A Greek constituent assembly, convened in 1863 at the urging of Britain and the newly installed King George, adopts a much more democratic constitution in 1864.

The Constitution of 1864 had been drafted following the models of the Constitutions of Belgium of 1831 and of Denmark of 1849, and establishes in clear terms the principle of popular sovereignty, since the only legislative body with reversionary powers is now the Parliament.

Amplifying the democratic freedoms of the 1844 constitution, it vests sovereignty in the Greek people, although the sovereign retains substantial, if vaguely defined, powers in foreign policy.

A single-chamber parliament with full legislative powers is to be elected by direct, secret ballot.

The powers of the King are reduced and the Senate is abolished, and the franchise is extended to all adult males.

Because the king retains substantial powers, however, the choice of a new monarch remains an extremely important issue.

Greek politics remains heavily dynastic, as it has always been.

Family names such as Zaimis, Rallis and Trikoupis will occur repeatedly as Prime Ministers.

Although parties are centered around the individual leaders, often bearing their names, two broad political tendencies exist: the liberals, led first by Charilaos Trikoupis, and the conservatives, led initially by Theodoros Deligiannis.

Trikoupis and Deligiannis will dominate Greek politics in the later 19th century, alternating in office.

Trikoupis favors cooperation with Great Britain in foreign affairs, the creation of infrastructure and an indigenous industry, raising protective tariffs and progressive social legislation, while the more populist Deligiannis depends on the promotion of the irredentist concept of Greek nationalism known as the Megali Idea.

Greek politician Charilaos Trikoupis, elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1865,  is appointed foreign minister in 1866.

Trikoupis had studied literature and law in Athens and Paris before entering the Greek diplomatic service, and had represented the Greek community of London at the Constituent Assembly in Athens in 1862.

Foreign Minister Trikoupis, who seeks to develop resources and an industrial base for Greece and to create a strong army and navy, begins in 1869 to address the problem of legislative gridlock.

By 1835, three years after Greek independence, plans were being put before the Greek state to construct a railway line from Athens to the nearby port of Piraeus.

After a contract for its construction was finally signed twenty-two years later, four different companies had consumed an additional twelve years laying the eight and a half kilometers of track, the work being completed in 1869.

 

The small Greek state contains within its borders scarcely one-third of the Greek populations of the Near and Middle East, and the struggle to expand the nation's borders is to dominate the first century of independent statehood.

In spite of the new constitution of 1864, the Greek political system remains deeply flawed.

Seven general elections will be held From 1865 to 1875, and eighteen different administrations hold office.

King George can and does create and dismiss governments if legislation or a budget fails to pass, so political leaders constantly juggle competing interests to keep fragile ruling coalitions together.

Often the king asks leaders of minority parties to form governments while more significant legislative figures are overlooked, actions that are a recipe for political gridlock as well as a mockery of the democratic process.

Charilaos Trikoupis had written a newspaper article identifying King George's toleration of minority governments in 1874.

After the writer's arrest for treason, the king, in a decisive step toward political modernization, concedes in 1875 that he will henceforth entrust the government to the political leader enjoying the confidence of a majority of the deputies in parliament.

However, if no party can obtain the pledged support of a plurality, then the king will dissolve parliament and call for a general election. (The result of this reform will be a relatively stable twenty-five-year period at the end of the century, in which only seven general elections will be held.)

Greece has little industry and few roads, the basis of the social and economic structure being a collection of small agricultural towns acting as marketplaces for the surrounding villages.

Prime Minister Alexandros Koumoundouros, hoping that the development of a railway system would go some way towards redressing this lack of internal and external communication, had in 1881 signed four contracts for the laying of standard gauge (1.43 meter) lines, intending to make Greece a pivotal point on the journey between Europe and India.

Charilaos Trikoupis, prime minister for short periods in 1875, 1878, and 1880, has sought to develop resources and an industrial base for Greece and to create a strong army and navy, but his periods in office have been too short to implement his ideas.

After Trikoupis becomes prime minister for the fourth time in March 1882, he immediately strives to strengthen Greek finances.

Trikoupis, possessed of a different political vision for the railways, cancels the Koumoundouros contracts, replacing them with four of his own.

Viewing rail service as a way of stimulating the internal growth of Greece, he proposes a four hundred and seventeen kilometer-narrow gauge (one meter) system encircling the Northern Peloponnese, with a separate system in Thessaly linking the Port of Volos with the Town of Kalambaka on the other side of the Thessalian plain.

There is also a line of seventy-six to be laid from Athens to Lavrion, on the peninsula to the south of Athens.

Although Trikoupis prefers narrow gauge over standard gauge due to cheaper initial construction costs, the line linking Athens to Larissa, which is planned to eventually join with the European system, will be constructed to Standard Gauge. (The network will take twenty-five years to complete, twenty years longer than the five anticipated by Trikoupis.)

Greece, perceiving Macedonia as an essential element of the Megali Idea, will hold vehemently to its claims, first against the Ottoman Empire and then against other Balkan nations. (Elements of this policy remain in force today.)

The incorporation of Thessaly has brought the northern frontier of Greece to the borders of Macedonia, which, with its mixed population of Greeks, Bulgarians, Serbs, Albanians, Turks, Vlachs, and Gypsies, is a byword for ethnic complexity.

It has also brought Greece into contention with Serbia and Bulgaria, all of which cast covetous eyes over Macedonia, which remains under Ottoman rule.

Initially, the contest is conducted by means of ecclesiastical, educational, and cultural propaganda.

Efforts to impose either Greek or Slavic culture in Macedonia will eventually lead to terrorist violence and atrocities and a perpetually volatile situation.

 

The kaleidoscopic coalitions of internal Greek politics in earlier years have given way to a two-party system, in which power alternates between two men, Charilaos Trikoupis, Prime Minister of Greece and Theodoros Deligiannis.

Trikoupis represents the modernizing, Westernizing trend in politics, while his archrival Deligiannis is a political boss in the traditional mold, whose only real program is the overturning of the reforms of Trikoupis.

Believing the modernization of the political system and economic development to be the essential preconditions of territorial expansion, Trikoupis struggles to establish Greece's credit-worthiness in international markets and encourages the country's hesitant steps in the direction of industrialization.

He also promotes infrastructural projects such as road building, railway construction, the building of the Corinth Canal, and the draining of Lake Kopaïs in Thessaly.

Such measures, however, together with Trikoupis' concurrent efforts to modernize the country's armed forces, must be paid for, and the increased taxation they entail, prove an easy target for the populist demagogue Deligiannis.

Deligiannis is able to court further popularity by advocating an aggressive policy toward the Ottoman Empire, but his belligerence is to have disastrous economic consequences.

Charilaos Trikoupis’ party had been defeated in the Greek general election of April 1885, and his bitter rival Theodor Deligiannis, a resolute advocate of aggressive and often irresponsible irredentism, has replaced him, serving for a third time as prime minister.

While Trikoupis has argued for the strengthening of the Greek state as the essential precondition of territorial expansion, Deligiannis, displaying no such caution, mobilizes in 1885 in an attempt to exploit the crisis over Bulgaria by an invasion of Turkish Macedonia.

The Great Powers respond by imposing a naval blockade, stopping the adventure before it can begin.

Charilaos Trikoupis and his arch-rival Theodoros Deligiannis are Greece’s dominant political figures of the last quarter of the nineteenth century—Trikoupis the Westernizer and modernizer, Deligiannis the traditionalist and strong advocate of irredentism.

Trikoupis sees Greece as needing to develop economically, become more liberal socially, and develop its military strength in order to become a truly "modern" state.

During his terms as prime minister in the 1880s (altogether he will serve seven terms, interspersed with the first three of Deligiannis's five terms), Trikoupis has made major economic and social reforms that have pushed Greece significantly to develop in these ways.

The only engine to drive such reform programs is extensive foreign loans.

By 1887, some forty percent of government expenditures go to servicing the national debt.

Trikoupis has levied taxes and import tariffs on numerous commodities, increased the land tax, and established government monopolies on salt and matches.