Low alphas observed in some of the subscales call for caution. Cronbach’s alpha has been criticised as being too conservative and susceptible to the influence of low item numbers (Sijtsma and van der Ark 2015). Indeed, in the present study all subscales attaining low alphas included only a few items, while alphas in whole scales which also included more items were satisfactory. Moreover, subscales in this study were not used in isolation but as part of factors attaining very good fit using SEM, a method more robust than Cronbach’s alpha. Nonetheless, findings should be approached with caution and further research should confirm the reliability and validity of these scales, particularly as they are set to measure complex constructs and cross disciplinary boundaries. For example, avoidance to the state, a complicated and multifaceted concept to capture empirically, may require more than adapting a scale originally designed to measure avoidance in interpersonal relationships. Similarly difficult may be capturing authoritarian submission and aggression in a new socio-cultural context where concerns about immigration spread across the political spectrum and institutions traditionally friendly to the far right, such as mainstream conservatism and the church establishment, are now seen as suspect.

The present study suggests that insecurity in the bond with the state can lead to authoritarianism indirectly, via the experience of traumatisation and perceptions of social cohesion. This, however, involved two different rather than one single pathway as it was hypothesised. Perhaps the construct of collective attachment lies behind the link between post-traumatic stress and perceptions of social cohesion, as suggested in previous studies (Johns et al. 2012). If this is true, when attachment to a major institution is entered into the model as occurred in the present study, the link between social cohesion and post-traumatic stress will become non-significant.

Nonetheless, the positive relationship observed between perceived cohesion and authoritarianism, however weak, appears to contradict the claim that authoritarianism emerges as a response to threatening perceptions of low social cohesiveness (Duckitt 1989; Feldman 2003). As data were collected after Golden Dawn had already been established as a significant political force both nationally in the particular borough, its ultra-nationalistic discourse may have inflated the sense of morale and belonging among sympathisers, resulting in a positive association between perceptions of social cohesion and authoritarian attitudes. However, as the present study did not assess voting behaviour or party affiliation, the extent of the link between authoritarianism and support for Golden Dawn or any other politicalparty remains uncertain.

The negative indirect effect of person-to-state attachment on authoritarianism via social cohesion was also counterintuitive. One possible explanation may be found if the nature of attachment representations is considered. Although adult perceptions of self and other can be distorted by previous attachment experience, often do reflect the reality of the specific relationship (Owens et al. 1995). According to these researchers, the way current adult bonds are experienced is significantly impacted upon by representations of the past and the external demands of the present.

Bonds between individuals and collective entities, such as the national state, may follow similar principles. Considering the levels of dysfunctional provision and open hostility the modern Greek state has directed towards its citizens since its inception in the early nineteenth century (Ricks 2009), it may the case that those who feel either reluctant to engage with it (high avoidance) or apprehensive when they attempt to do so (high anxiety) mostly report real rather than defensively distorted characteristics of the relationship. Taking into account the fragmentation of formal social support, the lack of trust in social institutions, and the damage the country’s international image has suffered in recent years, those individuals have also reasons to perceive low social cohesion. Interestingly, while they formed rather realistic perceptions of their social conditions, those individuals appeared less likely to endorse an authoritarian stance. On the other hand, those who presented high authoritarian attitudes were those who, despite all its serious historical failings, perceived a relatively trusting relationship with the Greek state and continued to have strong feelings of belonging and morale about their seriously strained and frustrating country. If such unrealistic perceptions constitute an unconscious defensive attempt to conceal a painful social reality, then authoritarian notions of all-powerful leaders and absolute social conventions can offer an illusion of comfort.

On the other hand, an alternative explanation could be that individuals with genuinely positive experiences with the state apparatus also genuinely perceived society as cohesive. However, the question remains why such socially content citizens adopt aggressive and intolerant socio-political views, which according to previous research, have been consistently linked with resentment and negative social experience (Rickert 1998; Sassoon 2007)? The above interpretation of the findings seems to suggest that the state attachment scale worked more like those scales of adult attachment assessing a specific relationship rather than those assessing generic working models (Collins and Read 1994). Although further validation is required, CFA results and the obtained associations between attachment-to-state and other study variables provide preliminary support for the validity of the instrument.

The current findings also confirm the important role of traumatic fear in the development of authoritarianism, a role repeatedly identified in history, but rarely evidenced in empirical research (Besel 1984; Sassoon 2007). As this study focused on traumatisation by austerity and socio-economic turbulence, it provided further evidence for the role of “economic” trauma in the emergence of far-right ideology and may be relevant to other major socio-political events currently unfolding across the globe. The recent appeal of nationalistic, xenophobic, and intolerant discourses to a large number of citizens after years of social inequality and economic hardship in Europe and the USA seem to be triggered by the experience of significant and unexpected threats. Such threats refer not only to people’s livelihoods but also their social identities and become overwhelming as social institutions fail to contain them. Although economic hardship is not the only factor behind such an upsurge, it can interact with others, like uncontrolled immigration and challenges to national and democratic sovereignty, generating a toxic ideological mix.

While crisis-related traumatisation provided indirect links between attachment and authoritarianism, such traumatisation did not emerge as the result of particular perceptions of social cohesion, as it was initially hypothesised. As mentioned above, attachment may lie behind the link between post-traumatic stress and the extent to which society is perceived as cohesive. The current findings suggest that improving the quality of state provision and facilitating the exchange of interpersonal support are critical in reducing post-traumatic stress, distorted perceptions of social cohesion, and the adoption of authoritarian attitudes. The succession of Greek governments that managed the crisis and the troika of foreign lenders that imposed the harsh austerity seem to have operated in exactly the opposite direction. A similar approach has also been used in dealing with the economy in other Eurozone countries besides Greece. If policies towards enhancing the supportive capacity of social institutions and human relationships had been adopted instead, loss of trust in national and European institutions may have been prevented and the appeal of far-right parties across the continent may have been restrained. When threats to personal and social identities are buffered against, individuals feel less compelled to seek refuge in ideologies of total protection and irrefutable certainty.

The present study has a number of limitations. As attachment styles are understood to be relatively deep-seated and long-standing patterns of experience and behaviour in human relationships, it would not be unreasonable to expect that the styles of current participants had been formed before the economic crisis hit the country. However, it is also possible that such patterns, particularly in relation to the national state, were indeed affected by the crisis, including a crisis-induced surge in authoritarianism. Although the attachment-to-authoritarianism pathway model had a better fit than the alternative tested, the correlational nature of the study cannot really establish the direction of causality so findings need to be interpreted with caution. Moreover, it should be taken into account that demographic variables such as age, gender, or caring for dependents were associated with post-traumatic stress in the current sample (Sochos 2018) and may have impacted the current analyses. For example, as older individuals and those caring for dependants were found to suffer from relatively greater posttraumatic stress and as this is a rather young sample with 60% of participants having no dependants, the levels of post-traumatic stress recorded may have been distorted on those grounds. In addition, future studies should test the hypothesised model in representative samples in Greece and other countries undergoing socio-economic turmoil and validate further the adapted scales used improving their reliability when required. Finally, future psychosocial research on the recent trend towards reviving an idealised notion of the traditional nation-state could be informed by attachment theory and conceptualise such trend as a response to the dismantling of previously protective local social institutions by neoliberal globalisation. The present study can be thought of as a step in that direction.