I was speaking with a Greek friend about this situation last night. He said both he and his family in Greece see the unelected technocrat government as the best alternative to the country holding elections. The political system is broken, he told me, and there is no way an election would yield a government that could tell the people what they don’t want to hear and implement the immensely unpopular austerity reforms demanded by Northern Europe in exchange for the bail-out.

It is the same in Italy, where the political system has become so dysfunctional it allowed a prime minister to stay in power while he openly flouted the law, had sex with underage prostitutes and called his own nation a “shitty country.” “It’s not like democracy has been working so great for us,” an Italian friend told me. “I felt powerless before with Berlusconi in power. At least this way I’ll be powerless with a competent government.”

So has it come to this? Have our political systems in the West failed us so utterly that people are willing to try less democratic approaches? The prospect of unelected technocrat governments has caused alarm in many quarters of Europe. And the fact that Greece is the birthplace of democracy is an irony lost on no one.