Among the factors that explain the severe impacts of the global economic crisis on the Greek economy, specific institutional conditions of the Greek political system stand out. The study attempts to shed light on these conditions, placing the theory of Acemoglu and Robinson regarding the roots of wealth and poverty as a broader interpretative framework. During the critical period of 2010-2014, the vicious cycle between the institutional pathologies and the elements of closure in the Greek economy reached a worse degree: collapse of political credibility, weakening of the normative quality of the Constitution, and serious disruptions in the functioning of parliamentary democracy, an unbearable persistence of corruption, clientelist relationships, and entanglement, and a decisive indifference of the media towards their constitutional role. Of course, an electoral overturn, like that of January 2015, would never be sufficient on its own to reverse such developments. After the activation of the imaginary and the symbolic gestures, the question of the effective activation of institutions always arises.